All posts filed under: Travel

Five Cruise Boarding Tips

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Recently we had the opportunity to go on our second cruise. This time it was in a Royal Caribbean ship, (our first time it was aboard the Carnival Fantasy), The Empress of the Seas. Once again this is one of the smaller ships of the float, which makes for a more relaxed experience. At some point I will do a comparison between the smaller Carnival ship v. the smaller Royal ship. Today I want to give you some tips on boarding your cruise. If you do a quick google search you will find that this topic has been discussed ad nauseam. But after spending several hours reading through many travel blogs these are the tips that most everyone seems to agree on. As far as my own experience I can confirm that these are great guides to follow. Some extremely obvious (don’t leave your passport) others not so much (bring a bottle of wine/champagne), here I give you 5 tips that will make your life better on embarkation day. 1- Be early – There seems to …

A Day In Nassau

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Earlier this year I had the opportunity of going on my first cruise to Nassau, Bahamas. We went on the Carnival Fantasy. The ship is one of the smallest in their fleet, but it was actually a pretty nice, relaxed cruise. I write about our food experience aboard the ship in the following post: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. Now this post is our candid opinion about our time in Nassau. My husband and I were not very impressed with Nassau. This was our first cruise together and our first time in Nassau. We were expecting an adventure Anthony Bourdain would have been proud of… instead we found a very touristy town. Previous to the trip we tried to be adventurous explorers and did many hours of research trying to find authentic food restaurants, to find historical sites, and meaningful adventures. We came up with what we thought was a promising plan, rented a scooter and headed away from all the tourist hangouts (Senor Frogs?) and went inland to explore. When we went inland we were …

Food Aboard The Carnival Fantasy — Day 3

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Sunday was our day at sea. I spent this day relaxing around the pool with a few cocktails. We napped, and we ate… It was magical! Day 3: For both breakfast and lunch we just went to the buffet. For breakfast I had grits, ham, chicken flautas, fruit, and bread. For lunch we had the glorious burritos (my husband’s mission for the trip was to eat as many burritos as possible… somehow he only ended eating two though). Dinner — My husband ordered the caprese salad. It was good, with a basil pesto and oil, it was pretty yummy. I got the wild mushroom soup (one of my favorite soups). It was very good! My husband got the chicken parmesan as his entree (I guess he was feeling like Italian food that night). It was ok, nothing that exciting about it. The small side of potatoes au gratin was just blah, and the veggies were good. I ordered the lobster. I have to say I was very disappointed. It was just a tiny lobster tail with no …

Food Aboard The Carnival Fantasy — Day 2

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The next day dawned with a clear, sunny sky, which I enjoyed with a cup of coffee from the highest deck, and took lots of pictures of the sunrise… Lots! Breakfast — Since we wanted to debark as soon as possible, we had an early breakfast. We went to the dining room for this one, not the buffet. It was actually a pretty disappointing breakfast. There weren’t that many customers around, but they still had a hard time getting our drinks (coffee, milk, orange juice). We actually got our food before we got the juice. As far as breakfast I had eggs benedict with a side of corned beef hash. The eggs benedict were pretty bad, the hollandaise sauce was in mousse form (why?) which had dried up when they put it under the broiler (again, why?) and at that point it was a pretty dry flavorless paste on top of the eggs. The corned beef hash was more of a mashed potatoes with corned beef, it was a bit odd. All in all pretty …

Food Aboard The Carnival Fantasy — Day 1

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Overall we loved the food aboard the Carnival Fantasy. In the next couple of posts I will show you the day by day log of what we ate! Day 1: Boarding & Lunch — We got to the terminal very early in order to skip traffic delays (let’s face it, it gets very bad in the downtown Miami area). Because of this we ended up eating a very rushed breakfast and waiting at the terminal for a bit. Once we were on the boat the first thing we did was get lunch. The only thing open was the buffet at Windows On The Sea, the burger, and burrito place right outside. My husband got pizza which was average, we also tried a burrito which was AMAZING (my husband LOVED it, with steak, shrimp and all the toppings you might want what isn’t there to love?). From the buffet I got an assortment of salads and veggies and steak (see picture). The desserts offered were bad… just bad. Dinner — The first night on the boat the weather …