Carnival Pride - Day 6 - Freeport (Part 1)

All cruise long even the crew and fun squad referred to Freeport as the port of nothing. I think the only time I've gotten off in all my visits here was to take a Carnival excursion to the UNESCO center for a dolphin encounter. Even now that I can say I've gotten in the water with stingrays, I would still rather do another dolphin encounter. I've heard there's one excursion with sea lions now, future goals? This was also our shortest port day from 7:15AM to 1PM so we were just planning to play it by ear.

While I had decided the soda package was worth it for me, Joni ended up drinking so many coffees from the Piazza Café that she made quite the impression on the woman working the counter. The first time during the cruise, Joni ordered a chai latte and the crew member says "No you don't want that, it's just hot milk." Two other ladies waiting at the counter mentioned getting hazelnut lattes. Joni agreed to try one too and liked it. Joni went back to get another hazelnut latte the next day and the same woman says "No, I'll make you a caramel latte." Joni tells her that she doesn't like caramel flavoring so she offers to make Joni a vanilla hazelnut latte instead. Really reminded us of the old character from Seinfeld - no chai latte for you!

We'd gotten up unnecessarily early this morning and had the perfect view from our balcony. Look to the right and you could see the latest ship in drydock. I spent a lot of time searching the internet but I finally figured out that the ship we saw there was from the Pullmantur line. A look to the left let us watch the Costa Grand Classica docking.

A cruise tip for any new or experienced cruisers who may not know - in addition to being able to put cash on your account at guest services to cover your onboard charges, you can also exchange any cash you have for smaller bills. For instance, in case you forgot to grab some $1 bills for tipping or in my case you only wanted to bring small bills on shore for shopping. I had used up a good portion of my smaller non $1 bills shopping in Nassau and didn't want to be having to hand a large bill to some craft booth owner who "didn't" have change.

A visit up to the buffet where I tried the eggs benedict - slowly becoming a tradition for me to try on every ship. In case you're wondering, Princess and Celebrity so far are leading the pack but both of those were breakfast in suite restaurants and not mass produced for the buffet. The things you talk about when you've been friends for over 20 years and are together 24/7 this week - the amount of milk to the amount of cereal ratio in my breakfast bowl. I learned that Joni only likes a splash of milk in her cereal bowl so when my tiny cereal box contents looked like pebbles in the sea of milk from one milk carton, I was told I needed to put more cereal in that bowl because the sight of all that milk was bothering her. Apparently we've progressed from current events, to the weather, to family life, to discussing the travesty of having too much milk in my bowl.

Soon after breakfast, we headed on shore. Last time I'd bothered to browse the shops right at the port, it was 90% individual stands of people's handiwork. Now we only saw about 30% of these small pop up shops and the most was full souvenir stores in their own buildings. Senor Frogs and Fat Tuesday were there 10 steps from the port gates so all you drinkers can rejoice without having to stumble very far to come back to the ship. We did find that a lot of the employees in the shops we checked out were, let's call it "attentive." Joni was still browsing to try and finish her gift selection for every friend and relative and each thing I picked up to show her someone was there to quiz me about my interest. When I returned some snow globes Joni vetoed to the shelf, I got quizzed on why I didn't want them.

Which beach excursion would you take?

After a while I decided it was simpler to hang back outside and get some pictures while Joni shopped. We were so close to the ship that I could hear another Alpha (medical) call and hoped that it was only a drill this time. I was waiting for a chance to take a picture of some male and female pirate themed statues outside a shop and got to observe a couple taking pictures of their young teen son standing between them. The son posed very nicely standing between the two statues facing the camera but Mom decided she'd rather have a more unique picture and grabbed the female pirate statue's breasts while telling her son that he should also "grab the boobs!" for the next picture. That poor young man looked so mortified but mom was laughing and kept repeating it like the punchline of a hilarious joke when she noticed I was standing there. "I told him to grab the boobs! Haha haha!"

Our towel animal today looked about as happy as we were that the cruise was almost over.

Once back on board, Joni wanted to go sunbathe so I attended Outrageous Laws trivia on my own. Next time you're thinking of dangling your bed out the window, you'd best think twice if you want to stay out of jail. With time to kill before I'd agreed to meet back up with Joni at the general knowledge trivia, I headed to the top deck in hopes of getting clearer photos of the ship in drydock. In the past I've been able to get some great angles of the ships in photos as they are raised up but today's perspective wasn't the best. As I walked along the open deck however, I was treated to a cool surprise. The Carnival Elation had just arrived and in order to back their way into a slot perpendicular to us, they did a complete 360 turn in the open water before backing up past us. As a photographer, being on one cruise ship up high while a ship is far enough to see the whole thing yet close enough to have clear features is the holy grail of perspectives for a cruise ship nerd like myself. I call scenic photographic gems like this as postcard shots. I love those instances when you come home showing off your pictures and your family questions why you bought postcards.

After reuniting for trivia, Joni and I headed back up to Lido deck to try the Blue Iguana taco bowls for lunch. The buffet was super busy so by the time we got our food and could find a place to sit and eat it, we missed the next couple trivia themed games. I highly recommend though getting a hodgepodge of all 3 meat choices (chicken, steak, and shrimp) as the base of your taco bowl. A smattering of diced tomato, cheese, sour cream and guacamole was my concoction of choice. If I could have found a taco sauce that didn't depict someone's mouth on fire running for the hills on the bottle, it would have been even better.

After mixing everything together

With unexpected time to kill, we decided to grab our birthday spa gift cards as they were to expire today and see what they could be used on. I think the spa staff might have gotten used to people deciding not to use their gift cards because the guy we talked to lost all his enthusiasm when we explained why we were inquiring. As in most things in life, there's always a catch. Unlike the Pixels gift card Joni got which was simple and straightforward as to what it covered, we were handed this 2 sided list of procedures that they offer only to be told that our gift card only allowed us to choose from the few items marked with the "tts" (time to spa) fine print next to them. The cheapest of which was an $85 60 minute session for Individualized Personal Training. Our other choices were: Skindulgent Facials: a $189 50 minute La Therapie Hydra-Therapie Skin Nutritive Facial or the $145 50 minute Elemis Pro-Collagen Age Defy Facial; Acupuncture: $169 50 minute Single session; Detox Treatments: $159 Ionithermie Cellulite Reduction Program, all the massages and salt glow sessions ranging from $160-$418, teeth whitening, a gent's grooming package (what no ladies' grooming package?), a hair blowout or the classic Fire & Ice manicure and pedicure. We also asked about using it on products instead but there was a limitation on how we could only purchase certain products and all of them ranged from $75-$300. What did we decide you ask? That our unused gift cards would make a nice souvenir from the trip!

Instead we opted to spend the money that would have covered the rest of a spa service/product on the onboard shops and Cherry on Top candy store. Yes, even us 38 year old folks visit the candy store. Turns out we're both suckers for the sour gummies and Joni even helped me finish off the bag I bought in addition to the small bag she made up for herself. I still had my jelly beans left over from the first trip but Joni felt compelled to go back and restock her gummy supply. She threw in a few of those gummy funnels in the name of her kids but I have a feeling I know who ate the bulk of that bag. :)

Back to the Piazza Café for Cartoon trivia. Not a topic I'd normally bother to go for but we figured why not? Did respectably but a lot of the questions were geared more toward more recent primetime animated shows (hint: both the Oasis (in TV trivia) and the Pride included a question asking the name of the Simpsons dog. Not many people remember his name is Santa's Little Helper. You're welcome!) and I usually don't watch those. I barely watched the morning cartoons as a kid but at least knew things like The Flintstones were from Bedrock and the Jetsons son was named Elroy. What 80's kid doesn't automatically hear "his boy Elroy" in their head when they think of the Jetsons theme song?

Joni went over to get another coffee and the crew member behind the counter commented on how often she's been coming for coffee. She asked if Joni had been getting her points but Joni didn't know what she was talking about. She offered to give Joni credit for the past coffees she's gotten and promised to "bring her over something nice" while we sat in the café to play Rock & Roll trivia. Unfortunately, the coffee bar soon got slammed so she never got the chance to break away and bring whatever it was over. The Rock & Roll trivia caused a bit of confusion because it was listed in the Hub App schedule but not in the Fun Times. People were showing up questioning whether it was really going to be held until fun squad member Bradley showed up ready to host it. Just before it started, he announced the next Clue suspect who didn't do it. I won't give away any spoilers but this was the first time Ms. White did NOT give out the clue.

Unfortunately I missed out on attending the official scheduled Cruise Critic Meet n Mingle I'd signed us up for as we were attending the Clue reveal and the Guesses game right after. Since we usually attend the activities on board frequently, we get to know the entertainment staff as well as your kids might get to know the youth staff. A couple times we've encountered the same staff on future cruises so it's like seeing an old friend. 

The only negative thing I'd comment on when it comes to my experience with Bradley on this trip is his reaction to my being the only one in the crowd of trivia players who'd traveled to the places in Europe he asked about. Earlier in the cruise he asked who had been to Norway and I was the only one to raise my hand thanks to last year's Baltic cruise. This time, he had a question in the game about the Eiffel tower in Paris. He polled the group asking if this was anyone's first cruise. Tons of hands shot up. Then he asks who has been to Paris and I was the sole hand raiser again. Bradley's tone turns snarky as he remarks "Oh wow, you're well traveled." It left me feeling like I should somehow be apologizing for my lucky opportunities in life.