arctickitty

More coffee snob comments.  Princess sends their baristas to Italy to get trained.  I’ve not heard anything about how Carnival trains their baristas so I was a little skeptical of it, but those two Americanos were done well.  What I’m looking for in an Americano is an excellent coffee flavor and a proper crema (the coffee froth on top) and both of my drinks had both.  That just-right coffee flavor is such an emotional boost to me, warm hug in a cup that fuels me.

Princess also had coffee cards that you could purchase.  I got one for my TransAtlantic and this meant I had a certain number of lunches for espresso based drinks of any kind.  I could also get unlimited fresh brewed coffee and premium tea bags (similar to what Carnival had at their coffee shops with full leaf tea in a tea bag).  Seemed like the only way to get a deal on coffee was to get Cheers, which would not have been useful to us.  I don’t get fancy coffee on a regular basis at home as I like what I make for myself and don’t have the budget for it, so it’s not like I needed or wanted daily lattes.  Plus I found coffee places in many of our ports that I wanted to try, so I wanted to spend some of my money at them instead.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 10 / Cruise Day 9

Fifth Port Day / More Like a Sea Day / Victoria, BC, Canada

This is the condiment area at Java Blue.  It must have seemed important that I document it for you.

The baked goods at Java Blue looked better than those on the lido buffet but with so much food on a cruise ship, I didn’t see a need to buy anything.  This is one aspect Princess wins at: how they use their atrium, for several reasons.  One is that in addition to a bar, there is a barista style coffee shop like Java Blue called the International Cafe.  But the IC is also a 24 hour light food venue.  In the morning they had parfaits and breakfast sandwiches and muffins and cronuts and donuts; these rotated.  The rest of the day they had sandwiches or little plated salads like watermelon and feta or pasta.  They had soup behind the counter and cheese plates in the evenings.  So there was always somewhere to get a somewhat healthy, somewhat classy snack.  You could also get your barista-made coffee any hour of the day or night; you didn’t have to wait until 6am.  There was a Cruise Critic member whose trip reports I read who routinely got up at 3 or 4am.  He loved photographing cities he visited as well as the ship at those hours.  His style would be cramped on Carnival.

Another thing Princess did to use their atrium better was they had live music at more varied times of day.  It was not trivia all day long and then live music doesn’t start until 4pm.  Whatever they had onboard for strings, whether a duo or quartet might play mid morning or mid afternoon and then depending on the geography of the cruise, whatever specialty music would play as well, so mariachi band or steel drums (or in the case of the TransAtlantic, lots and lots of the string quartet…those ladies were busy).  
 

Anyway, back to Carnival, and I noticed that they added this sign to Java Blue and the Serenity bar later in the cruise. Lots of fun sounding warm drinks on there!

This menu also appeared at Java Blue.

This is the salsa dancing lesson.  I was trying to understand the woman in the chair on the stage.  We saw sign language interpreters at many other events but it didn’t look like she was signing but showing how to dance while seated?  Any ideas?

My energy was flagging and it was midday and Victoria was to keep us up to midnight so I decided to go big before going home.  I got an Americano AND a juice from Juice & Java.  This was my second Americano for when I just wanted some coffee that tasted better.  For the record the taste of the coffee in the lido and dining rooms seemed to vary widely.  One day it tasted like tea, some days it was bitter, some days it was burnt, and some days it was just average.  I sprinkled on some nutmeg.  At coffee stands and shops I usually get a latte or a special if they have one, but if I’m trying to economize a little, I’ll just get an Americano and put half & half in it.  The point here was caffeine that tasted better so hence the Americano.

By this point in the cruise they had run out of some of the ingredients needed to make most of the juices (kale, pineapple) so I couldn’t order the one with parsley that I wanted, so I got this celery one instead.  Like the previous juice, it was very very good.  I don’t have an expensive juicer and we don’t have a shop where we can get fresh green juices at home so this was worth the up charge and hydration support to me.  So next I found Special Someone and we found a place to park our butts outside while we foraged for snacks.  He helped drink the drinks.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 10 / Cruise Day 9

Fifth Port Day / More Like a Sea Day / Victoria, BC, Canada

Next I explored the Red Carper nightclub.

These window seats had awesome cushions and I brought Special Someone down to chill there later.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 10 / Cruise Day 9

Fifth Port Day / More Like a Sea Day / Victoria, BC, Canada

Then I went back in the arcade and looked around some more.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 10 / Cruise Day 9

Fifth Port Day / More Like a Sea Day / Victoria, BC, Canada

This was one of two times I wandered through O2 this day.  Both times there was an attendant and no teenagers.  He said there were a few on board and they wandered in a little but they’re teenagers so they wander.

Below is the gaming suite.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 10 / Cruise Day 9

Fifth Port Day / More Like a Sea Day / Victoria, BC, Canada

I continued my wanderings.  This open door caught my eye but I couldn’t read the sign.

Entrance to the Red Frog Pub.  I feel like I forgot to go down to desk 4 to check it out very often.

Then I decided to capture for those who haven’t been on the Splendor, how the signs change colors.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 10 / Cruise Day 9

Fifth Port Day / More Like a Sea Day / Victoria, BC, Canada

The next place that I wandered into was The Cool.

Can’t stand that I ever saw this jazz bar in use nor did I see mention of jazz music in the Fun Times.

Sometimes I am drawn to shapes, and that’s what’s going on here.  Otherwise I have nothing intelligent to say about what you’re looking at.

Looking down into the Gold Pearl.

More shapes.  

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 10 / Cruise Day 9

Fifth Port Day / More Like a Sea Day / Victoria, BC, Canada

We spent the day neck and neck with our sister, Carnival Spirit.

I don’t remember where I found this nook.

I took some pictures in El Morocco lounge.

A lot of the design elements across the ship reminded me of Spain.  Antonio Gaudi, tiles, modernism, Moorish influence…

I think the newer ships like the Marie Gras look plain and boring.

Why not go all out?

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 10 / Cruise Day 9

Fifth Port Day / More Like a Sea Day / Victoria, BC, Canada

Good morning.  It the second to last morning aboard the Carnival Splendor but it’s afternoon here.  We’re having a heat wave and it’s 75 degrees.

Special Someone ordered the granola parfait because it said Greek yogurt but it wasn’t really Greek yogurt, it was regular yogurt.

Since we’re eating breakfast, that means that I’ve neglected to tell you how our wild night out went for the second elegant night.  In general very few people dressed up for this one.  I wore the purple dress I posted earlier and Special Someone wore his same tux shirt and a different jacket.  Since it was blue, it naturally went with his European skinny jeans.  Even though we were more dressed up that almost everyone else, it never occurred to me that technically he was violating the dress code.  We didn’t look like dress code violators.

Before the cruise, Special Someone had told me that Carnival would have an 80s party.  Having grown up in that cave, I’ve never been to an 80s party, but we were ready.  I had like green leg warmers to put on and this ridiculous rainbow jacket that is actually great for early morning walks IRL.  And my leg warmers are really just Italian compression stockings that happen to be an amazing color.  All cruise, Special Someone had been asking Andy the Cruise Director when 80s night would be and he said to keep our eyes out for the Aurora party.  Well the Northern Lights lido deck glow party was to be on the second elegant night at 8:15.  We were so ready for it.

There were also going to be 4 comedy shows, two each by two comedians.  Some nights there’d only been 1 or 2, so this was our night to try Punchliner again.  Additionally, they were going to do the first production show of the whole entire cruise, Epic Rock, so we wanted to see that, too.  We were so ready for it all.

And then dinner took For.Ever.  And Ever.  So we had to sing like Elsa and…let it go.  Our assistant server was singing a solo and he did a great job so we just had to party along with him and accept that we were missing the Northern Lights lido glow party AKA 80s night (although we did get to see Andy’s outfit later and it was AMAZing).

We missed most of the comedy shows but wandered into El Morocco Lounge aka Punchliner and listened to some dude ramble about how he has airline STATUS not lol I don’t care about your airline status anymore than I care about some chick talking about how she’s friends with a lot of PLATINUMS you know.  So we walked back out and that was comedy for us.

Now the production show, Epic Rock baffled us it was so terrible.  The singers were off key and sounded worse than high school.  Our assistant server did a much better job in the dining room.  All the amateurs we listened to at Karaoke the next day did a much better job.  
 

We found the costumes confusing and didn’t understand what they were going for.  It was like they were maybe trying to channel a Hamilton vibe?  Looked like pioneer times meets colonial times meets Carnival cruise lines?  All of the women had big bustles and all of the men had big ruffles.

And the choreography.  I don’t think I’ve ever deigned to critique choreography  before, but this was just so bad.  Sure they were fit people but it just seemed like they were running around in circles nonstop.  Where was the fire?  It lacked drama or lyricism.

And then the lighting effects.  I was late to the production show game on Princess and only saw a few of theirs, but I remember one New York City themed show with lighting so realistic it felt like we’d been plopped in Manhattan.  Epic Rock seemed like someone had cut some shapes with child safety scissors and was projecting them from their bedroom.  As for a set, there was this strange cube thing they kept pushing in circle.  You could see them having to really exert themselves to push it, so it must have been heavy or something.  
 

Special Someone lived in Vegas for a good number of years and said he wasn’t expecting Vegas quality, but he was expecting something better than high school.

Or Costco.  If Costco put on musicals, this wouldn’t be up to their standards.

After that, we wandered the ship and people watched and tried to stay awake.  It was really hard.

Anyway, back to breakfast.  Carnival treated our Victoria Day like a sea day so we had Sea Day Brunch.  This was the first day I slept in and we got in comfortably close to closing.  I very rarely repeat orders on a cruise but I pretty much wanted to repeat some of the same brunch items.  I started with the Caesar salad and ate the whole thing again.  I also got the cucumber and tomato from the Signature Tower, no bagel, no seafood please.  I did not get the spinach from the steak, no steak, no eggs, no fries.  
 

I got the Voyage burger again.  Even before I started adding my own layers, it started shorter than my previous Voyage.  It was a little more wieldy this time.

Special Someone ordered the skillet cake.  Like a lot of the breakfast and brunch dishes, it was missing the promised toppings.  It was ok but the regular pancakes on port day breakfast and on the lido buffet were softer and fluffier.

I think this was the first day we noticed the syrup had molasses mixed into it.

Huevos rancheros

Mozzarella sticks with crap fries instead of curly 

We remembered to order dessert this time and enjoyed the pie even though the ice cream was soupy and melted (maybe we took too long eating all that food we ordered).

I was curious about the cookies so we ordered them, too, and took them with us.  Between the two of us, we liked them all!

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 9 / Cruise Day 7

Fourth Port Day / Ketchikan
 

And now, second elegant night dinner. 
 

This is the crab cakes. It was good.  I liked the apple slaw because I like just about anything with mayonnaise.

I think this was the night in which another couple seated a couple of tables away from us started talking about how they went on the keto diet before the cruise in order to preemptively lose weight.  They were explaining their version of keto to another passenger and were telling him about how you can basically eat a lot of meat and cheese.  I added, “And mayonnaise!”
 

Mayo is a good group, isn’t it?

(For the record, keto should really just be “a lot of meat and cheese.”  That’s just called the Standard American Diet minus the French fries).

Anyway, here is the Four Seasons salad.  It was a decent salad but I did not feel like I was visiting a resort.

Stuffed mushrooms.  These were good with no errand Thanksgiving components.

Spanakopita!  The chickpeas server with it were surprisingly good.

This was the night we ordered 6 entrees.  Our server didn’t quite know what to do with us as he didn’t know we are entree pushers who just push everything onto one plate.  So we each had our own Spanakopita.

We each had our own filet mignons and were glad for that as well.

This is the 50th anniversary shrimp, all four of ‘em.

The sixth entree was Alfredo but Special Someone thought it looked gross.  We ate it.  I mean, really, cream and pasta and cheese.  Those are food groups, too, right?  It wasn’t amazing but we hadn’t had much pasta all trip so it was nice to have.

And then I ordered two desserts!  Here is my beautiful fruit plate before the pineapple shortage.

Key Lime mousse.  I liked it.  Not too sweet.  Does anyone know how they make the no sugar added desserts?  Do they use fake sugar?  Or just fruit based products?  Or sorcery?

Special Someone got the Grand Marnier Soufflé and he said it was very eggy.  

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 9 / Cruise Day 7

Fourth Port Day / Ketchikan
 

Second Formal Night Menu

I was excited when I looked at the menu that we hadn’t missed Spanakopita (Greek spinach pie) as the previous night we never found the menu because it was broken in the HUB app and when I tried to look in the dining rooms during the day, I didn’t find it there, either.  
 

I may have mentioned this before, but after the ship-wide everything computer related outage of the first sea day, I screenshotted all of the menus and put them in folders on my phone.  This way we knew we’d have access to them whether or not HUB wanted to work.  It was futzy.

I also approve of the scheduling of this formal night on a port day.  We had 5 ports plus Tracy Arm scenic cruising, so IMHO this short 7am-1pm port was the best time to schedule the second round of elegance.  With Victoria the next evening scheduled for 8pm to Midnight we also planned to use the formal night as our practice of trying to stay up late.  So we tried to nap in Serenity (Special Someone is so much more skilled at that than me) and then tried to stay up late on the elegant night.  

4 hours ago, grima625 said:

Thank you for taking the time to write this wonderful review. I found it late, but have enjoyed reading all of the posts. I enjoy your perspective as an Alaskan doing an Alaskan cruise. It seems you did a great job of planning to include great backup plans to use as needed. 
 

I have really loved your detailed reviews of the meals. It makes me miss all of the wonderful offerings that Carnival has.
 

Alaska is on our bucket list to do some day. We will definitely be reviewing reviews like yours before going there. 
 

Great pictures of the beautiful scenery of Alaska. I think getting out and seeing it on hikes is the best way to experience it all. 

Grima625: welcome aboard and thank you for your kind words!

Regarding hiking, it did well best for us to feel immersed in the rainforest.  We were both interested in the train in Skagway, for example because I am a little kid and like all forms of Toys and Special Someone is mechanically minded and likes all things that Go, but when we watched some YouTube videos of it we saw his beautiful it is but how you’re confined to the track.  After that we watched some Skagway hiking and floating videos and confirmed that’s Ed stick with our more typical mode of transport.  You might not cross off a flashy bucket list time (I am allergic to bucket lists anyway) or cover as much distance, but in all of these ports, the hiking and walking are excellent experiences even if you don’t go nearly as far as we did.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 9 / Cruise Day 7

Fourth Port Day / Ketchikan
 

Alien took a ride on the towel animal of the day.

We took a ride on the Masala Tiger menu of the day.

Masala Tiger chefs at work.

At long last, a picture of the platter of chutneys and dips and chaats from Masala Tiger.

The Tiger doesn’t have the cups; i fetched them from The Deli.

This may or may not have been the day when I got truffle sauce from The Deli for the cucumber and the bottle exploded and the sandwich cook did not look very happy with me.

I seem to have failed to take a picture of the papadam but picture giant undulating Pringles.

I suggested that Special Someone get a hot dog with or without a bun for us from the Deli to complement our chutneys and papadams.  This day he was an overachiever and got both. 
 

At this point we need to wander off on an olive oil tangent.  I showed a picture earlier of the “bacon pan drippings” which was bacon bits in low quality olive oil.  The “olive oil and balsamic” sometimes offered with the bread was equally lacking.

Next is a half & half tangent.  At Juice & Java, Special Someone noticed that the creamer was Kirkland Signature Brand, aka Costco brand.

From this, Special Someone did the math and made the pronouncement that Carnival should be able to provide us food that was at least as good as Costco.  So for olive oil, they could have at least bought Costco brand for our bread.

When he brought out the hotdogs with grilled onions I said, “Ooh fancy.”  I thought he’d taken it to Guys to dress up but he said The Deli served it that way.  
 

When he tasted the hotdog, he said that the link was about the same quality as a Costco hotdog BUT Costco doesn’t have onions anymore (at least at ours) so this one was better!

We made very good use of the daybed in Serenity this afternoon, along with blankets from the towel counter at the inside pool.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 9 / Cruise Day 7

Fourth Port Day / Ketchikan

In these ports I often had a list in my mind of what I call “soft goals.”  A soft goal is an idea for something that would be nice to do, if it happens.  One of them was to see the neighborhood “to the right” of Creek Street.  This means if you were at the shore and facing downtown, this is to the right.  I remembered really appreciating the historical signs in this area last visit and I thought that Special Someone would appreciate it to, because it covers some lesser-known history.  
 

Here’s the signs for y’all to read, if you can.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 9 / Cruise Day 7

Fourth Port Day / Ketchikan
 

Once we were back to downtown Ketchikan, we had enough time to walk around Creek Street a little.

I thought this sign said Ketchikan Single Mill.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 9 / Cruise Day 7

Fourth Port Day / Ketchikan
 

Ohhhhhhh, and now it is time for donuts.  Jellyfish Donuts.  That’s a creative business name, not a donut flavor or ingredient.
 

They should have talked about locally baked donuts on the “younger people with high incomes, please move to Ketchikan” website.  

If you’ve been following since the beginning and read my short posts during the cruise, you know what happened when I saw “salmon” on the donut menu.

Donut flavors the day of my visit.

Additional food options.

Salmon donut.  Amazing.  

Found this website encouraging remote workers to move to Ketchikan:

https://chooseketchikan.com

I like how the availability of locally roasted coffee is explained before healthcare.

10 hours ago, lincdax said:

 

Mr Olson received 46 votes (a distant 4th)

That’s more votes than I ever got!!

(The island I lived on typically had about 30 people vote in an election).

6 hours ago, Hogladyrider said:

What about seniors who do not use a computer?

Someone else can upload the information to an app for such a senior, but they’d need a way to bring a copy of the QR code.

My May 2nd sailing apparently did not deny boarding to people without ArriveCAN as they kept making announcements to do it and the stateroom attendants were tasked with talking to their guests individually.  They made it accessible on the ship WiFi and had help desks set up.  Met one person who tried to do it onboard and she was full of complaints (she was full of complaints in general but she said it took her 8 hours to do).  Took me about 5 minutes.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 9 / Cruise Day 7

Fourth Port Day / Ketchikan
 

I loved these posters because they show so many of the creepy crawly looking types of fish like my bosses used to catch out on the island when they were trying to catch halibut.

We were impressed with the line at this drive-thru coffee stand.  We almost wanted to just go get in it to see if the line was worth it.

Kitty the Riveter!  And a write-in candidate no less.  Wonder how it turned out?  Back in 2021…

4 hours ago, ashkir said:

I called my mom and told him I need her to go get him the passport and I'll pay for it. I told her to get her passport too so she can go with him. I talked to my PVP and can get them an interior room for a great price. My mom's never been there either. 

Ashkir I think that’s awesome.  I think cruising in a group of 4 is tons of fun.  You can split up and come back together.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 9 / Cruise Day 7

Fourth Port Day / Ketchikan
 

This post is for Special Someone.

He noticed this length of blue paint on the dock railing.

Accessible boat parking???

You can see it’s just the one section that’s painted blue.

Oh, the mysteries of life…

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 9 / Cruise Day 7

Fourth Port Day / Ketchikan
 

A view of the downtown cruise ship docks from the small boat harbor.

And some small boats in the small boat harbor.  I found a boat with the same name as a friend’s daughter.

And not far away I found the friend’s name!

We just felt like Fran has seen better days…

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 9 / Cruise Day 7

Fourth Port Day / Ketchikan
 

We explored the small boat harbor…well because I just never get tired of it. I think this was the advantage of doing the hike first…we knew how much time we had left and could allocate poking around time appropriately.

I walked down a set of steps to this area and we were very curious what it was used for.

We eventually figured out it appeared to be a spot to park and offload waste oil.

Carnival Splendor Alaska Cruise

Trip Day 9 / Cruise Day 7

Fourth Port Day / Ketchikan
 

Guaranteed

Eagle

Sightings.