HoosierShipmate

I will check tonight @Laurenran

@Sand and Seas I was just looking at the menu and remarked that there was filet to my wife….but given how awful the buffet pizza is I’m betting he needs his pizza fix more than a filet will tempt him. Will be interesting to see. I tend to wander thru a new restaurant ‘looking for a restroom’ so I can look at everyone’s food before I order. I haven’t figured out my choice yet so my eyes may make the decision for me later.

Thanks for the dinner suggestions - we just got La Cucina reservations. For those curious I would have gone with the double meatball suggestion and the chicken and seafood paella. The avocado hummus was the only item I definitely would NOT have picked! Excited for Italian but sad Josh won’t potentially have steak every night. I didn’t tell him I was keeping track but since we are having Cagney’s again tomorrow I knew tonight was the deciding night. So he will have it 6/7 of dinners.

My mom is following along and texted with concerns that all we do is eat 🙂. We do other things. We are pool/sun people, we enjoy roaming the ship and seeing shows like six and comedy and dueling pianos. We all like to read, and the kids went to the card room and library a couple of times. Angie and I’ve either read in a quiet place or in the sun pretty much nonstop. Chelsie took pics for me from the workout room - she’s on the rowing team so has to spend an hour a day on the erg and Josh works out too - they said the free setup is nice - I haven’t looked at it much less participated!

Wait time for O’Sheehans was about 15 minutes for the two of us. I won’t post the menu again but I did order the ‘chili’ and it also doesn’t have beans. Somebody was asking earlier. In fact it’s less ‘chili’ and more ‘ground beef in a bowl’ but great with the tortilla chips as a dip. Buffalo wings are better than smoked BBQ. The fish and chips was ok, not great. C had the coney dog w chili on side. Said was great (mine was the other day too)

Chelsie and I are waiting for lunch at O’Sheehans and I wandered thru the bar side - shocked I haven’t been hit up to bowl yet this trip! Maybe we will do that tonight before the glow party.

@cruiseny4life that carnival broken egg sandwich is amazing!

That comment makes the perfect segway to dinner choices! We are going to TRY to get in at La Cucina but currently it’s walk up and beg availability so we likely will end up in the MDR. This is the menu, I’m trusting you all to pick my meal. I reserve the right to ignore your suggestions 🙂 Don’t let me down, let me know what you’d order if it was your night in the MDR! Suggestions due by 6:30PM whatever time zone I’m in today which I’m never confident about.

@IamPEBJ I honestly don’t think I’ve even looked at Spice during the day. Pool has been crowded when not at port but we have had four chairs together anytime we wanted them with little searching. We usually are on 16 above the pool not poolside. I’ll wander back to Spice this afternoon if it gets sunnier and as people get back on board. Will get you pics.

HahahHa I ordered over medium which is always a coin flip as to what they’ll bring at almost any restaurant I visit.

Early morning photos of the pool area before the people arrive and a view of Costa Maya from deck 15…we won’t get off the ship today but will enjoy the silence. It’s overcast but warm and not raining. Need to enjoy the weather before returning to snowy Indiana.

Breakfast at O’Sheehans - by the time the kids were awake it was that or buffet. A repeat so no real commentary other than my latte had foam art for the first time - must have been a slow morning for the barista!

Yielding to her wishes is smart @PaperSniper4 - and I strive to reach 42 as soon as my kids are both out of college! And yet at the top of this page you were suggesting I ignore my unappreciative wife!? Are you trying to get me thrown overboard???!!! LOL

We love roatan and did 3rd party in the past with Victor Bodden tours and it was amazing and so much cheaper than whatever cruise we were on!

@IamPEBJi just looked and Syds is family karaoke tonight so I will be staying far far away. Will try tomorrow 🙂

Quick take: I have two ‘ship on a stick’ trophies from previous Carnival cruises that I covet like academy awards. On NCL if I get every answer correct, beat out the full room of early risers and win this trivia contest I get….no trophy. So obviously like NCL won the straw battle, Carnival wins for their ship on a stick trophies.

Two comedians this week - Quinn with a last name I can’t remember but have seen him on a ship before and Keith Bender. Both are good. I think I laughed more at Quinn, but ‘liked’ Keith better. I’m having a hard time processing that myself. They have had the shows in the main breakaway theater instead of headliners and both shows were full but not sold out. Syd Normans was standing room only at 9pm for 9:30 performance - we made a choice not to stand but could have. If we had walked in at 9:30 and had the option we might have. Considering trying again tonight and grabbing seating an hour early if our dining and timing works. It felt like we were almost early enough but not quite. There’s quite a love for that place so people may have been camping by the door to grab seats when it opened. Will report back. Currently negotiating breakfast with the kids via text, primarily ‘get up I am awake and so too shall you be!’

Freestyle Daily - Norwegian Breakaway - Day 6 - December 22, 2023 Here are your dailies! And stay tuned to help pick my dinner tonight! Menu coming this morning.

Cargo pants for croissants is genius! I consider myself pretty frugal too and as I said earlier am usually happy with an inside cabin, basic plan, etc - this time the pricing was odd, which led to the balcony for almost the same price and after my spreadsheet of internet add ones, my average coffee consumption per day, likely drink choices and whatever I used for my vacation justification math ended up with the ‘drink everything eat everything all the time gluttony’ package. That’s how they should market it. I’m actually worried I have become a balcony person and when we book our next cruise it’s gonna hurt my pocketbook.

Dinner tonight was planned for Savor but we ended up at Taste. Same menu of course, they look pretty much the same inside, but the wait time for Savor was ‘around an hour’ and when we asked at Taste they said ‘about 30 minutes’ - so Taste was the choice. They really need to figure the system out to merge checkin - they’re 20 feet from each other and could make it so much more efficient. We waited at Mixx and had a drink and they called us about 20 minutes later. It was just after 7:00 when we got our pager. The menu: For the appetizer course I had minestrone soup and it was very good. Angie had the same plus ravioli. J had bruschetta and cheddar potato soup and C had Caesar salad and bruschetta. minestrone soup - photo doesn’t do it justice 🙂 Soup really doesn’t photo well does it? Our wine finally showed up around the time appetizers were finishing - we ordered glasses instead of a bottle tonight bc I wanted to try the champagne folks keep talking about (rose, not good) and Angie wanted the Riesling again. I think they brought her the wrong one but I wasn’t paying close enough attention. For the mains, I had the Almond-Crusted Barramundi with a side order portion of the shrimp fettuccine Alfredo. Angie picked the bang bang chicken and shrimp, Josh of course chose sirloin (now 5 out of 5 for steak at dinner) and Chelsie had a special order version of rigatoni due to the original having nuts in it. Everyone enjoyed. I liked the fish but there was a mustard flavor I didn’t expect with I was able to deal with but if it had been stronger I would have probably hated it. Dessert was a tough one tonight…..hard decisions on the menu: On Carnival I pretty much order the melting cake every night plus anything else that looks good. Love that it’s on the menu every night on their ships. So melting cake tonight was a given. And bananas foster - it’s a fruit so it must be healthy right? The family was pretty aligned tonight on desserts so while there are only three pictures I believe we ordered seven desserts - so don’t panic that we suddenly bleed iced our nightly caloric intake! I enjoyed the meal but the service tonight was probably the most challenging we have had. But in general we were happy again with our meals. We walked it off afterwards around the ship as we headed to Syd Normans (full) and then finally decided on comedy in the theater.

Thanks @mexicobob I’m going to read your post verbatim to my wife in a minute and watch her roll her eyes and make fun of me haha. I, however, am blushing with happiness over your compliment! We do not get robes in this room category, but am told if you ask the cabin steward you can get a coffee maker that uses the flat pouch style coffee pods and they will refresh daily. My steward shows up once a day on a schedule I’ll never understand and hasn’t actually spoken to me other than to nod and say hi. I have the feeling staffing cutbacks have made his job nearly impossible to keep up so many rooms and be as friendly and chatty as I was used to in days past. The robes never fit me, so I’m not mourning that. I would love the umbrellas I saw today for Haven guests, they were pretty impressive!

If the app had the MDR menu (or if I wasn’t too lazy to go downstairs and take a pic) I’d put it up here and have y’all vote or choose my dinner order.

I agree with both of you on this topic. I know they need somebody to coordinate the activities but a ‘big personality’ isn’t really important to me - like an emcee every night.

Ship just left Harvest Caye to begin our trek north - feels like a symbolic halfway point even though only two full days remain after tonight. Here we are:

Catching up while I’m just waiting to get ready for the night….breakfast this morning at Savor before heading onto the island. Same menu as usual (MDR menu for breakfast repeats) so just the pics. No commentary other than I tried a bite of Josh’s omelette and it was better than mine a few days ago so maybe mine was a fluke. The yogurt parfait was part of my breakfast and was delish, by the way! FWIW I hate eggs Benedict so these aren’t mine!