harryfat1

Looking back at the Odyssey way in the back. Dang, we walked pretty far to get here as we looked back at where the ship was and afterward we had to walk back there in the heat. OK, the tour is over. Time to tip the nice man and we are on our own to explore the town before going back to the ship for lunch. CFKACD not paying for lunch off the ship… Zoom into the ship with the North Star up and running

OK, we have arrived at the last segment of the walking tour where RaeRae took us to the rooftop bar of the Elements Hotel for us to rest and check out the view. I am almost certain 99% of the average cruiser will not find this place on their own.

More scenery:

You can add your own editorial here to the artwork. Anything I say will be used against me in being banned for life from CC:🤪

More cool mural artwork on just about every street. Paint stores in Curaaco must have a lot of business

People from the tour bought popsicles here as I saw someone on YouTube recommending this ship Bet you that you won’t see this Santa back home from your neck of the woods. I would have queued up the “Here Comes Santa Claus” song from a YouTube channel but I think everyone is tired of Christmas songs by February so we will move on.

Continue on with the trip report: ++++++++++ The tour continued with a stop at one of the small shops where the owner knew the tour guide and they gave each one of us a small sample of Curacao liqueur to see what it tasted like as it's a very famous island product. If we had been on an island tour, many tours would have taken the tourists to the distillery out of the town so the storefront is the only place you can get a small free sample of the liqueur. Emphasize on the word small as we all got a mini Dixie cup size sample as the store owner was pretty cheap on the pour as ost got got about 2 drops worth in each. Anyway, onward with the tour. After the sampling, we saw more artwork along the way Cool bike. I assume Biker19 is reading this somewhere - what do you think?

Speaking of Princess Cruises and Asian food, on the Majestic Princess, besides the Noodle Bar upstairs at the Pool deck serving basic noodles, they also have specialty dining that serves upscale Chinese food. As far as I know, Majestic Princess is one of the rare ones that has a dedicated specialty just for Chinese food, not a combination of all the Asian food on other cruise ships. Let me know if I missed another ship out there. I think RCI had originally envisioned the Silk restaurant on the first set of Q class ships as part of the Asian flair when they were trying to jam the concept of “Dynamic Dining” down the cruisers' throats but from what I read, other than the decoration in Silk is Chinese, the food in the Silk restaurant is same as all the MDR restaurants? Personally, I would find it odd to be eating Escargot and Burritos in a red Chiense-themed restaurant but that’s just me. Anyway, the Majestic Princess’ Chinese menu had to be “adjusted” when she out to the US for the Alaska season as the original menu was too “weird” for the North American crowd. Here is the current version of what Americans think of upscale Chinese food: https://www.princess.com/downloads/pdf/ships-and-experience/food-and-dining/harmony-dinner-menu.pdf I had to laugh when I first saw the menu back in 2022 when I was researching the ship ahead of our Alaska cruise. This is very “Gringo” Chinese food. Some of the “Chinese food” here doesn’t exist in Asia. It was created in North America for local consumption. For example, there’s no Crab Rangoon or General Tso’s Chicken in Asia - made in America. Sweet and sour pork is a cheap Chinese takeout as well as pork won ton soup. Not a high-end restaurant. This specialty restaurant would be empty if the ship sailed back to China without reverting to the original menu. They had to overhaul the original menu to bring the ship to Alaska. Here's the original menu: https://www.princess.com/content/dam/princess/onboard-experience/food-dining/pdfs/menu-harmony-dinner.pdf.coredownload.inline.pdf Actually, I showed a few items from my previous pictures as I highlighted them in green: The chilled jellyfish is the yellow thing in the middle Here’s the egg white fried rice with scallops: Noodles with crab: As for the yellow highlighted soup from above, how many North American cruisers will order the Chinese herbal soup? It’s just so interesting to see how much the cruise ships have to change to cater to different food tastes in various regions of the world. Some day, I will be interested in sailing on the Spectrum of the Seas sailing in Asia as I have seen videos of their Windjammer, which has different food than the Windjammer on the Odyssey even though both ships are "ultra" Q class ships. I can write more about the differences between the cultures but nobody cares. That's not why you are here - you are here to hear the Baby Got Back song. So we will move on...🤪

For those who have sailed on the Quantum and Ovation during the Alaska cruise season, I thought there was an Asian noodle place on board as both ships were built for the Asian market. But not sure if they modified it for the North American market? We sailed on the Majestic Princess to Alaska back in 2022 and that ship was also built exclusively for the Chinese market. If it wasn’t for Covid, it would never have made it to the US cruise market. The entire ship has both Chinese/English signs. They have a dedicated noodle place on the top deck that serves Asian noodles daily as I can tell you that your average overseas Asian cruiser WILL NOT eat the American/Mexican food typically found on the top decks' North American based cruise ships. Maybe an 8-year-old Chinese kid overseas will eat a hot dog or burger but his/her parents or grandparents won’t touch any hot dog or El Loco Fresh on their sailings in Asia so they need noodle shop for the overseas crowd. Here are a few pictures from the noodle bar on the Majestic Princess: You pick whatever you want and they will cook it for you

As far as I know, no North American-based cruise line offers a dim sum restaurant. If someone else knows, please let a comment below. Most land-based Chinese restaurants in the US/Canada do not offer this type of food. Only a limited number offer this in sit-down seating. There are some take-out dim sums in Chinatowns in the big cities but a full sit-down restaurant that offers this type of food is rare, especially post-COVID as many big places closed shop due to high overhead. The reason it’s rare is you need a HUGE steam area to cook this food. Every one of these round bamboo things comes from a steamer. You would need to dedicate a huge part of your kitchen to steam this as in the kitchen they are stacked like 8 high when steamed in the kitchen. You need a massive amount of steam to cook hundreds of these in a very short time for people to eat it while it’s hot as they don’t taste good cold. Carnival Excel class ship has a small booth for takeout Asian food that is supposed to have one basic steam item daily as their specials of the day. Nothing like the extensive menu selection you would find in land-based restaurants. Here's a sample menu I found online. They have 1 item per day from here:

Super cool. Do you remember what was the occasion for the military show? Was it like an Independence Day celebration? Yeah, I wanted to be on the bridge when it breaks away from the dock as it swings 90 degrees back to the other side but we never saw any watercraft sailing by to warrant the opening of the waterway.

RaeRae took us to an art store but they won't allow cameras inside so I refused to go in if they won't let me take pictures. I will just stand outside and take pictures of the area Narrow 1-lane street

Honey, what's the name of the island we are on? Oh, yeah...

So if you look at the map. we started from the left side where I showed the beginning of the walking tour. All the murals were from the purple section and now we crossed the bridge to get to the "punda" side of the city. The red arrow is right after we crossed the bridge. Google Maps says there's Punda Live Heart by the red arrow area. We have a story about that after the tour RaeRae working hard explaining to everyone about the Punda district

Looking back at the square from the entrance of the Queen Emma bridge HAL has the best spot as it's just down the street from the bridge

Back to the walking tour - after our 20-minute rest break from the heat, we walked outside back to the main waterfront area to cross the bridge. This is a pedestrian-only bridge and the interesting thing about it is that if any ship/boat needs to cross the channel, the bridge can "break off" and has a motor to swing it 90 degrees to let the boats cross. I have seen YouTube videos where people just stood at the bridge while it swings. You are not forced to leave the bridge so it's almost like a boat ride. I was looking forward to the ride but the bridge never opened that day when we were there. Maybe it's just after Christmas and there wasn't much marine traffic that day so it was disappointing.

OK. Our local football team lost the Superbowl in Overtime so not feeling the happiest but we will try for a few picture uploads regardless. ++++++++++++++ Last part of the dim sum meal from yesterday before we get back to the Curacao walking tour (Weird corrupted photo file)

Yeah, these are the more authentic Asian restaurants in the SF area but not in Chinatown itself as that's for tourists. Locals eat in the neighborhoods away from Chinatown. I'm not a foodie but many of my wife's relatives are and they ordered many of the dishes as each table has a few dishes that are the same but everyone in the table can add to the basic set. Since I've been in the US for many more years than my wife's relatives, I'm much more Americanized. I think I was the only person on all the tables who requested ice water as that's not a regular thing they will serve in a Chinese restaurant. I drank tea as well as water but I want my iced water with my meals. Most old-school Chinese won't drink ice water. There's a Peking duck on the menu. Always a popular dish.

If you have any type of murals on your house, you will stand out. People might be driving by your place from all over on weekends just to check it out. Similar to houses with massive amounts of Holiday decorations will attract visitors from all over.

Yeah, you only get good dim sum (or any dim sum) in areas with a large Asian population. Small towns will have Chinese restaurants where you have the basic lunch and dinner menus but not dim sums.

How about some pig's blood cubes? Too weird? How about just basic stir-fried pea sprouts with garlic? You can't go wrong with the basic dumplings here: The food just keeps coming: Vegetarian rice flour noodles Each steamer has food inside and you can see how much food is here and more are still coming even as the food is stacked 4 high

A huge plate of squabs (baby pigeons less than a couple of months old) Crab with Chinese noodles in the middle to share Here's the squab close-up on my plate. Yeah, it's going to be very messy eating this. You can't be polite in Chinese meals. Gotta get your hands dirty. Got some noodles and Dungeness crab which is the West Coast specialty

I know you are thinking, dude, this is very ordinary. What's so weird about this? How about a whole bowl of chicken feet? Beef tripe (cow stomach) Baby Octopus and seaweed

Enough talking, food picture time Eggplant: Buns with pork inside Dumplings The table is starting to look like this as more and more food arriving