Detailed Photo Review of Carnival Dream 7 Night Western Caribbean Cruise 3/10/19

[TXBBQDUDE]

13 hours ago, Cairns Cruisers said:

This is an amazing coincidence as I said to my wife,I don't want to drive straight through to San Antonio from NOLA. After checking into Lake Charles or Beaumont I said let's stay at Sulphur. I'd picked out the Hampton Inn and dinner next door at LeBleu's Landing. I'd love your opinion on either place or a better suggestion.

 

First let me say San Antonio is probably my favorite city in Texas.  I grew up right by it and consider it home.  As far as Sulphur goes the Hampton Inn is nothing to write home about but I am sure you will get a good night's sleep in there.  LeBlue's Landing is your Typical Cajun restaurant that I would say is better than most.  The locals will go and get the buffet Line but I always order off the menu it is fresh and I generally do not do buffets.  Get a cup of the Chicken and Sausage Gumbo it is a good representation of Cajun Gumbo as opposed to the Creole Gumbo they serve in New Orleans.  I also recommend you trying the Boudin Sausage it is a Cajun Rice Sausage that will be different than anything you have probably ever tried.  Seafood is going to be king in this restaurant my wife and I will usually split a Seafood Platter.  Lake Charles is a mess right now with all of the construction so going over the bridge can be a mess so you probably picked the best spot for a nights rest.  Side note on my block there is probably 5 Australian families and countless South Africans so people in Sulphur will not be suprised by your accent.  

[deladane]

Now it was time for show and tell!  First, Danny passed out the skins of 8 or 10 different animals.  Is it weird that we look so happy to be holding a skunk and raccoon skin? Haha

 

Two crawfish in a cage

 

a baby ribbon snake

 

For the grand finale, Danny introduced us to his friend Bruce, a 3.5 year old alligator who was stowed in a cooler in the boat this whole time!  He put a rubber band around his mouth so he wouldn’t bite us, then he showed us how to safely hold him.  Danny wasn’t really concerned that Bruce would hurt us, but that we would hurt Bruce.  The worst thing that could happen would be if he wiggled out of our hands and ended up in the water.  With that rubber band around his mouth, he has no way to feed or defend himself and he would not live long like that out in the wild.  Danny said that if Bruce did try to wiggle away, to make sure that he lands inside the boat so Danny could catch him.

 

I’m holding an alligator!!

 

 

After everyone had a chance to play with Bruce, Danny told me to come up to the front of the boat, and he plopped Bruce down on my shoulder!

 

Me, Danny, and Bruce

 

[deladane]

After that, Danny brought the boat back to the pier and the tour ended promptly at 11am.  Overall, we both thought the tour was fun and we learned a lot about alligators and the swamp so we were glad we took the time to take this tour.  At around 11:20am, Byron returned with the shuttle bus to drive us back to New Orleans.  He dropped us off in the reverse order of how he picked us up this morning, which meant we were the last ones off the bus.  Luckily, it only took about 15 minutes to drop everyone off, so we were back at our AirBNB by 12:15pm.  We ran upstairs to quickly get changed, then went down to the restaurant in the building next door to our house.

 

Tracey’s is a sports bar with a restaurant where you order at the counter in the back.  They serve fresh oysters and crawfish, and have a full menu of sandwiches.

 

 

 

DH ordered a roast beef poboy.

 

 

I ordered a half order of the Muffuletta sandwich, which is a New Orleans sandwich filled with olive salad, cheese, and a variety of meats like ham, salami, mortadella, and capicola, served on a loaf of Italian bread.  It was such a delicious combination of flavors, but even though I only ordered a half size order, it was so huge that I only ate half of it!  It was too bad we were only going to be in New Orleans for a short time because, while I did have a fridge and microwave in our AirBNB so I could have taken it back to eat later, there was not going to be a chance to actually eat it.

 

[mkcurran]

41 minutes ago, deladane said:

 

 

That looks amazing!

[MEUB1112]

Love your review,and it was great to meet you both in Roatan. It was a great cruise!!

[pghsteelerfan]

3 hours ago, deladane said:

After that, Danny brought the boat back to the pier and the tour ended promptly at 11am.  Overall, we both thought the tour was fun and we learned a lot about alligators and the swamp so we were glad we took the time to take this tour.  At around 11:20am, Byron returned with the shuttle bus to drive us back to New Orleans.  He dropped us off in the reverse order of how he picked us up this morning, which meant we were the last ones off the bus.  Luckily, it only took about 15 minutes to drop everyone off, so we were back at our AirBNB by 12:15pm.  We ran upstairs to quickly get changed, then went down to the restaurant in the building next door to our house.

 

Tracey’s is a sports bar with a restaurant where you order at the counter in the back.  They serve fresh oysters and crawfish, and have a full menu of sandwiches.

 

 

 

DH ordered a roast beef poboy.

 

 

I ordered a half order of the Muffuletta sandwich, which is a New Orleans sandwich filled with olive salad, cheese, and a variety of meats like ham, salami, mortadella, and capicola, served on a loaf of Italian bread.  It was such a delicious combination of flavors, but even though I only ordered a half size order, it was so huge that I only ate half of it!  It was too bad we were only going to be in New Orleans for a short time because, while I did have a fridge and microwave in our AirBNB so I could have taken it back to eat later, there was not going to be a chance to actually eat it.

 

I LOVE Muffuletta's!!!  So much good food in NOLA!!!  I forgot to mention yesterday that you got really great pictures on your bayou tour.  The first time we did, I got a few good ones, but that was a film camera.  I'd love to cruise out of NOLA, but would want some time back in NOLA either before or after the cruise. 

 

[bettyboop16]

Hi Dana,

I've always enjoyed reading your reviews. I assume Paris will be a land vacation. Do you have a blog site & will you write a review on your Paris vacation?

[deladane]

7 hours ago, MEUB1112 said:

Love your review,and it was great to meet you both in Roatan. It was a great cruise!!

 

Are you the man who said hi to us on our way back to the ship in Roatan??  It was great meeting you too, and so glad you stopped by to say hello in my review!  Glad to hear you had a great cruise too!

[deladane]

5 hours ago, pghsteelerfan said:

I LOVE Muffuletta's!!!  So much good food in NOLA!!!  I forgot to mention yesterday that you got really great pictures on your bayou tour.  The first time we did, I got a few good ones, but that was a film camera.  I'd love to cruise out of NOLA, but would want some time back in NOLA either before or after the cruise. 

 

 

That muffeletta was sooooo good!  Our local deli makes a version of this but I never realized it came from NOLA.  Getting good photos on the swamp tour was pretty easy... the gators move very slowly (or sometimes they don't move at all lol) so they make good subjects, and we had overcast skies so no harsh glares from the sun to contend with.  Plus, it helped that Danny brought our boat close to the shore so I didn't need to zoom in as much.  NOLA makes for a great embarkation port, so hopefully you get the chance to cruise from there soon!

[deladane]

4 hours ago, bettyboop16 said:

Hi Dana,

I've always enjoyed reading your reviews. I assume Paris will be a land vacation. Do you have a blog site & will you write a review on your Paris vacation?

 

Funny you mention that... I've been debating if there was a way I could post a similar style of review for Paris and London on the board for Northern Europe cruises.  Technically, yes, it is a land vacation and we are not taking a cruise on that trip, but lots of people go to Paris and London pre- and post- cruises from Europe, and some itineraries even dock nearby those cities.  I do have a blog (you can find it here:  deladane.home.blog) but it doesn't get nearly as much traffic as my posts on cruise critic.  I'm afraid I won't be as motivated to write a good review if hardly anyone is reading it haha  I was considering posting in the Europe ports of call section to ask if anyone had interest in reading about my time in Paris/London to help plan their pre- and post-cruise stays, and if so, then I will definitely do it.  Just not sure if it's against the rules because we're not going on a cruise and this is a forum about cruising (...does a one hour "cruise" tour along the Thames and Seine River count as a cruise??? haha)

[deladane]

After lunch, we took the bus back to the French Quarter.  We got off the bus at Canal Street and walked down towards the river to check out the sites.  It was extremely windy, and it started to drizzle, but luckily it stopped quickly and that was the only time we had any kind of rain over the entire vacation. 

 

While we were walking, we saw this Holocaust Memorial and walked over to look at it, but we didn’t really understand what it was.  We walked along the path and then realized why we were so confused… they temporarily removed the art panels for refurbishment!  The sign said it would take four months to complete the work, so I guess we were just here at the wrong time.

 

 

 

 

 

As we continued to walk along the water, we saw this statue- Monument to the Immigrant.  Apparently she had a lot of fun during Mardi Gras because if you look closely, you can see that she is holding green beads in her hand!

 

 

This time tomorrow, we will see our cruise ship at this spot!

 

[deladane]

The Natchez Steamboat was boarding for an afternoon tour.  There were hundreds of people waiting in line, so I can only imagine how crowded the boat would be for this tour!

 

 

We continued along the path until we came to the terrace overlooking Jackson Square and the famous St. Louis Cathedral.  You can see the flag is held out to the side, blowing in the strong winds.  The weather forecast actually predicted “strong, damaging winds” for this weekend, and they weren’t kidding!!

 

 

[Cairns Cruisers]

15 hours ago, TXBBQDUDE said:

 

First let me say San Antonio is probably my favorite city in Texas.  I grew up right by it and consider it home.  As far as Sulphur goes the Hampton Inn is nothing to write home about but I am sure you will get a good night's sleep in there.  LeBlue's Landing is your Typical Cajun restaurant that I would say is better than most.  The locals will go and get the buffet Line but I always order off the menu it is fresh and I generally do not do buffets.  Get a cup of the Chicken and Sausage Gumbo it is a good representation of Cajun Gumbo as opposed to the Creole Gumbo they serve in New Orleans.  I also recommend you trying the Boudin Sausage it is a Cajun Rice Sausage that will be different than anything you have probably ever tried.  Seafood is going to be king in this restaurant my wife and I will usually split a Seafood Platter.  Lake Charles is a mess right now with all of the construction so going over the bridge can be a mess so you probably picked the best spot for a nights rest.  Side note on my block there is probably 5 Australian families and countless South Africans so people in Sulphur will not be suprised by your accent.  

Thanks so much for the info. I'm guessing so many Aussies and Sth Africans means there's mining near you?

 

[TXBBQDUDE]

7 hours ago, Cairns Cruisers said:

Thanks so much for the info. I'm guessing so many Aussies and Sth Africans means there's mining near you?

 

 

No it is construction building LNG Plants.  Just like the ones the company i work for built in Perth and Gorgan Island

[MEUB1112]

13 hours ago, deladane said:

 

Are you the man who said hi to us on our way back to the ship in Roatan??  It was great meeting you too, and so glad you stopped by to say hello in my review!  Glad to hear you had a great cruise too!

Yep, I'm that guy. Like I said, great review, following along to keep the memories going. Have a great day.

[deladane]

Our next activity for today was a free walking tour of the French Quarter with Free Tours By Foot.  We have had great experiences with free walking tours in other cities like Chicago, Puerto Vallarta, and Cartagena, so we wanted to take one here in New Orleans too.  They have all sorts of tours throughout the day, covering different topics and areas of the city.  This two-hour tour of the French Quarter was scheduled for 2:45pm, which worked perfectly as it gave us time to get back to the AirBNB after the swamp tour, change clothes, go out for lunch, and get back down to the French Quarter with a few minutes to spare.  Our guide, Matthew, sent us an email the night before with directions to meet him at the Andrew Jackson statue in the center of the Square.

 

 

About 25 people showed up for this tour, which made it a little tricky to stay together and hear what Matthew had to say once we got deeper in the Quarter.  Matthew was good about gathering us together safely in a way that we wouldn’t get hit by a car driving down the street but also wouldn’t block pedestrian traffic on the sidewalks.  We zigzagged all around the tiny streets of the French Quarter, stopping every few minutes for Matthew to share stories and anecdotes about New Orleans history. 

 

 

 

I was totally obsessed with the beautiful wrought iron balconies, one more intricate and ornate than the next.  My favorite story that Matthew told us was about the “Romeo Poles.”  As the story goes, men used to climb up the poles on the street level to get to the ladies on the balconies of the higher floors.  The same thing happens during Mardi Gras as people down on the streets try to climb the poles to get to the more exclusive parties up on the balconies.  Some of the hotels apply grease to these poles to prevent people from climbing up!  I thought that was really funny and interesting.

 

 

The tour ended at 4:20pm, so it was closer to an hour and a half long instead of the 2 hours originally planned, but that was okay with us as we got to see plenty and were ready to move on anyway.  We started walking back towards Bourbon Street and saw this sign stating “cell phone use prohibited”… That just seemed really odd to us.  Was it because of the school?  Did it just mean you can’t use your phone while driving?  Hopefully it didn’t mean you can’t use your cell phone while walking around because that would be impossible to enforce!

 

 

 

[JaniceB]

Enjoying your review and happy to see you had tried some New Orleans food, I was a little worried when your first meal was pizza!  The Natchez is a pretty big boat so even though the line was long it is a nice cruise.  

[Purdey16]

Deladane I've been following and enjoying your review you have given me a insight to how new Orleans looks and some great ideas of what to do when we visit there for two days on a cruise in January 2021, I know it's some time away but I love to plan ahead like you , at the moment I have 5 Cruises booked and do a lot of planning based on other people's recommendation and views and I'm definitely going to do your Cajun pride swamp tour , like yourselves we like to use every minute of the day experiencing new places enjoy the rest of your holiday and when you do your land based holiday here in London I hope you will enjoy it just as much .

Thank you for your review can't wait to see the rest 

[deladane]

8 hours ago, JaniceB said:

Enjoying your review and happy to see you had tried some New Orleans food, I was a little worried when your first meal was pizza!  The Natchez is a pretty big boat so even though the line was long it is a nice cruise.  

 

haha I know, pizza is kind of embarrassing considering the other options available in NOLA.  Partly, we just wanted something quick and easy so we could spend more time exploring.  Partly, we had some trouble finding restaurants that would work for both of us because I don't like spicy food and DH doesn't like shellfish, so that nixes nearly everything in NOLA lol  At least we did get to try a few NOLA staples with the muffeletta, poboy, and of course, we had beignets on the last day of the trip!

[deladane]

8 hours ago, Purdey16 said:

Deladane I've been following and enjoying your review you have given me a insight to how new Orleans looks and some great ideas of what to do when we visit there for two days on a cruise in January 2021, I know it's some time away but I love to plan ahead like you , at the moment I have 5 Cruises booked and do a lot of planning based on other people's recommendation and views and I'm definitely going to do your Cajun pride swamp tour , like yourselves we like to use every minute of the day experiencing new places enjoy the rest of your holiday and when you do your land based holiday here in London I hope you will enjoy it just as much .

Thank you for your review can't wait to see the rest 

 

Thank you!  I can't imagine planning for 5 cruises at the same time haha That sounds so overwhelming but exciting all at the same time!  

[deladane]

When we made it back to Bourbon Street, it was a total mob scene!  It was much more crowded than when we were here last night, and it was so loud that we could barely hear each other talking.  I guess Saturday is a more popular night to go out on Bourbon Street, but this was just too much for me… at least without any drinks in my system! Haha  I had wanted to check out the piano bar in Pat O’Brien’s, so this seemed like the perfect time to rest our feet, order a cocktail, and sing along to some fun music.  As we approached the bar, there was a huge line of people lined up on the sidewalk.  I left DH at the end of the line and headed to the front to make sure that this line was going where we wanted to go.  As it turned out, Pat O’Brien’s is right next door to the famous Preservation Hall Jazz Club, so all of those people were waiting to go there and we had no wait at all to walk right into the piano bar. 

 

 

Pat O’Brien’s is divided into three sections… to the left is a traditional bar, to the back is a huge outdoor patio, and to the right is the piano bar.  The piano bar section had a really cool atmosphere with dark lighting, brick walls, ceramic beer steins hanging from the ceiling, and 2 piano players set up on the stage at the front of the room.

 

 

This was the outdoor patio area:

 

Their signature drink is the Hurricane, so of course we had to try it.  Just be careful when you order drinks here, as they serve their specialty drinks in a souvenir glass and they automatically charge you $4 per glass, but you can get a refund if you return your glass to the bartender. 

 

 

 

The Hurricanes were very strong and they were so large that it was like two drinks in one!

 

 

 

We stayed for about an hour and enjoyed singing along with the piano players.  Tables turned over fairly quickly, so while there was always groups of people coming and going, it never felt too crowded at any one time.  We left around 6pm to walk around on Bourbon Street, and somehow it was more tolerable after drinking those Hurricanes! 

 

 

[deladane]

Our first stop was to buy a 64 ounce fish bowl filled with rum punch.  There were a lot of places selling these and they were all the same price at $10 for the original bowl, and $7 if you wanted a refill.  It wasn’t as tasty as the drink from Pat O’Brien’s, but I guess you get what you pay for! Haha

 

 

 

Originally, we planned to go to a sit down restaurant for a Louisiana-type of dish, but we were tired and just wanted to get something quick for dinner.  It didn’t take much thought to decide to return to Crescent City Pizza Works for another delicious slice of funky pizza (yes, I know, pizza again??).  As tempting as it was to get the same BBQ pork slice that I had last night, I decided to try something new and opted for the “It’s Easy Being Green” slice with pesto, green tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese.  I tried putting my hand in the photo for a reference to the size of the slice…

 

 

Funny enough, there is actually a second slice of pizza below this one.  They said they burned the original slice, or it was too crispy, or something like that, and they gave us a second slice to replace it.  We both like our pizza extra crispy so we had no complaints about the original slice, but there was no chance we’d let either slice go to waste and DH helped me finish the second slice.

 

After dinner, we walked around a little more and listened to some of the street performers.  This guy was very talented at playing his violin.

 

 

By 8pm, we were both really tired and decided to head back to Canal Street to catch the bus back to the AirBNB to pack up for Embarkation Day tomorrow!

 

Step Tracker Daily Total:  18,561 steps; 7.7 miles; 4 flights of stairs

 

[lab_love123]

I'm really enjoying your review. I've never given much thought to cruising from NOLA because the Florida ports are much easier for me to get to. However, after reading all of your fun pre-cruise activities I'm going to have to reconsider!

[deladane]

4 hours ago, lab_love123 said:

I'm really enjoying your review. I've never given much thought to cruising from NOLA because the Florida ports are much easier for me to get to. However, after reading all of your fun pre-cruise activities I'm going to have to reconsider!

 

NOLA made for a great embarkation port with a variety of fun things to do.  Highly recommended, even if just to change it up from your usual Florida cruises one time! 🙂

[deladane]

Sunday, March 10, 2019 ~ Embarkation Day!

 

 

I had a lot of trouble sleeping for both nights in New Orleans, and I was awake nearly all night last night.  We sprung the clocks ahead one hour today for daylight savings time, and at first, I thought that would be annoying to lose one hour of sleep on embarkation day.  As it turned out, I was awake anyway and gave up on sleep by 6:30am.  I always check my sleep stats from my Fitbit every morning, and I was not surprised at all to see all these red lines signifying the time I was awake last night!

 

 

I mentioned yesterday that the weather forecast called for extremely high and damaging winds all weekend.  The forecast also called for flooding along the banks of the Mississippi River.  Not being from this part of the country, I didn’t understand exactly what that meant, so I did a bit of research about it before leaving for the trip.  There was actually a thread posted this week last year with the exact same concerns, so thank you to that person for posting that thread and for those who replied.  It turns out that this issue of flooding happens every year when the heavy snows from the winter months in the Midwest start to melt and send more water into the Mississippi River.  The river is considered at flood stage when it reaches 17 feet deep, and this was expected to happen on March 9.  The levees are designed to hold up to 20 feet, so we still had 3 feet of wiggle room, but the concerns were that boats would need to travel slower along the river to avoid splashing water on shore with their wakes, and the river could also have stronger currents making it hard for boats to move along the river safely.  This is not such a big deal for a cruise ship, which is designed to maneuver safely in much more extreme conditions, but I was a little concerned that there would be increased traffic from other boats in the river, and that may impact the Dream.  It also crossed my mind that with losing one hour last night due to changing the clocks, the Dream would lose one hour from it’s time to reach the port this morning, and the port workers would lose one hour from the time they needed to offload last week’s cruise and load up the ship with new supplies for our cruise.

 

With all of that said, I checked the webcam for the Port of New Orleans and was thrilled to see this:

 

 

It looked very foggy, so we were lucky that the Dream did not appear to have any delays and was already tied up at the terminal.  We were officially going on a cruise today!!