Destiny Review Dec. 9-16 Part 4

[ECP]

Barbados

December 12, 2007 - 6:30AM: Hum! I think I am getting use to this alarm clock. I am also getting use to going out onto the balcony and seeing a diffirent place each time I wake to start a new day. This time however the port looks very industrial and spread out. Our's was the fifth ship to dock and it looks like a long walk to the stores much less downtown. But it was debatable who had the most colourful ship: The Ocean Village or NCL. What do you think?

 

 

Before continuing about our day on the island, I guess I should mention some of the problems on board the Destiny that just *RUINS* the vacation of the negative review posters. As has been pointed out before Destiny is an older ship that is due for a major overhaul in mid-2008 and it shows it age in a number of oh-so-horrilble problems.

 

1) The hot tubs on the open Lido deck never worked the entire cruise, and that is a bummer. How can one cruise without hot tubs! However, the hot tubs under the sun-roof were always running, plus they would close the roof when it rained making them useable even then. I guess the extra long walk was too much, even if it makes the pizza snacking a lot more easy.

 

 

2) The ice-cream machine rarely was ready to run most mornings, it was always being taken apart and cleaned/restocked. I know not having ice-cream with one's breakfast can be a real deal-breaker for some people. But in particular to the one man I heard complaining about them running out of choclate in the afternoon one day (it was refilled within an hour), please note by the second day of the cruise every kid on-board know where the free stuff is, how that machine can keep up is beyond me.

 

3) The first drink despensor on the port side of the Lido deck was always running out of ice, I rarely got any from it. Thus I was *forced* I tell you, forced to walk an extra fifty feet to the next one if I wanted any ice. Oh, the inhumanity! I can see why this would ruin the vacation of some people but I say 'The walk will do you good'.

 

4) Kids, I really did not see the swarms of kids that others complained about, but if there were more on other cruises I can see why the negative posters don't like them on-board. It is bad enough that they are always clustered around the free ice-machine, but worse they hog the water-slide! I mean they really hog it a-lot! Us adults need to use it too! So I can see if there were more kids on-board why it is considered a bad thing.

 

5) Ship repairs, on more than one occasion I noticed service panels being openned and repairs being done by the crew while the ship was in dock. Again, the very idea, repairs while the ship is not moving and safely tried to a dock so if anything major goes wrong extra help/equipment may be available. Clearly, the negative posters have it right. The repairs should be done at sea in the middle of the night while the rest of us are sleeping and we can't see/hear the work being done. Plus if the ship is fifty miles from the nearest land then if something does go wrong then that is clearly all the crew's and Carnival's fault.

 

5.5) Related to note 5, Sonya mentioned there was a leak just outside her cabin door with a sewer-like-smell when she left for breakfast, there was also wall panel openned with tools, someone was clearly working on it already. She had not known about it till she left her cabin because there was not smell in the cabin itself.

 

********************************************

 

After the daily run/breakfast/get-together we decided just to go into town and see what we would find. We had to catch a shuttle bus at the ship's exit to the tourist area/mall (good thing we did not have to walk, it is about half a kilometer and not very inviting in looks). The bus takes you to a small mall where there are an assortment of stores with some small vendors/booths down the middle of the hallways. We learned a little from St. Thomas and Dominica this time. All three of us toured the stores keeping an eye out for items we would like to buy when returning to the ship without going thru the bother of carrying all that stuff all day long. Also in the mall was an information center whereas a gentleman asked a number of my questions about beaches, supplied free maps of the island and pointed me to where the taxis and buses could be boarded.

 

Getting to the transportation area takes you by still more vendors in small booths selling a range of clothing, dresses in particular. Getting the girls by that was hard.

 

The taxis are either vans that pack as many people (10-12) that could fit, or regular car-type that hold up to four people, five if you are all very friendly. We asked for a car-type taxi and found ourselves being shuffled into a van-type. If you want a car-type taxi be a little forceful to insure you get what you want. With six ships in port there are a lot of people wanting transportation and the attendants are more interested in keeping the flow going, than what type of taxi you want. Anyway, we got in and we were quickly (for the traffic) delivered to downtown.

 

At first, downtown Bridgetown was a major disappointment. This place had tons of jewelry stores, lots of American food chains, and the standard stores everybody needs to live. But there seemed to be very little that was 'Barbados' for sale or to photograph. So we walked along Broad Street aiming to find a beach to relax on. I picked up some aspirin along the way, we also found some street vendors selling food but could not convince Sonya to try the pig's tail. However, along the way we did see another vendor selling paintings, paintings that just happen to match Sonya's planned musical motif back home. So she picked up one picture that she liked. Continuing to National Heros Square we crossed the bridge as we tried to find the beach, here I picked up some fruit (sweet-sop which they called custard apples and also some mountain apples).

 

 

Because of a number of flowering plants found in this little park a small photo session started up, and as we continued walking to the beach we found ourselves among older and more interesting looking buildings to take shots of, including a very interesting old white church with a christmas display in the front.. And then to our surprise we found ourselves at the BoneYard Beach! This points out one problem of most maps of Barbados, it is the bays that are named on the maps, not the beaches in them. Check your map or find out which bay the beach you want to go to is in ahead of time if possible.

 

The sand of BoneYard beach was inceritably fine, in-fact it was so fine we took only a few photos because we could not trust that the sand would not get into the cameras and damage them. But it felt great to sit on and just run your toes thru. The beach is enter thru a public access point between two establishments, both wll rent you beach chairs. The bar on the left wants $15.00 a chair but includes a free drink in that price. The restaurant on the right wanted $5.00 per person but that is all you got. The restaurant was also selling lobsters (the large was big enough to feed two according to the waitress) but the price for the smallest was about $35 and the large over $70 each. We passed. While we sat on the sand we were approached by vendors walking the beach, while all were very polite they did show up often enough to be a bit annoying when one just wants to relax.

 

This does point out another mistake to avoid, Carnival freely supplies beach blankets and if we had packed some before leaving we would had had them to put down on the sand which would not only let us lie down on the sand but probably would have made thing safer for the cameras. Future cruises we will have beach bags with us. Makes it easyier to carry food and water too. Anyway we spent an hour or two comparing what we knew of diffirent beaches, enjoying the sun (behind thin clouds so it was not too hot), and other general beach talk.

 

 

Heading back we retraced our steps, only once we reached the pictures again both girls caved in, Sonya getting two more music themed pictures and Lee buying a picture that reminded her of the painting work of a cousin of her's. Getting back to the taxi stand we hire a cab to take us back to the port mall, this driver took a diffirent route that was much shorter and faster, if we come back to this island we plan to give very exact directions to our driver.

 

Finally, when we returned to our cabin, not only was a towel frog waiting on the bed, but also two invites to The Past Guest Party. I hear aside from ship-on-a-stick prizes they also give out free cruises. We had missed the previous one on the Fasination and heard later that only 50 people showed up that time - those are good odds for winning a free cruise!

 

 

And we missed it! I can't believe we forgot it because we were watching the movie Ratatouille, and I had already seen it! Well, at-least my Lee loved the movie.

 

This does bring up another point about negative reviews of the Destiny. I have seen a few messages saying that there are only a few limited channels available, while the claims include only one movie channel (I counted two), one national network (I counted all three present) and limited weather reports (I never had that problem). What may be the cause of most people misjudgement is that the *same* Carnival Channel is repeatly mixed on diffirent channels on the TV. If you want to browse the TV you must not be distracted as to lose track which channels you have seen, the more you look, the more you see.

 

Some quick notes about dinner time.

 

Sonya told us the work on the leak was done, there was no smell and there was some machine down there drying out the area. Seems like they know their job alright.

 

While some people have made it clear that they don't like the idea of the dinner room staff dancing, it seemed to me that the staff runs the full range of just going along (it's part of the job so I will do it, but that does not mean I have to like it) to let's have some *FUN* on the job. In particular the table beside us (recess a little below our level) had two newlyweds at it. And they had a waiter who got into the dancing, include a partial strip-tease. The women at the table would even get up and dance with him. Anyway, I did get photos of the staff who waited our table and the smiles looked real to me.

 

[ECP]

Sorry about that, I fix the ultra-wide images. I have to edit the images on a different computer than the one that I use to post the thread with.