Day 39 - Carnival Panorama Cruise (Day 2 at Sea)

---

We were up around 8.00am and feeling good. The ambience around the ship is awesome and it is great to have a cruise on Carnival again as the last cruise to Alaska on Holland America was undoubtedly the wrong brand for us.

It was cloudy and a bit stormy when we left Long Beach yesterday but woke up today to find a beautiful sunny day with calm seas and much warmer as well so summer has arrived ! A short climb up the stairs from Deck 8 to Deck 10 for the breakfast at the Lido Marketplace where I had a disciplined portion of scrambled eggs, baked beans, small potatoes and bacon. The OJ is like drinking cordial straight so will only have small portions if absolutely necessary and had a coffee outside near the main pool in a comfortable booth seat. I thought the buffet would not be self service but it seems everything is back to normal now.

Kerry had been looking at the daily planner and is going to an art session in the Ocean Plaza at 9.00. Right on 9.00 the DJ is already pumping the music poolside but in a good way to create atmosphere. I’m off to General Trivia at 9.15 (I think there are about 6-7 trivia sessions today whilst we are at sea).

Trivia was in the Liquid Lounge and only about 40 people and no large groups in teams. I got 4/10 correct but the winner was 9/10. We gre some sunflowers at home last Christmas so when asked what direction the flowers always face that one was easy to get right, and I guessed a couple of others correct including naming the tv show with the catch phrase “come on down” correctly (but only because we saw it on TV the other day and now hosted by Drew Carey. However I made some silly mistakes and should have chosen NY as the city with the most taxis instead of London and coffee as the 2nd most traded commodity in the world after oil since I am such a consumer ! Guessing the colour on the top left of the windows logo was tricky too (and I got that wrong).

Kerry went to her painting and finished some artwork and I met her in the same lounge for trivia session # 2 which was themed around Carnival’s 50th birthday which they are celebrating in 2022. Only 4 teams were playing and we got 5/15 as the questions were really hard but we came in 2nd place and finished only 1 off winning the prized medallion !

We then decided to chill and found these cool chairs on Deck 11 overlooking the pool. There are so many places to go on this ship and it is not crowded and had a coffee and time to catch up on writing the blog as I’m almost 2 weeks behind publishing now !

Midday arrived and the music cranked up an extra couple of notches with the classic KC and the Sunshine Band song “That’s the way I like it”. We hung around these comfy seats to watch the pumpkin carving competition where 4 guests had 15 minutes to carve their unique displays and those watching on Decks 10-12 were to be the judges and the winner was not the best (probably the least creative in fact) but had the loudest family group to make enough noise to make her the winner .

Tomorrow we arrive at our first port being Cabo San Lucas and the ship has to drop anchor and we get a shuttle to the town (aka lifeboat I guess !). They are going use a queuing system to allow everyone time to get off the ship with priority for those who are carnival shore excursions so I went to the session at 3pm to get my boarding pass as we don’t have anything planned and arrived 15 minutes early and already there was a couple of hundred people in a queue but managed to get Group 3 so not too bad as they went to Group 23 I think.

Kerry had trouble getting the temperature right with the funny shower and whilst the room is quite spacious and modern the bathroom is very traditional for a cruise ship and the shower (with a curtain) is quite small so some of the people I’ve been spotting on the ship so far must only be able to wash half their body at a time !

For dinner tonight it’s a formal night or what Carnival refer to as “elegant night” the first of 2 on this 7 nights for this adventure. Hence I had better take off my white “Kennebunkport Maine” t-shirt I’m wearing for the first time with my blue adidas shirts and my brand new blue Nike sliders I bought at the Las Vegas premium outlets a few weeks ago (it’s nice to be back in a warmer climate again).

It’s still quite cool on deck probably around low 20’s and cloudy day but tomorrow it’s supposed to be sunny and much warmer so we are looking forward to that. I’m not sure I have anything elegant to wear (and certainly not in the luggage I brought along !) so I’m improvising by wearing my expensive and brand new Nautica shirt I bought in Boston and a good idea to wear it whilst it still fits me.

Despite yesterday’s commitment neither of us went to the outdoor fitness area and I’ve had my first Guys hamburger with fries, some cookies and an ice cream today so the healthy eating and daily fitness plan is out the door on Day 2 !

We went to the main dining room for dinner and had a shared table again with Gina Marie and Dawn who were friends from the San Francisco bay area and another chap who introduced himself as Bruce Lee from Indonesia / LA (was it really him ?). He told us details about Indonesia having 17,500 islands so imagine setting a challenge to see all of those ! We told him we had visited 2 of these being Bali and Komodo to see the wild dragons.

One of the table waiters grabbed the microphone and gave us a good rendition of Sweet Caroline for a bit of fun and yes we all joined in especially Bruce). Dinner was really ordinary as my steak was fatty and hard to cut through and Kerry’s bass with gnocchi was served cold. We then rushed to watch a couple of comedy shows (one guy was Drew Marks) and we ran into Macey from Hawaii and Heather and Andrea (the sister from Utah) again. There was this one funny joke about why Santa Claus’s sack is so big but you’ll have to ask me later for the answer as I’m unable to be published here !

We then went to the piano bar which was going off again and we sat with Gina Marie and Dawn who we met for dinner and James the piano man kept telling everyone Dawn was single and ready to mingle (I suspect her bestie Gina Marie may have set her up). James is really good at getting the crowd involved and earning his tips. We then finished off the evening watching the Motown / 1970’s party at the atrium which was a lot of fun singing and dancing to some classics and the session finished with good old YMCA.

Tomorrow we have our first port of call being Cabo San Lucas and are scheduled to arrive at 10am.

---

Photos

Cruise outfit for Day 2
My new t-shirt from Kennebunkport, Maine and my new Nike sliders from Las Vegas South premium outlet centre.