Let's Talk About Ship Baby

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Let’s talk about this ship and about this cruise overall. We are on an 8-night/9-day cruise on the Costa Fortuna which holds just over 2,000 passengers when at full capacity which it is not. The drinks available are Sprite, Coke, Coke Zero and Fanta. They do have some sort of canned disgusting mango/peach/I-don’t-know-what tea and canned, disgusting lemongrass tea. There is no other tea on the ship that I can find. I know these people drink tea and use tea bags but I don’t know where the hot water is or I’d be brewing my own tea and making an iced tea. There is no iced coffee (except what I made one day that was not good). There are constant espressos. Every bar has a gigantic espresso machine. I did see cappuccino on the menu one day. I think it was on the dinner menu, oddly enough. Heineken is the beer of choice and is free in our stateroom and is the only beer on tap but only in a couple of places.

Food is “just okay” with too many odd offerings for us and frankly, I’m not trying the “gummy” octopus Kamie had for an appetizer. I am being open-minded and trying a few new things but I can also afford to skimp on more than a few meals. We knew the food was going to be odd when we booked this cruise so none of this is a surprise. Kamie will try anything once. We have not seen the basics available like bacon, sub sandwiches or any sandwiches for that matter, or simply mixed vegetables with some sort of grilled chicken. They do offer these types of things but they always have something else included or the vegetable is leeks or the protein is covered in a red onion jam or a pile of fried onions. Just odd offerings to us. They do not mash their potatoes and frankly, no matter how they are cut, they barely cook/bake their potatoes. Most pasta is served al dente. The deserts are just so-so.

The ship is in decent-ish condition but it’s old and gaudy. Everything is brightly lit in red or orange. The a/c seems to only work well when the ship is moving faster and even then it’s really not up to American standards. It is clear this is an old ship which needs a refurbishment. It’s still a basic but normal cruise ship, however. Nothing major wrong just none of the fancy upgrades most of the US-based ships have these days. I knew from my research pre-cruise that this ship is being overhauled in August.

Ice. Ice melts in your glass before you get from the bar to your room. I can fill a trenta (the largest, 30 oz) Starbucks cup full of ice cubes at the bar and by the time I walk directly to my room 2 floors up and half the glass is water. Maybe that’s why they don’t use ice on the regular here – the humidity melts it. Which also reminds me, the buffets do not have self-serve anything. You can’t even get your own water or ice. They have ropes at each end and you must ask an attendant to get you juice or ice or water. We have used the lunch buffet one time and it was okay. None of the offerings are what Americans would consider normal food. For example, I saw olives and wanted them in my salad but they reached in and grabbed a spoonful and it was green olives, black olives, olive oil, and a ton of red onions all mixed together. No thanks.

Several passengers will be getting off in Rio. Our tour lady told us many more passengers will be boarding for the first time in Rio. We saw the “Welcome” new pamphlets in TEN cabins this evening on our hallway alone so there must be a lot of people embarking tomorrow. Half the cruisers are Argentinians and speak Spanish. The other half are Brazilians who speak Portuguese. Argentinians are friendly. Tomorrow, the boat becomes rather full with Brazilians who are not the friendliest we’ve noticed so far.

In other news, we were lazy Americans today but we have to remember even though we are going to see some fabulous places and visit new countries, this is still our vacation time. I was on the balcony before sunrise again (it was daylight but the sun wasn’t up yet if that makes sense) so I watched the sun come-up and enjoyed the beautiful breeze we are getting on the balcony. Kamie was sleeping. I decided to get back in bed and skip breakfast. We both slept until almost 8:30am. I don’t know what we did today but we wasted our day. I talked to the Internet guy one more time. He likes me. He is from Israel. His brother is American. There was a long line of people waiting behind me and he just started talking about his life to me. Kamie and I walked around the ship a bit. We walked into a big room just in time for a Quiz Show that was basically where you name that song and who sings it… songs by Cyndi Lauper, Celine Dion, and Michael Jackson. It was funny. Afterwards, that giant stage became a yoga session and I decided to join them. Yoga is like a mini workout or at least it can be. Several others and I left after probably 15 minutes when they decided to get out the mats and do floor exercises. I needed a few good stretches, some lunges, and some deep breaths… which is basically what I got.

We spoke with the tour desk about our excursions this week. We have paid for a Costa guided excursion in every port. The excursions start tomorrow. The “problem” is that some of the excursions are only in Spanish. Kamie is a little disappointed because he won’t get to hear or know the history they are telling us in some of the places we are going. We both wish we spoke Spanish. We know the basics (hello, goodbye, thank you, ice, beer, bathroom, excuse me) and we know all our numbers. Thank goodness for the basics. Our waiter told us at dinner tonight that the excursion we have in Rio tomorrow does actually have a translator so we’ll see. I feel like I believe him. Costa told us no translator was available but we said we wanted to take the excursion anyway. So far, we have 5 excursions booked with Costa and only 2 of them are supposed to have English-speaking guides. We’ll see how this goes as this may be the reason Americans don’t book Costa. If that’s the case, Costa really shouldn’t even allow Americans to book their cruises unless they can speak Spanish or Portuguese. The website shouldn’t even be in English.

Anyway, I got some sun and finished my first book today. After we wandered around the ship, we ended back on our balcony reading in the wind and semi-sun. Lucky for us, the sun does not hit our balcony so it’s never hot out there, just humid. It’s great. I’m not sure what happened but we missed breakfast and we missed lunch. Around 3pm, Kamie wanted some real food. We decided to go look for food and the buffets were open and the hamburgers and fries were available. The fries were good. The hamburgers tasted off to me… like, the meat didn’t taste normal. I didn’t eat my hamburger.

Later, we learned that for some odd reason, my Fitbit, which is basically offline, jumped ahead one hour today. It’s so strange. It’s not being updated, just charged so I still get my steps. Today should have been daylight savings time in the USA which South America doesn’t recognize. Maybe my Fitbit was preprogrammed to jump ahead an hour today? At this point, we are now 2 hours ahead of Missouri and 1 hour ahead of Florida. My nail guy told me that the US voted to never move again… that we will not be “falling back” this fall. He said it was official. I had not heard that yet but I hope he's correct. The US needs to choose one and stick to it.

The weather on our TV shows low 23 C and high 28 C. We don’t know what that is Fahrenheit, but we think a high of 77 to 84?? It’s not hot. It’s humid. Humidity is 87%. We don’t mind. It is so breezy outside that it feels fantastic. It must be because our ship is cruising so fast.

Tonight’s dinner was octopus for Kamie (eh), spaghetti for me (again), and some beef that was bleeding so I cut it up and left it on the plate. This may be the second vacation I’ve ever taken where I lose weight. The first one was China. At the same time, I normally avoid pastas so there’s that.

Tomorrow, we will spend all day in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil! We booked a 10-hour excursion with the ship. We plan to see the Copacabana, Sugarloaf Mountain, travel up the Corcovado to the Christ the Redeemer statue, and see some other areas of this grand city. I would rather see Dom and the boys…

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Photos

It would take us days to figure out what mate leats were LOL
I originally thought it was condoms LOL

Comments

[Stacy]

I'm just going to leaf this comment right here...
Drinks would be a challenge for me because I don't do soda. How was the water? Unfortunately the nail guy was not correct either. The vote has been tabled, not enough support because there's no financial gain for anyone. Horse shit. And what in the heck are the leaves they are talking about?!?

[Eeda and Jahn]

Water
I am not a soda person either. Soda is a treat for Kamie on this cruise. He normally drinks Gatorade. He's drinking Fanta so he drinks like a third grader now. I hate that the nail guy is wrong. What the heck. Oh... mate leats. Uh. This is a long story but simply put - they put this leafy green tea into a cup of hot water and they drink it through a stainless steel straw that has a strainer in it. When they are done, their cup is FULL of these leaves. They are supposed to dump them in the trash. Kamie said one time there was a sink full of them in one of the men's public bathrooms. They clog the sewer system. EVERYONE in Argentina drinks this tea and carries their hot thermos with hot water and leaves and mate cup with steel straw with them AT ALL TIMES (like, off the ship). Many of them discussed this with us and they were sold EVERYWHERE. Not my thing. I've never been a huge fan of green tea let alone this straw straining system.

[Stacy]

That is WILD!
The tea leaves is WILD! What about the water? Was there plenty of drinkable water?

[Eeda and Jahn]

Water
Yeah. We had unlimited bottled water in our fridge and in our room and on the ship. Everything was included with our room - all drinks including bottled water. THey would use a bottle of water to refill our water at breakfast, lunch or dinner. There was unlimited water - unless you were at the buffet. Someone would stand behind a rope and ask you what you wanted - water or juice or punch. They filled the small glass and handed to you -= another reason we stayed away from the buffet.