[legion]

Chapter 2: Triumph

So I wake up Saturday morning and my head is spinning. A mild headache, but mostly a little dizziness. We have to be on the ship at noon, and it's 9:00. I saw a Krystal across from the Red Fish Grill, and figured it was as good a place as any for breakfast.

I was wrong. I was anticipating a McDonald's/Burger King quality breakfast, I was shocked to learn there is a tier below this, and on that tier is Krystal. I got my crappy breakfast combo and set it to work soaking up the remaining alcohol in my system.

I was feeling better by 11, and we packed up and caught a cab to the port. I got off the cab, a porter took my bags, and I proceeded to the stock yard. I was handed a health form. We filled it out, and waited in line for 30 minutes to hand it in. On to the next line.

We waited in line for 1.5 hours to get our room keys. I don't see what took so long. We were at the counter for a mere 2 minutes, and there were 47 counters. We got on the boat around 1:00.

3,000 guests and 1,100 crew on the boat. We were on the eighth deck starboard, and we had a king-sized bed (a real king sized bed) and a balcony. Sweet room, and much bigger than I was expecting. We settled in then headed up to the 9th deck buffet for some lunch.

Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my cruise, and Carnival exceeded my expectations in all areas except for one: the food. The food sucked. It was crappy food-service quality food like I had in college. The difference being that in college, the crappy food service food was made by college students for college students, so they tried to make it the best they could. On the Triumph, I think the unseen cooks harbored some deep resentment for the guests on the boat, at least that's what I could guess by the quality of their work.

So for lunch I had a food-service cheeseburger and chips and salsa.

Well, it looked like chips and salsa. See, in my other complaint about the buffet (which I only visited when I had no other option), was that they often put the condiments before the things that they complemented. So you learned quick to take a little of all of the condiments because you might need them once you saw what was actually offered. So I selected the salsa, which turned out to be nothing more than pico de gallo (tomato, onion, and cilantro), and the "chips" were friend flour tortillas. So rather than chips and salsa, I had bland and bland.

After lunch, we went up to the fantail to get shots of the city as we pulled away. I bought a DLSR the day before we left, so I got some cool shots of rain moving in over the city as we left.

Then it was pretty much time for dinner. We were in the Paris dining room, whose decor is somehow inspired by Paris, but it's decor is also exactly the same as the London dining room. Now the Paris dining room was cool, because it is on decks 3 and 4 full aft, so we have a full view of what we are leaving behind.

And winding down the Mississippi River over dinner on a 900 ft. boat was pretty cool. The boat listed heavily as we made tight turns through the meandering river.

I wish I could say the food was as good as the view. Nope. The choices for dinner (well, the only two I considered) were "Flat Iron Choice Steak" or "St. Louis Style Ribs". I opted for the ribs. I couldn't figure out why anyone would actually put "choice" on the menu. Either it's prime or I don't want to be told. When the ribs arrived, they were boiled spare ribs smothered in KC Masterpiece. I consider "St. Louis style" to mean a dry rub and barbecued.

Ok, so the food sucked, that's that last I'll say about that. After dinner we found a bar and had a few, then went to bed.