jam19872016

The new Carnival stores look really nice and reminded me a lot of the one on Celebration.

Onto Freedom now there is a new Dreams studio location in the atrium just off to the side. The location on deck 4 in the old internet cafe was still there, but I guess this is more visible. @Blackjackboss this one's for you. I almost didn't photograph the giant Lady Liberty. I also never went up to the BBQ place. It was so terrible in January that I just didn't care to try it again when the rest of the food onboard was so much better overall. As a revenue generator, I was surprised the PYOB was not fixed in dry dock.

The chef was even giving the thumbs up to reassure me, and I completely missed his message. I've got to do better!

It was also fruit and veggie carving day where they displayed some beautiful works of food art.

As I understand it, QM2 has eliminated the free sauna. I can't have it all I suppose. For identical itineraries I would choose QE without a forward deck than QM2 without a free sauna.

I went back and I did miss two photos of stairway art. I thought I took more but I only found two but I did find a few other photos that got missed. Somehow I skipped a whole day of uploads from my phone. These were from the first sea day leaving Barcelona on QE. Stairway art. Even back then, parents were dumb enough to lift their child over the railing. And another sitting on the railing, I guess those were the only ones I felt a need to take a picture of, that's a shame as they were quite interesting. This day was also the day of the Indian cooking demonstration.

I'm pretty sure I walked each of the decks and checked both port and starboard and they were all marked crew only. I started at the top and worked my way down, so possibly by the time I got to 6 I was defeated enough that the big watertight door was enough to deter me without an actual sign stating crew only. I hope I get the chance to check again someday as that is my favorite place to be for sail away from any port. Thank you 🙂

I'd looked closer at this portrait of the ship and thought I'd found out the ship had a secret deck just like most Carnival ships do, it would certainly appear that there is the forward observation decks like on Carnival. Alas when I walked to the front of each deck, they were marked crew only and when I peeked in, they were most definitely for crew access only. What a shame. In addition to Commedore club which was inside, the only outside deck with a forward view was on this deck with the lawn games. I'm almost certain that I had taken many photos of the stairway art on Queen Elizabeth. I found so many of them so interesting but I cannot find them now. I am going to have to look on my phone again but they did not get uploaded to my online host. That will be a real shame if I lost them somehow. While most of the art was classic and tasteful, this one final piece was modern and whimsical and I enjoyed it just as much although it certainly did not fit the overall theme of the ship and as I understand it is a recent addition.

Strolling the outside decks at night. Sunset the night before arriving in Naples. From the Commedore club I watched an MSC cargo ship arriving in port in Civitavecchia

Barcelona at night from QE. I am always fascinated by the stairway art on cruise ships, and the art on here was very interesting. Lots of pictures of classic Cunard ships. Passing a ferry as we leave Barcelona.

Checking out the top deck. I never did find an unobstructed outside view off the front of the ship. The best I got was inside the commodore club which was a lovely lounge, but your view was at the mercy of the cleanliness of the windows at the time. Beautiful space inside though with nice comfy seating.

Some lunch time snack options. Barcelona from the QE

Hope everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving today who celebrated. And a great Thursday to everyone else. Catching up some more random pictures. Terminal B in Barcelona...much better stocked than the other terminals I docked at while in Barcelona. The hallways on Cunard were more narrow than Carnival but still not as narrow as I've seen on cruise ships before. The pizza place was something I wish I had a chance to try more there was just too much other good food available. The topping list was impressive. They had a daily special also.

I don't know what asbestos looks like. I googled it and most pictures seem to be yellow, although it did return some pictures that were white. Some more research showed that ships built when Freedom was built could legally be built with asbestos in certain parts of the ship which I'm not smart enough to understand exactly where. A lot of technical jargon that just went way over my head. I'd like to give Carnival the benefit of the doubt that at the least the employees cleaning up would be in proper PPE if it was Asbestos but Carnival Corp is on probation for illegal dumping and continued to do it until they got caught AGAIN so benefit of the doubt is gone for them. I guess wishful hoping in lieu of benefit of the doubt?

I didn't personally witness any fall into the water so hopefully nothing did, but it's hard to imagine that nothing caught enough extra wind to fly over the decks. Maybe they were smart enough to purposely wait until the winds were in the correct direction to not allow that to happen? No turkey for us today, we are going non tradtional since its just the two of us and I'm not big on turkey. There will be pie though 🙂 Happy Thanksgiving to you as well!

The pics are somewhere wayyyyyy back in pages, I think you were on Venezia at the time. It was a beautiful port but the weather wasn't the greatest that day. Most of the excursions were to Sete Cidades but the visibility was poor. I'd read its best not to book tours to it until the day of because visibility is often bad but they run the tours anyway. I ended up finding a beautiful botanical garden while wandering around and it was the only port with city wide wifi which was nice.

Coming up next I will have some extra pictures from my time on Queen Elizabeth and the return crossing and my final thoughts on the trip. Then tomorrow or Friday I will be starting another live for my next trip which I will include a link to in this one. Thanks for following along!

Somewhere in the Atlantic, a day out from Azores. Pizza line much more manageable on the crossing. The work on the funnel had begun, and today it was snowing. This was being spit out of the funnel, the crew worked hard to keep it cleaned up but during the last few days there were a lot of nasty things being spit out of the funnel and I am sure some of it unfortunately ended up in the water. There were also a lot of sparks flying which was more than just a little unsettling.

That late at night with the drunk munchies, anything is worth the wait 😅. Late night choices have improved in the last year, but its not great by any stretch of the imagination.

Line must have moved quicker tonight, I got mushroom pizza! Usually I've been waiting so long I just take pepperoni. Score! My mom loved her steward from her 10 days in her own cabin. She even got six towel animals in five days. She had me line them up at the end for a photo. First day coordinates on the TA. The sea about half way between Florida and Bermuda.

Pizza line at 11:33. I sure did not miss this on the Journeys cruises. Even worse was the late night snack line, which is the line I waited in. Peeking into the kitchen while I waited in line. Grand Turk tried to give me a sunset.

The seagulls in Nassau are as aggressive as the vendors.