TubT

Some of the most interesting, healthful, best tasting and inexpensive dishes (e.g., Vietnamese Pho, Sicilian stuffed artichokes, Cioppino [Dungeness crab and seafood stew]) are simple fare that grace the home tables of working class folks as often as they do four star restaurants.

In France, escargot is an inexpensive way to provide protein for country dwellers. They don't call it "wall fruit" for nothing.

Back to lobster: did you know that lobsters are in the same phylum (biological classification) as cockroaches? If you like lobster, you may want to be adventurous and try some salmon when you do that Alaska cruise.

 

Oops. Time for dinner- bouillabaisse!

No. Spiders.

One of the reasons we go on a cruise is to eat stuff I'd never order at a restaurant. Yeah, I've tried a lot of different things on 30 cruises. Escargots, for one. And my wife makes a great fauxcargots, made using sauteed button mushrooms. Calamari? To quote one comedian, even a cut up garden hose would taste good, if you fried it in butter, etc. My wife loves lamb; to me, today's lamb doesn't taste much different from beef. I remember when it had a strong taste and was a cheap meat.

The word is that the "camera" was the eye for the TV remote.

Expecting any food on a cruise ship to match what you're used to at home is a fool's errand. If that was the case, why not just stay at home? After all, you wouldn't go in one of the restaurants, order chili, and expect the esoteric and unexplainable Cincinnati article, would you? I know that when we went on NCL's Norwegian Sea out of Houston (twice), although they called the cruise the "Texaribbean Cruise," any "Tex-Mex" food they served tasted like it had been made from a recipe written by someone who vaguely remembered eating in Texas some time back, wrote the recipe from memory in Indonesian, faxed it to Norway on a bad fax machine, where it was translated into Norwegian by someone who didn't speak Indonesian or English. But we ate it, and enjoyed it, and took it with a grain of salt...and a few flakes of chili powder, sometimes.

I had a different experience. The brisket was soft and had a wonderfully dense crust (as it should). I believe that this is more of a Texas-style BBQ experience, than a Carolina-style. I didn't have the greens, but they didn't appear the way that you described yours. Personally? I prefer KC-style BBQ.

How to start an argument in the south: Just pass judgment on a BBQ joint! (Of course, here in Texas we say the difference between Texas BBQ and KC BBQ is that we got the cows when they were fresh off the pastures, and KC got them after they'd walked 700 miles.)

Huh. A concept I never fully explored. A pre-cruise review. Don't see any reason why it couldn't be useful. So, keep it up.

Now, that said, one of our earlier cruises was on the Sensation. I'm talking about 1995 or so. Does that sound right? At that time, I found the ship crowded and gaudy. But keep in mind this was after 2 cruises on the old Constitution in Hawaii, and one on the Crown Princess. The old one. The Sensation is the same size as the old Crown Princess, 70,000 tons, give or take, and it had 1,000 more passengers. Now, it seems kind of nostalgic to go on a cruise to the Bahamas with only 2500 of your closest friends.

I've been on a Mac for 10 years or more and haven't had to worry about these things so much since I switched.

Well...maybe. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-glassberg/are-apple-products-really_b_10241742.html

Yeah, I think "neverbeenhere" has probably never been anywhere. At least on a cruise ship.

That said, we had one experience in Jamaica and swore we would never get off the ship there again.

Mike

And even if the forecast is for warm the day of departure, bring a jacket because a week later could be nasty.

The argument about universal passports comes down to the argument about universal secure ID. It CAN be done, but staunch conservatives oppose it on the basis of "invasion of privacy," and staunch liberals oppose it because it would, in effect, stop illegal immigration. But surely it has to happen eventually.

The hubs took them to the post office yesterday, priority and insured. The postman said they would get them by Monday, but said it could be 6+ weeks before we get them back. I hope he is wrong and you are right. :)

Did you pay the extra for expedited processing?

To the OP, as far as your son is concerned, I have seen the occasional teen who buys or rents a zoot suit to wear on the formal night. I've even been tempted myself! The cruise is supposed to be fun, and I can guarantee he will have an interesting time wearing that.

I had a my renewed passport in 5 weeks with regular processing. So with expedited processing, it is most likely that you will receive your passport within one month.

 

 

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We just did ours, but we did pay for the overnight. It was 7 days from the time we sent them off until the time they arrived back in the mail. Add another week for normal mail.

There are hotels all along the way, Ennis, Corsicana, Fairfield, Buffalo, Madisonville, Huntsville, Conroe, etc. We had planned on driving from our location (between Waco and Fort Worth, near Lake Whitney) down to Galveston, but you can stay a ways north of there and save enough to pay for your week's parking.

The chances of fog in January are good, so be prepared. But it's not as bad as the Houston terminal. The channel out of Galveston is not as small as the one out of Houston.

I don't know if anyone follows it, but they did have snow in Houston last night. It doesn't happen often, but this is exactly what I was warning about.

Canadaman111, by the end of February, spring has generally taken hold in Galveston, However, if there is a cold north wind, it could still be pretty uncomfortable. If you do some searching, sites such as Intellicast can give you historical averages, highs, and lows for almost any date.

I just looked, and on that date, Galveston's average high is 66, average low is 53, .01" average precipitation (no average snow accumulation). Record low is 27, record high is 79.

I only had a blazer with dress shirt and tie. Next cruise, I will bring a suit. MY comfort level. I would wear a tux, if I owned one. I can't see renting one for the cruise.

You can buy a tux for the price of an inexpensive business suit, if you do some shopping. JC Penney, for one, sells them. For less than $200, you can get the full regalia including shoes and tie. You can also buy used tuxes from some formal shops. In fact, I just checked Amazon, and they sell tuxes for around $80. For something you might wear a few times per year, that would probably work out great.

Now, all that said, I DO have a tux, and I like to wear it on the formal nights, but, with me, it's kind of a "joke," in that I think of formal night with the same sort of seriousness as I think of a prom. Once is kind of fun, but it really doesn't mean anything.

And yes, I DO wish the lines would be stricter with their enforcement of the dress code.

In case anyone thinks I'm just whistling Dixie, check out the current weather in Galveston. In the 40's, with rain, and going down to 37 tonight. https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/galveston-tx/77550/weather-forecast/331114 And you can see it live on the Galveston CruiseCam. https://www.galveston.com/cruisevideocam/

This is my first time on a Carnival ship. On Princess and Celebrity, I've alway brought a tux for formal/elegant night. It just seems nice once in a while to do it, not that many chances anymore to dress up like that. My question is----on carnival, will I be the only one in the MDR in a tux? From this discussion, it sure sounds like it. what say you?

We're high-time Princess cruisers, too. You won't be the only one in a tux, if you're on the same cruise as I am. On the other hand, for Carnival, I have been sorely tempted to find a nice purple zoot suit.

Wow, sounds like dressing up nice is a thing of the past I guess.

After 25+ cruises, I finally broke down and bought a tux. How often do you get to dress up to the nines? You can buy a tux for less than a sport coat, if you know where to shop.

It is so funny when people quote the carnival page on what or what not to wear.

 

I wear flip flops and shorts to every dinner but the steakhouse or "Elegant Night" most of the time. I have worn jeans a polo and flip flops to elegant night before with no problem. I know some have said that the dress code is enforced but I have never seen anyone turned away. "Now I have also never seen someone come to dinner in a bathing suit also."

In all my cruises, I have seen only one couple adamantly turned away from the formal night. He: no shirt, black leather vest, black leather pant, black motorcycle boots. She: Black leather halter top, black leather mini skirt (which was so short her black underwear was visible), black thigh-length leather boots with high heels.

Just an idea, but I keep a file of all the paperwork I'm going to need on the cruise, ready to grab and go when the day finally arrives. However, a thought occurred to me. Maybe scan all the important papers into my phone? That way I have a backup.

You can see it here: https://www.galveston.com/cruisevideocam/

Oddly enough, some researchers feel that even if this year's flu shot is not all that good for this year's flu, it has a long-term cumulative effect. There is some evidence for this. The 1918 flu epidemic killed almost entirely young people. Researchers think one reason might have been that those over about 25 had been exposed to a variant of that flu soon before 1900, and their immunity saved them. So, each year, you get a flu shot, and it gives you some immunity to the strains included, even though they might mutate over the years. Of course, like all medical research, they might "discover" something entirely different next year. We can only do our best, right? But, in an average year, flu kills about 30,000 Americans. Roughly similar to the number of gun deaths (including suicides, etc.) or the number of traffic deaths. I don't know about you, but if I could get a vaccine that might save me from being killed by those two methods, I would take it.

Someone mentioned a quarantine, but that is logistically impossible.

It seems it can rain, even heavily, any given day in the Caribbean. Just a word of encouragement. On our cruise before last, we arrived at Roatan in the rain. We had raincoats, etc., so we put them on and trooped out to the bus to go to the Tabayana Beach Resort. Go to the beach in the rain? Well, we figured we were going to get wet, anyway, and worst case, we could enjoy some people watching, have lunch, and take a ride back to the ship. We got to the resort and went in the changing rooms. When we came back out, the rain had quit, the sun was breaking out, and it turned out to be a magnificent day. And all the people who had cancelled their beach excursion missed out.

I know I am bumping an old thread, but I thought it was better than starting a new one since all of these places still exist.

 

I want to get fresh off the boat seafood. So I was wondering what kinds of fish would actually be locally caught? A lot of these restaurants have farm raise salmon on their menus, I can get that in Oklahoma with equal non-freshness.

 

I assume the shrimp would most likely be local, but wasn't sure what else. You'd think people would play up the local caught on the menu.

Snapper and redfish, for starters.