POA1

We started dinner with the Caribbean Deviled Eggs. (I posted the menu earlier if you want to read the descriptions.) I have our wine steward on the same page as we are now. I order our wines "straight through" for delivery all at once. That ensures that our wine is always there when each course arrives. The exception is dessert wine and after dinner cordials. I'll order them with dessert. For our starters, we had Domaine Houchart Rosé. The previously discussed Trignon Cotes du Rhone accompanied the mains.

I really appreciate the tip! Apparently the only thing better than an espresso martini is a chocolate espresso martini. Consider it on the priority list.

Pregame cocktails were at the Royal Dutch Cafe. They make a wicked Espresso Martini. The Espresso Martini and - I know you are sporting your shocked face - Maker's Mark on the rocks. Even though Poohby Joe doesn't dine in public, he still dresses for dinner. (He needs to keep a low profile because the poohparazzi are everywhere.)

I would never do that. Michelle read it first and kept the plot from me. I was working on Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr series, aka the Burglar books.

This morning, at breakfast in the Club Orange dining room, a guy sent his breakfast back. Three times! He and his wife exuded a level of misery I thought would be impossible at 8:00 AM. Maybe it's just me, but if someone cooks my breakfast, brings it to me, and then cleans up afterward - I'm having a good day. Despair rained down from the black clouds hanging over this couple. The bubble of awesome kept us dry and comfy.

Your trip reports were an inspiration to us over the summer. You UK itineraries are on our bucket list. We try to make our own fun, but the staff has been uniformly great. I had a whole write up earlier and the internet went out. I'll keep this short, but there is more to follow.

Sorry for the posting drought. The radius server was down and we could not log on. It's a shame, because my response to was inspirational. @VMax1700

The Trignon is on the By the Glass list and will be the pairing if one of us decides to order the pork belly tonight. I've used it for a pairing a couple of times already. Here's the full list in case anyone wants to know. I find the wine selections by the glass to be fine. I haven't run into any problems finding a pairing for what we've ordered.

We have the colored bottom ones and the ones with the pewter emblems. Is there a third series?

The MDR menu often has a cordial of the day, which does not appear on the Club Orange menu. Naturally, there is none today, but I swear I'm telling the truth. The cordial comes in a souvenir glass for a surcharge. I'm interested to see what they look like. But since we have full sets of the last two series, I'm not sure if we really need more shot glasses. Although a game of checkers with shots is always a possibility. (That's from the TV show M.A.S.H. or college in the 80s.)

Tonight's Club Orange dinner menu. For all intents and purposes, the CO menu and the MDR menus are the same with the following differences: Club Orange always has Beecher's Mac and Cheese available as well as a seared tuna and asparagus salad. We also get one extra entrée choice. (Except on formal nights when the menus are the same.)

The two ships from the Margaritaville side of the beach. And here Michelle helpfully points out the sign warning Carnival guests not to smuggle. I wonder why the sign fails to mention Holland America passengers. C'mon HAL cruisers! It's time to up your drug game.

I just fact checked myself. Happy to report that I was not making up the info on the Freedom. Carnival's new livery is a lot more attractive than the plain white hulls of the past.

Some Grand Turk pix. They are doing an abandon ship drill at the moment. The Grand Turk sign. Hooray for Pixel's wide angle lens. Carnival Freedom on the left, is on pretty much the same hull as the HAL Vista class. (Somebody fact check me on this.) The two ships from the beach I wrote about earlier. The "town square" Christmas tree.

I run my photos through ImageShrink before posting. It gets them down to a lower resolution (XGA, usually) and prevents the issue CC has with large image files. ImageShrink is an Android program, but there's bound to be an iPhone equivalent,

We did the obligatory stroll through the Grand Turk cruise port. It's expanded since we were last here, which was either 2016 or 2018. (I should probably look at my Live Froms to find out.) Tip for anyone coming here: When you enter the cruise port and exit the duty free shop, hang a right and walk down a bit. You'll find a nice, secluded set of free or beach chairs with some palm tree shade. With both the Nieuw Statendam and the Carnival Freedom in port, this area was still largely unoccupied. There's a little restaurant shack nearby if you want a snack or drinks. Our whirlwind Grand Turk speed-walking, picture-taking tour, we're headed up to the Retreat Cabana. I'll work on my photos and post them shortly.

Forgot to post Poohby Joe's dressy night photo. Deepest apologies. First typos, now this!

After the wine tasting in the MDR, I can see why people say that Club Orange has less than comfortable chairs. They're not terrible, but you can sort of tell that this was originally America's Test Kitchen.

Yes. Those are the ones. I prefer the old plastic liter bottles, for volume if nothing else. For the record, we brought along some plastic bendy straws. I'm not a fan of the paper straws. And don't worry, we won't throw them away. We will pack them and take them home with us. (We have sea turtles on Fort Lauderdale Beach. They love plastic straws! 😉 Just kidding. We will dispose of them properly.) We drink our water from Yeti cups with reusable straws. We probably use fewer than a dozen plastic straws a year.

"Bottled water" is in cans this trip. Or at least the beverage package water is. They're the tall, skinny cans that remind you of the ones Red Bull comes in. We're docked in Grand Turk, having arrived before 7:00 AM. I was up a little early to get some reading done. We loaded our Kindles with books from the library. I'm reading Richard Osman's "Last Devil to Die." It's book 4 in The Thursday Murder Club series. The series is an excellent read. We're pretty avid readers. If we read every day of the cruise, we'll be at 400 days in a row when we get back to Fort Lauderdale.

Thanks!

I know I'm supposed to be answering questions, but I have to ask one. What do you tune the TV to so you can listen to the PA announcements? Other than watching the safety video, we have not had the television on.

We highly recommend having a cocktail or two and snacks at the Tamarind bar. It helped us avoid the dinner crowds on the first night. You'll find Nami Sushi on the three Pinnacle Class ships and the two Signature Class ships. That's the Koningsdam, Nieuw Statendam and Rotterdam, as well as the Eurodam and Nieuw Amsterdam.

I hope it read "Scooby snacks" or Scoobies. That's a call back to the 1969-1971 CBS cartoon series, "Scooby Doo, Where are you?" In any case, the scoobies were from the Tamarind Bar. The food is from the Nami Sushi menu. It's a la carte and we spent around $20 on the food, exclusive of drinks, which were covered by the beverage package.

I really need to watch my spell check.