FINALLY! My really long Victory review 1/17-1/24/10 with MEGA pix!!

[LRGidget]

Thanks for the heads up because we are people that have no air conditioning in our home and never use it on the cruises. On past cruises on Royal we had sliding doors to the balcony and we would turn off the air and leave the doors open and it was perfect ... when we left our room for the islands or the evening we would close everything up and turn on the air very low but it looks to me that leaving the balcony "DOOR" open on Carnival isn't going to be an option... darn darn darn but will definitely remember where you said you can turn it down or off:rolleyes::cool:

[Ti2m]

Thank you for the review thread. I realy enjoyed it.

 

Timm

[Emptynesternow]

Absolutely the best review of any cruise yet!! Your pictures are wonderful...and although we're on a Princess cruise this time out...I'm looking into the Victory next -- we've cruised with Carnival twice before.

 

Hope you keep warm, the power stays on and you get more time to continue this review.....like a great book...can't wait to turn the page!

[ridingmax]

Thanks for the info and great pics! I'll be doing this cruise with my family in April and reading your blog has been a great way to build up anticipation for the trip. THANKS! Waiting patiently for your next post.....:)

[milokitty]

Plus, the kids were off school yesterday; are still here today and driving me crazy (they just won't shut up:p); the DH may or may not make it back "across the pond" from the UK today, and will certainly miss all this fun snow exercise:rolleyes:; and the dog has to go to the bathroom. Sigh. Guess I better shovel an area for him, too, or he won't be happy.

 

And I can't forget to clear a path to the grill. We are die-hard grillers . . . winter never stops us!

 

Barbados was one of our best islands!:D

 

I'm starting to think there is something about snowfall and husbands being in the UK. Our neighbors are British and when we got 20" in Dec and 32" last month, the husband was in the UK. This last storm yesterday, their whole family was in the UK and we only got high winds...hmmm...

 

Ditto on Barbados!!

[cantwait06]

LOVE this review! Thank you so much for your awesome recap and beautiful pictures:) :) :)

[Dirkgun]

Thanks for doing this review it is great to read and see your great pics. I am doing my Victory review also .... man it is a lot of going over things to make sure you don't miss anything. I almost want to post all of my pics. It was that fun of a cruise. Your pictures are awesome, what kind of a camera do you use? Keep up the good work. :D

[scraphappylady]

Okay, back again. Thanks for being so patient! Well, hunny's back from UK (jet lagged, but home :)), snow is shoveled (well, not the sidewalks, but hunny can do that later!), and the kids were told in no uncertain terms that they WERE going to be playing outside in the snow later this morning. There they can talk and shout all they want and all I have to hear is a low buzz. That might give us an hour or two of sanity.

 

Now, where was I? Oh, yes, . . . Barbados.

 

 

Day 4 - Barbados

 

Because we had an earlier excursion today, we were up by 6:30 am. As Jon got ready, I sat out on our deck, watching the climbing sun and taking pictures.

 

Compared to Dominica the day before, the landscape of Barbados was much flatter, and not half as picturesque. The shore line was much prettier closer in, as we found out later in the day, but for now we were still pretty far away. As I stood on the balcony, I could see the Norwegian Dawn, I believe, coming in behind us.

 

 

After breakfast on the Lido, and another made-to-order omelet, to which I was fast becoming addicted (Egg Beaters, though, so I was trying to stay relatively healthy!), we had enough time go up on deck and take a few more pictures as we sailed into port, around 8 am.

 

Holding up the lifeboat! My hero . . .

[scraphappylady]

The Ocean Village and Celebrity Equinox were already in port when we arrived, and by the time we left at the end of the day, the Arcadia (P & O Cruises) as well as the Norwegian Dawn were there as well.

 

While this turned out to be one of my two favorite islands to visit, the dock area was very industrial and not much to look at. We ended up docking right next to a gigantic crane, used to lift containers onto and off of oceangoing ships, and that was interesting, but the rest . . . not so much.

 

 

Once we disembarked, we took shuttle buses to the terminal, although we could have walked – it wasn’t that far - and some people did walk later in the day when they were coming back to the ship. Nope, not us. Still too lazy, and all that snorkeling takes a lot out of you!:rolleyes:

 

 

When we reached the terminal, we walked through, mentally checking off some of the shops we might want to visit later, since most were still closed (it was only around 8:30 am at this point.) We wandered outside the building, to near the taxi areas, to wait for our excursion to start and watched as many other Carnival tours were sent on their way. As we sat waiting, we started talking with another group of people from Michigan who we then discovered were also going to be on our catamaran (hi, guys!)

[scraphappylady]

We had booked online ahead of time with Silver Moon/Ocean Adventures for snorkeling over two shipwrecks and a swim with turtles. Since we wanted to get really close to the turtles, without another person’s flippers in our faces, we opted to pay the extra money and reserve a spot on the 12 person catamaran. ($110 pp vs. I think it was $85 for the 24 person catamaran) I highly recommend doing this if you can afford to. We were so spoiled the entire trip. This was the tour I had been looking forward to the most, and I was NOT disappointed.

 

As we boarded the company’s taxi/van, we were told it wasn’t far to our boat, and it literally wasn’t. We probably could have walked to where the catamarans were tied up, being just across the water from where Victory was docked. It wasn’t even a five minute trip.

 

We were helped on board by one of the two men sailing the catamaran this day and told to sit wherever we wanted to. (While it wasn’t a huge leap to get onboard, we did have to take a fairly big step off the dock and over, and the boat was shifting around somewhat.)

 

 

(I think I got you in here, Milokitty!:eek:)

 

We had paid half of the tour fee online ahead of time, and paid the rest before we got underway. Then they broke out the drinks and we were off. Jon went for a rum based beverage, while I decided to stick to soda until I was done snorkeling. No worries, though. There was plenty of time to indulge afterwards!

 

 

 

A few minutes into our trip, we were given warm banana bread that was to die for, and we pretty much ate our way through the rest of the trip, when we weren’t in the water.

 

We met the rest of our tour group and quickly got to talking. (Hi, Sandy and Nancy!) Our group was comprised of people from both Victory and the Celebrity Equinox, so we also spent time comparing the ships and discussing our likes and dislikes about each.

[scraphappylady]

Thanks for doing this review it is great to read and see your great pics. I am doing my Victory review also .... man it is a lot of going over things to make sure you don't miss anything. I almost want to post all of my pics. It was that fun of a cruise. Your pictures are awesome, what kind of a camera do you use? Keep up the good work. :D

 

 

Thanks, Dirk!

 

I'm reading your review, too, as you write it and loving it - it's great to see the same itinerary from someone else's point of view, even if it's a few weeks later, and what you did that we might not have!

 

I'm sure I'm missing a ton of stuff that we did, and I tried to keep a small journal as I went, but by the third or fourth day, there just wasn't time for me to jot much more than what we ate or a few of the places we visited. I'm relying more on the pictures and my DH's memory as I write.

 

As for the pix, thanks! I love my camera. I have the Canon Powershot SX20 IS as my workhorse (love the 20x optical zoom), but I also have a Canon D10 as a "pocket" camera, and the one I use for underwater. (Some of those pix coming up soon). Your pix were great, as well, and it's nice that you had so many people taking pix as you went! A pain to try and decide which to include, I'm sure, but at least you get a lot of different points of view with those as well. Ah, if only we could include ALL our pix, but I know at least for me, I had about 2,500 when all was said and done. :eek:

 

Looking forward to more of your review as well!

[barbevrn]

Thanks, Dirk!

 

I'm reading your review, too, as you write it and loving it - it's great to see the same itinerary from someone else's point of view, even if it's a few weeks later, and what you did that we might not have!

 

I'm sure I'm missing a ton of stuff that we did, and I tried to keep a small journal as I went, but by the third or fourth day, there just wasn't time for me to jot much more than what we ate or a few of the places we visited. I'm relying more on the pictures and my DH's memory as I write.

 

As for the pix, thanks! I love my camera. I have the Canon Powershot SX20 IS as my workhorse (love the 20x optical zoom), but I also have a Canon D10 as a "pocket" camera, and the one I use for underwater. (Some of those pix coming up soon). Your pix were great, as well, and it's nice that you had so many people taking pix as you went! A pain to try and decide which to include, I'm sure, but at least you get a lot of different points of view with those as well. Ah, if only we could include ALL our pix, but I know at least for me, I had about 2,500 when all was said and done. :eek:

 

Looking forward to more of your review as well!

 

LOL, I THOUGHT I had enough memory for our upcoming Victory cruise. I have 2 4gb cards for my main land camera and a 4gb and 2gb card for my pocket/water camera. You are seriously making me wonder if that is enough. LOL

 

It would not hurt my feelings in the least for you to post all your pictures :eek: But, if you happen to have them online and have a link..that would work too. ;):D

[scraphappylady]

LOL, I THOUGHT I had enough memory for our upcoming Victory cruise. I have 2 4gb cards for my main land camera and a 4gb and 2gb card for my pocket/water camera. You are seriously making me wonder if that is enough. LOL

 

It would not hurt my feelings in the least for you to post all your pictures :eek: But, if you happen to have them online and have a link..that would work too. ;):D

 

Paranoid as I am about missing a shot, I ended up taking an 8 GB HC card for each camera, but I also brought along 2-4gb cards, just in case something happened to one of the 8 GB ones.

 

I really didn't anticipate using up all of the 8 GB space, since even set at the next to highest setting, my SX20 alone can take over 2800 pictures. :eek: I think what you're planning to take should be plenty. See if you can tell ahead of time how many your camera will take based on the setting you have it on.

 

I wish I could post all 2,500 or so of my trip pix online, but it seemed to take forever to upload just the 450 or so I'm using for this review. If I do it in the future, I will go back into my review and post a message and link.

[scraphappylady]

Barbados (cont'd)

 

Within what seemed like a very short time, we had arrived at the spot where we would interact with the turtles. While Jon went in the water long enough to touch a few, he isn’t much for snorkeling, and was happy to be my photographer.

 

 

 

 

Jon after snorkeling with the turtles

 

Ready to shoot!

[scraphappylady]

On the other hand, I would have been quite comfortable to grow gills and take up permanent residence, and couldn’t believe how short our time with the turtles seemed to be. We actually had about half an hour with them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was very happy with the pictures I did get, but of course, would have liked ten times as many. Guess we’ll just have to go back and do this again. Soon.

[scraphappylady]

Thsse underwater pictures were taken with my Canon D10 and I didn’t send them through Photoshop or re-touch them in any way.

 

It was the first time I had had this camera underwater and I wanted to see how it would perform. I can’t say enough good things about it, now that I’m home and saw how the pictures turned out.

 

I also took some short video clips with the camera, ran them through iMovie at home, and posted them on YouTube. Here's the link:

 

[SoonerOne]

Your pictures with the turtles are breath taking!!!! Absolutely beautiful:)

[barbevrn]

Oh man! Keep it coming. Your review is making me every so anxious for April!

[milokitty]

Your turtle shots are great! Much better quality than what I took with the disposable underwater camera (esp after I enlarged them). The video was wonderful too--I was able to show my daughter "our turtles"! The green tint on the shell and head were interesting. It almost looks like you tinted them, except that I know the shell wasn't green like that.

 

This really is a great excursion for anyone to take if you can afford to splurge. I also liked that we actually sailed, instead of just hoisting the sail and turning on the motor.

 

And thanks for including the shot of my glorious backside!:p

[GeneK]

Excellent review and fantastic photos!!:)

[TortieGal]

Been following your review all along but so happy to get to the Barbados part! We booked our excursion through Silver Moon so I'm glad to hear how much you enjoyed them. I was a little hesitant given the extra cost but it sounds like it will be worth it. :D

[cruisegirl29]

Hi,

 

I was on this sailing too!! I was at the lido deck bar for the meet n greet but never located anyone from CC!!!!

 

I love all your beautiful pictures & review!! Can't wait to keep reading about it!!

 

 

Happy sailing!

Sue

[cantwait06]

I love the sea turtle pictures, you are making me rethink my plans for barbados! Keep em coming!

[LRGidget]

Thsse underwater pictures were taken with my Canon D10 and I didn’t send them through Photoshop or re-touch them in any way.

 

It was the first time I had had this camera underwater and I wanted to see how it would perform. I can’t say enough good things about it, now that I’m home and saw how the pictures turned out.

 

I also took some short video clips with the camera, ran them through iMovie at home, and posted them on YouTube. Here's the link:

 

 

Your underwater pictures are GREAT ... I have an Olympus Stylus 770 underwater camera and now am wondering if I re-read the instructions or buy a new camera before we go!

[Randr2210]

Hey I'm on that sailing too! Can't wait!