The Palm Trees are Really Cool: A Pictorial Review of the Valor's Southern Route

[Nicole721]

After Dynasty Dazzlers, we set off to our other favorite store, Southern Exposure. We’ve been shopping at Southern Exposure since our first cruise back in 2004. Southern Exposure boasts a nice array of accessories and apparel, and Mom is partial to the jewelry they have there since it’s generally a little trendier.

 

 

After we finalized our purchases, we headed back to the ship hoping to get in some pool time before the crowds made their way back onboard.

 

[Nicole721]

We dropped our purchases off at the room (which still hadn’t been made up yet), changed into our swim gear and headed up to that adults-only aft pool. And much to our delight, it was completely empty, and we had not only the pool, but also the hot tubs, to ourselves for over an hour. Bliss.

 

 

 

When our fingertips were long past pruned and more of our fellow passengers began heading up to the pool to cool off from their adventures, we headed in for lunch. Since it was a port day, our options were limited to lido deck or…more lido deck or…room service. The Valor doesn’t have the Blue Iguana, or Guy’s Burgers, or the tandoor, or the pasta bar. It does have the pizza, and the Mongolian wok, and the deli, and the old school burrito bar and grill, and it even still has fish and chips, but it felt incredibly limiting. I found myself really missing the Blue Iguana. Especially when my stir fry wasn’t that good.

 

[Nicole721]

We walked around the upper decks for a bit after lunch before heading back to the room to nap. And watch Dr. Phil because nothing else as on TV. You know your options are numbered when you settle on Dr. Phil.

 

 

 

 

A couple hours, a shower and a decently long nap later and…we were still docked in St. Thomas. And since I just kind of picked at my lunch, I was getting the munchies. Mom and I headed up to Lido and grabbed some chicken fingers. Perfect snack.

 

[Nicole721]

We brought some back to the room for Stephanie and headed out to the balcony to watch sailaway. And in a predictably dramatic fashion, as we pulled out from the dock, a police car drove up to the gates with a family. A family that stood there and watched the ship sail away. Without them. I hope they had their passports with them, because they’d need to meet us in Barbados.

 

 

 

 

The schedule on this trip was a little wonky, so while the first formal night is usually held on the second night, this night was cruise casual. We headed to dinner just as the sun was beginning to approach the horizon.

 

 

[Nicole721]

We don’t really care for this menu, but we went to the dining room for dinner for one reason and one reason only: Bitter and Blanc (also known as heaven in a ramekin, and the greatest dessert on the seas). And that Bitter and Blanc did not disappoint. The lamb disappointed. Mom barely picked at it. But the Bitter and Blanc? No disappointments.

 

Chilled Shrimp Cocktail

 

Fried Vegetable Egg Rolls

 

Chilled Peach Cream Soup

 

Fresh Fruit Cocktail

 

Wilted Spinach and Portobello Mushrooms with Fresh Bacon Bits

[Nicole721]

Braised Lamb Shank in a Burgundy Sauce

 

Farfalle with Roast Turkey Breast and Green Peas

 

Black Bean and Vegetable Enchiladas

 

Tiramisu

 

Bitter and Blanc

[Nicole721]

Service was a little slow, so instead of having coffee with dessert, we just went to Lido after dinner for coffee. I needed the caffeine to get the useless knowledge flowing in preparation for Movie Trivia. Except Movie Trivia was borderline impossible because they did this thing where they showed a screenshot of a movie with the characters taken out of the picture. I was not impressed.

 

 

 

[Nicole721]

We were going to stay for Game Show Mania (the last time I played Game Show Mania was on the Valor…and I won!), but they crammed a ballroom dancing class in before it started and we didn’t really care for that (and we didn’t want to waste an hour watching it), so we just headed back to the room to relax on the balcony.

 

 

Waiting for me back at the room was a letter confirming my liquor purchases had been delivered to the ship. I appreciated having the confirmation since I didn’t carry the box back onboard myself.

 

 

A little more rested (and now 77% more comfortable in a pair of flip flips), we headed out to the shops to browse. We found that while the liquor prices were better than in the US, it’d be pretty hard to not find better prices on nearly any Caribbean island, especially the eastern ones, and especially if you’re shopping outside of the recommended shops (which pay for their inclusion in the shopping guides and are not actually selected based on being the best stores ashore, contrary to what the shopping guides want you to think). Still, if you’re caught on a shore excursion (or in a bout of indecision) and come back to the ship empty handed, you’ll find some decent deals.

 

 

[Nicole721]

Before the Welcome Aboard show, we headed up to the Lido deck for some more coffee and noticed that they had out a selection of cheeses, some raisin bread thins and plenty of fresh fruit. Perfect makings for a cheese platter! We came back a few times over the course of the cruise to grab some cheese to enjoy with wine or at shows. We took our plate to go and brought it down to the Ivanhoe to munch on during show time.

 

 

They were running a bit behind with Bingo, but the Assistant Cruise Director was running it and she had an incredibly dry sense of humor that I could appreciate, and it made the time pass by quickly.

 

 

I’ve complained a lot in the past about the Welcome Aboard show. It’s outdated and tired and it hadn’t been all that entertaining in awhile, but man, after our last cruise on the Breeze and those awful animatronic screens, the live band cut in favor of prerecorded tracks and the dance troupe minimized to a small handful of singers who could also dance, I welcomed this show back with open arms and tapping feet. I didn’t care that some of the dancing was off or the fact that these songs are all over 10 years old. I didn’t care. It wasn’t really the show I missed. It was the live band, the two singers who could really sing and the full thirteen-member dance troop behind them.

 

 

[Nicole721]

We usually skip out when the Cruise Director appears because a comic usually comes on and we aren’t really into the comedy shows, so we skipped out per usual this time and I guess there was no comedian – the Cruise Director did his own show. And from what we saw later on on the shipboard TV, he was actually funny! So while everyone else was enjoying that, we went wandering around the ship before heading back to the room.

 

 

 

Castle was on TV and at some point, I fell asleep watching it (a habit I carried onto vacation from home – frequent unintentional naps). When I woke up, Mom had ordered room service (which, apparently took less than ten minutes to get to our room) and we snacked while trying to decide if we wanted to hit the midnight showing of The Fast and the Furious 6.

 

Roasted New York Strip Loin and Cheddar Cheese on French Bread

 

Assorted Vegetable Sticks with Blue Cheese Dip (my room service fav!)

 

Peanut Butter and Jelly

 

Since none of us have seen The Fast and the Furious 1-5, we opted out of watching #6, choosing instead to watch The Proposal in our room (because who can get enough Ryan Reynolds?). Stephanie went to put our tray out in the hallway and found a, um, soiled towel in the hall. One, gross. Two, keep that stuff in your rooms. K, thanks, goodnight.

 

I fell asleep somewhere in between Betty White doing a tribal chant while dancing around a fire and Ryan Reynolds’ character deciding he really did love Sandra Bullock’s character (sorry, predictably clichéd ending spoiler alert). Two days down, four ports and a sea day to go.

[Nicole721]

Today’s Lido Lunch Menu:

 

 

Today’s Lido Dinner Menu:

 

[Ciardasully]

Since none of us have seen The Fast and the Furious 1-5, we opted out of watching #6, choosing instead to watch The Proposal in our room (because who can get enough Ryan Reynolds?). Stephanie went to put our tray out in the hallway and found a, um, soiled towel in the hall. One, gross. Two, keep that stuff in your rooms. K, thanks, goodnight.

 

I fell asleep somewhere in between Betty White doing a tribal chant while dancing around a fire and Ryan Reynolds’ character deciding he really did love Sandra Bullock’s character (sorry, predictably clichéd ending spoiler alert). Two days down, four ports and a sea day to go.

 

Enjoying the review.

 

I had to chuckle because it feels like The Proposal is always on TV. But it's a decent movie.

 

Thanks for the St. Thomas shopping tips. DH loves St. Thomas and he is a numbers guy. He never goes to the Caribbean without a prinout of the NH liquor store price list (we live in NY but I am from Maine so we drive through NH. NH liquor is tax-free and cheap though not as cheap as it used to be) because he refuses to pay more in the Caribbean than it costs in NH. On our Glory cruise, we went to the K-Mart in St. Thomas (where he bumped into a high school classmate from NY-weird) and it was the cheapest but he did have to lug two boxes back to the ship. We have a little one on the way so next time we are there, we will have a baby in tow so knowing that places deliver to the ship sounds like the way to go!

[Nicole721]

Enjoying the review.

 

I had to chuckle because it feels like The Proposal is always on TV. But it's a decent movie.

 

Thanks for the St. Thomas shopping tips. DH loves St. Thomas and he is a numbers guy. He never goes to the Caribbean without a prinout of the NH liquor store price list (we live in NY but I am from Maine so we drive through NH. NH liquor is tax-free and cheap though not as cheap as it used to be) because he refuses to pay more in the Caribbean than it costs in NH. On our Glory cruise, we went to the K-Mart in St. Thomas (where he bumped into a high school classmate from NY-weird) and it was the cheapest but he did have to lug two boxes back to the ship. We have a little one on the way so next time we are there, we will have a baby in tow so knowing that places deliver to the ship sounds like the way to go!

 

I swear, they must have played it on, at least, five of our last seven cruises!

[AutumnBM]

I'm loving your review! My husband & I are taking this cruise in September ALSO outta Chicago :) Can't wait to read more!!

[y7anks3]

Nice review cant wait until I am aboard in 5 weeks

[Nicole721]

I'm loving your review! My husband & I are taking this cruise in September ALSO outta Chicago :) Can't wait to read more!!

 

Thanks! :D

 

Nice review cant wait until I am aboard in 5 weeks

 

You're getting close! :)

[Nicole721]

We don’t really do much on sea days.

 

It feels like we do, but we really don’t. We swim (if it’s nice out). We eat breakfast. And lunch. And tea. We peruse the shops and walk around aimlessly. Sometimes we play trivia. We nap. We just…be. Does that make sense? We delight in doing nothing (even though we’re almost never actually doing nothing).

 

So our first sea day was our only sea day. And it felt like we had a ton to cram into it even though we don’t really do all that much. There isn’t all that much to do. We just aren’t used to so little unstructured time. This was the most port intensive sea trip we’ve ever taken – all of our other cruises had at least two sea days or some late arrivals into port that gave us a morning and afternoon at sea before coming into port in the late afternoon or evening. And with the lack of days to do nothing, we suddenly felt like we had to do everything.

 

It was slightly overcast when we woke up, but we were out and going with a strong purpose. We skipped breakfast in favor of going to brunch later (we had free drink vouchers to redeem, after all!), and headed straight to the pool. The towel animals were on parade at the main pool, and the main pool allowed, well, kids, so we headed aft to the adults only area.

 

 

The pool was empty.

 

That never happens.

 

It’s a sea day. It’s nice and warm. It’s not overwhelmingly sunny, but the sun is out. And there’s no one in the adults only pool. I didn’t know what I was missing elsewhere on the ship that had everyone else occupied and I didn’t care. No splashing children, or frustratingly oblivious swimmers trying to get laps in. Just open space and freedom.

 

 

 

((And I lied – I do know where everyone else was. They were in the Lido Marketplace shoving in front of each other for dibs at hard boiled eggs bennie and saving tables with an errant flip flop. In all my trips, I’ve never seen such poor crowd control or flow in the Lido eateries. This one in particular seemed constantly busy from sunrise until late afternoon.))

[Nicole721]

Even more surprising than the pool being empty was the length of time it stayed empty for – we had it to ourselves for almost an hour and a half. And lets be clear – we weren’t up super early. We hit the pool around 9:30 am. That’s prime swimming time on most sea days. But we weren’t complaining.

 

When we’d had our fill of water time and morning sun, we headed back to the room for some quick showers and to change, and then we grabbed our free drink vouchers and headed to the dining room for brunch.

 

It was crowded when we got to the restaurant, but not overwhelmingly so. Much less crowded than the Lido Marketplace was for breakfast or lunch, but busy nonetheless. We were seated quickly at a table for three and service from there was noticeably slower. It took a long while to get our drinks and even longer for a bread basket (filled with decently good popovers, but not the delectable looking pastries I’d seen in other reviews) to arrive.

 

 

 

Most (if not all) Carnival ships have veered away from the previous rotating lunch menus in the Main Dining Rooms in favor of a singular brunch menu. And while the brunch menu has some more interesting options listed (filet mignon, for one, along with crusted french toast and huevos rancheros), I found the rotating lunch menus were better executed. All of the dishes we tried tasted incredibly generic and poorly executed in that it tasted like food produced en masse (which…it is). A double chocolate brownie with salted caramel sauce sounds more intriguing than an ice cream sundae, except the brownie was hard as a rock and the salted caramel sauce tasted like it came out of a foil packet, whereas that ice cream sundae was served with a fresh strawberry sauce and macarons.

 

There were standouts, though. Mom thought the lox platter was fantastic and the mustard potatoes with my steak and eggs were superb (though I was befuddled as to why my dish was also served with curly fries – I didn’t understand the double serving of potatoes, though both were certainly tasty). The cheesecake was also particularly tasty, with a nice, dense texture and a perfectly crumbly crust.

 

Bagel Breakfast

 

Fresh Fruit Platter with Cottage Cheese

[Nicole721]

Eggs Benedict

 

Funniest French Toast

 

Steak-n-Eggs

 

 

[Nicole721]

Double Chocolate Brownie

 

Caramelized Cheesecake

[Nicole721]

After such a heavy breakfast…lunch…brunch?...we needed to move, so we took a walk around the promenade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We hit up the shops, too.

 

[Nicole721]

We stopped back at the room to change before we headed up to Serenity to lay out for a bit and noticed our Platinum treats had arrived. And while they were a nice array, one of our strawberries was molded.

 

 

[Nicole721]

Serenity (Carnival’s adult’s-only sanctuary) was busy when we got up there, but not so busy that we couldn’t find some sun beds. Stephanie noticed a couple on the bed next to ours chewing bar fruit and spitting all the peels out on the bed and it kind of grossed us out. There was a lot of trash and filth around the deck and I wasn’t sure if it wasn’t getting enough upkeep, or if the staff just couldn’t keep up with the trashy habits of some of our fellow passengers.

 

 

 

 

After some sun, we were in need of some naps (we had a lot of exploring to do in the next four days!), and on our way back to the room, we passed by a very crowded main pool. Definitely a lot of action out there in the afternoon if that’s what you’re looking for, but Serenity is probably a better area if you’re in search of some peace.

 

[Nicole721]

And speaking of peace, mine was found in a good nap. Mom woke me up after a couple of hours for tea time. We weren’t really hungry after such a heavy brunch earlier, but since we only had one tea time this cruise, we made room for some chamomile tea and macarons.

 

 

 

 

[Nicole721]

After tea, we headed back to the room to barter over counter space to get ready for formal night. I called last so I spent some quality time on the balcony while Stephanie and Mom got glammed up.

 

 

We skipped the Captain’s Celebration (a dollar off drinks isn’t as fun as free drinks) but headed out to the Promenade to people watch. People watching is fun on any day but even more fun on formal night. Formal night people watching is the best. And our fellow cruisers brought out their best – we saw many formal gowns (many of which seemed like quincenera gowns to me, which was unsurprising with the San Juan homeport).