Cruisin'...life on board

We cruised on the Carnival Triumph out of New Orleans. This was the ship that had a fire on board a few years ago and was stranded in the gulf with no air or hot food for a couple of days. But alas, they fixed all that and we were not impacted by any of those mishaps.

We LOVED the Triumph. The crew was fabulous. These people are all so great. Most of the workers apart from the entertainment staff are from countries like India, the Phillipines, Thailand, Singapore, etc. They work 8 months straight without a day off and then are home for two months. You may be like me and be thinking, "What about the other two months of the year?" Well, they actually work eight months, are off two and then go back to the eight months working.

We splurged and got a balcony. My other two experiences cruising I was in an inside stateroom and honestly that type room is just fine. We did enjoy the windows and balcony but for the cost difference I would take an inside room to be able to cruise again in a heartbeat.




This was when we were leaving New Orleans. They have a big fun sail away party with music and line dancing etc. It's a very festive environment as everyone is so excited to be on the way!

Mother and I had fun doing some line dancing. She's better than I am for sure!

The ship had three pools and five hot tubs. There are no lifeguards and part of your cruise agreement is that you are at your own risk basically. There is absolutely no one walking around telling kids to not run or not jump from the hot tub deck in to the pool below. It sort of caught me off guard as a school employee who is constantly saying "walk your feet" or "don't bite that sucker" :)


Here are the kids in the room. We had a king bed and the they had a couch bed and trundle.


There are always lots of things going on on the ship especially on sea days. Here the kids are playing trivia in the main lobby area.


There was an arcade on board with a cool air hockey game that let out like 20 pucks at a time...



The kids spent some time in the ship's library playing games and reading.




Of course everyone talks about all the good eats and amount of food you have at your disposal on cruises. It's true! We enjoyed sitting down and getting waited on for the most part but you can just eat from the buffet if that's your thing. We went to afternoon tea on the two sea days and enjoyed finger foods and cakes at this activity. Lothar liked the smoked salmon but most of us went for the pastries!



Mallory was very adventerous in her trying all kinds of things on the ship that she had never had. She ate mussels, rabbit, duck, frog legs, etc. We were proud of her for trying these interesting items. Again, it's all included so there's no reason not to order something out of the ordinary.



Our server was Raj and he was so great. The first night he asked our names and from then on he knew them and would use them when asking us our order each night. Such a nice touch.



This was our table, number 311, where we ate dinner each night.


Carnival ships are known as the "fun ships" and the servers dance and sing and perform a little show a couple of nights of the cruise. They sang a rendition of of 'leaving on a jet plane' the last night and it made me cry. They changed the words up and it was so touching. They were basically saying goodbye.



They get up on these tables throughout the dining room that are usually used to put the trays on when serving the plates.


Here's Paul having some fun!


Raj brought me a little cake to celebrate my birthday.


In my next post I'll talk about our special dining experience, The Chef's Table, and also our fun Cat in the Hat breakfast.

One last photo. They take pictures constantly on the ship. They actually print them all and have them on display for you to purchase. This was our embarkation picture. Embarkation is just a fancy word for gettin' on the ship'!