Slept relatively well. But alarm woke me up at 07:00. Blogged yesterday and attempted to get through all the food and drink we'd somehow accumulated during the last couple of days.
Just before 09:00 we headed across the road to catch the bus into town. But because I have no idea how Tampa buses work, and because the driver didn't bother to ask, he made me pay $4 for a $2 ticket. I was PISSED. Not only did I have to pay an extra two dollars I didn't need to, but I WASTED two of my hoarded dollar bills I reserve for the ridiculous tipping nonsense they have in this country.
Anyways. Got to the port and walked up and paid them a dollar each to staple our bag labels on and put them on a trolley. I mean seriously? WTF is with the ridiculousness of tipping in this country?? Fills me with rage.
Carnival Pride at Tampa Bay Port
Anyways. Security and checkin was painless enough. I drank the contents of my "refillable" water bottle, so they wouldn't take it off me. Onto the ship around 10:45. Which is pretty early. Yay for travelling with a platinum class cruiser :)
Me about to board the Carnival Pride!
So we had a couple of hours to kill, so the priority was to take as may photos of the public areas of the ship as I could. Just because :) Sadly the library has about twenty books in it all up, and there's one 500 piece jigsaw. So lame. I miss the Queen Mary 2.
David on the putt putt golf course on Carnival Pride
Then we went and had some lunch. I swear David knows about half the people in the ship. Everywhere we went he ran into people he knew.
I had lunch from the carvery bar, which today had roast beef, which was nice enough.
Around 14:00 we went to our room. They hadn't split up the beds so we poked them about that. Sadly the "french doors" don't actually open anymore, they're just floor to ceiling windows. Which is super disappointing. Also annoying because anyone on the promenade deck can see straight into our room unless the blind is fully closed. They should have covered up the bottom of the glass when they were sealing up the doors. At least the GPS works in the room which is a relief. Although I never got to download and reset it before we set sail.
A bit before our 16:00 departure we went up the front above the bridge to watch the sailaway. So that was pretty cool.
Jolly Roger flag and other flags on the Jose Gasparilla Pirate Ship
American Victory
Carnival Pride about to cast off
Carnival Pride casting off
Tampa Bay Port
Downtown Tampa
Jose Gasparilla Pirate Ship
The Florida Aquarium, American Victory and Jose Gasparilla Pirate Ship
P735 and Tampa
View along the Garrison Channel
Downtown Tampa
Decorated fuel storage tank
Ships and drydocks in Tampa
US Coast Guard 1108
View back along the channel to Tampa
View back along the channel past the Peter O Knight Airport
Bow of Carnival Pride
Pelican in Tampa
I went back to the room and washed a few things. Unlike Cunard ships where washing is free, here you have to pay like three dollars for washing machine, three dollars for some detergent, and three dollars for the dryer. Stoopidly expensive. Ridiculous.
This is how I did my washing for the first few days (later I was able to squeeze my stuff into David's free washes (yayy for plantinum class!))
After we'd taken some photos passing under the bridge at St Petersburg we went to dinner.
Sunshine Skyway Bridge
Carnival Pride approaching the Sunshine Skyway Bridge
About to pass under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge
Passing under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge
Carnival Pride's funnel just clearing the Sunshine Skyway Bridge
Sunshine Skyway Bridge
Pilot boat approaching Carnival Pride
Passing the Egmont Key Lighthouse at the edge of Tampa Bay
Sunset from the Carnival Pride
It's all any time dining on this cruise, but we didn't end up sitting with anyone David knew, in fact we had a table of four to ourselves. I had strawberry bisque for entree, brisket for dinner, and chocolate lava cake for dessert. ** Edit: so what they actually meant by "any time dining" is any seat dining - that is, we didn't have a set table every night. Not making this clear caused days of confusion **
David and his two strawberry bisque entrees
Then back to the room to download photos while David wandered off to spa and comedy club and whatever.
Emerald Trio violin trio in the Atrium Bar
Some other notes:
* The weather was cold and windy today, and we can definitely feel the motion of the ship tonight. Nothing like the force 9 gales on our transatlantic crossing though :)
* I have various bruises from the rides at Busch Gardens. Whoops.
* Notifications on my phone work, even though I'm only using the generic ship wifi, with no internet plan. So I can get Google Chat notifications, although can't go into the app and see them, or send any. I also found out that iMessages works, so I can chat to people on iMessage which is pretty handy. Nice to have a connection to the outside world. Pity Stu has an android.
* The room only has two American style power outlets on the desk, plus the one in the bathroom that only works when the light is on. David has his six port USB charger taking one of those which is super handy. But all the camera batteries and the laptop need power as well. Not so bad on sea days when we can stagger stuff, but is going to be annoying coming home from port days and needing to charge up all the batteries at once. There's two power points behind the lights in the bed, but they're both European style. Kicking myself I didn't bring a Euro adapter so we could have extra stuff going at once. I asked about borrowing a power board, but they said they don't have any.
* David likes the temperature on "arctic" which suits me just fine. Still not cold enough to be able to use the doona though.
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