Cruise: Food

The average cruiser gains seven pounds on a cruise. Awesome.

Chase and I have been trying to work out and sort of watch what we eat for months. I, especially, hit the workouts hard the week or two before the cruise. If you know me, I say this ALL THE TIME, but I'm going to say it again: I have the best job in the whole world. One of the amazing perks that leaves me no excuse for not being fit is that the house has a fully-equipped gym room. Elliptical, treadmill, pull-up bar/TRX system, weights, TV, audio system...the works. Chase and I even tried to work out on sea days (I think we ended up getting in three workouts...Chase might've done one more than I did). Per my mom's tip, we took the stairs everywhere (my mom, btw, is the only person you'll ever meet who loses weight when she goes on a cruise...she's amazing!). 

All of that matters only to say that we ate, and we ate big. I mean big...

When Chase and I are at home, we love to eat. There are a few places that we frequent (Babe's Chicken, Kelly's Eastside, Sauced Wings 'n More, Nico's Tex-Mex Cantina), but we love to try new places. It's a perfect date if we can try a new restaurant for dinner and end with a local coffee shop. Perfect. Needless to say, we were excited about trying all the food on the ship. There is so much variety that we didn't get bored, and we had fun finding the hidden gems.

Lobster night in the main dining room was fantastic. I thought it was cooked better than some of the fine dining restaurants I've visited.

We normally split our meals. It's economical and better for our waistlines. On the cruise, if we couldn't decide, our waiter would always say, "Try both." So we did. 

Soup as our first appetizer.

Spaghetti Carbonara as our second appetizer.

Prime Rib.

Of course, with each dish, we would share. Sometimes I would trade with Chase because I liked his better. Overall, I had two complaints about our food. It was under-seasoned. To be fair, I understand that most cruisers are probably 55+. It's easy to salt your food after you taste it, but people who like their food less salty can't take the salt out. I'll give them a pass on that one. My other complaint was the gravy. You can see it in the Prime Rib picture. They put that gravy on everything. I ordered a filet one night, and they put it on my steak! If I wanted a sauce on my steak, I would ask for it. They even served this sauce with "Southern Fried Chicken" and mashed potatoes with "gravy." If you say gravy with southern fried chicken, it better be cream gravy and not the same stuff you use as sauce for your steaks!

Our steakhouse night was incredible. We ate and ate and ate some more. I wish I had taken more pictures of the food because it was breathtakingly pretty. They even made my coffee pretty...although, I think I had already taken a sip at this point.

Bar-none, the best dish I ate on the whole cruise was the lobster bisque in the steakhouse. Oh. Em. Gee. It was seriously amazing. It was creamy with huge chunks of lobster, and I ate every last bite. My entree was surf and turf: filet (of course) and lobster tail. 

The desserts really stole the show. Chase had a quattro (I think that's what they called it) of chocolate desserts. He adores chocolate, and couldn't have been happier.

I got the biggest slice of cheesecake I've ever seen. We tried to save what was left over, but it wouldn't fit in our fridge.

A few other foods were worth mentioning. In the main dining room, I didn't get a picture, but they had a barbecued brisket that was tender and perfect. Also, the chocolate melting cake with ice cream was the perfect go-to dessert. Finally, the seaside barbecue, only served at lunch on sea days, was ridiculously good. Of our sea days, we only ate it once. We would've gone back on our last sea day, but we were doing the ship tour and missed it. They had sliders, quesadillas, pulled pork tacos, four different salsas...it was all so good! I wish I had taken a picture of that as well.

Overall, I'd give the food a 7.5 out of 10. If it hadn't been for a few really stellar entrees, the score would be lower. I felt like everything we got was tasty, but many things weren't worthy of a second try. Our servers really made the vacation for us, and we were so thankful for how kind and friendly the Carnival staff was for the whole trip.

Cruise Excursions: Cozumel

When looking back through pictures for this post, I noticed that I forgot to include a picture from our second formal night! It kind of fits here because it was in between Cayman and Cozumel.

Cozumel was my favorite port day. We had our own, personal tour guide because we had to leave for our excursion at a later time than their first tour, but earlier than their second. We got to snorkel, tour a mock tequila factory (they can't actually make tequila there or it's not tequila), spend time on pristine beaches, and tour a nature preserve and light house.

Did I mention that Chase got to drive a Jeep the whole time??

We celebrated our last sail away from port with a glass of wine. That's the Allure of the Seas in the background...our next cruise???

Cruise Excursions: Grand Cayman

Excursion day two took us to Grand Cayman. We loved everything we saw there...except our tour guide. The first thing he told us when we got on the bus was that it was his tour, and if we were going to talk, he would be quiet and wait for us to finish. Then he very abruptly told us that it's not pronounced Cay-mun, but Cay-man. Now, I enjoy history, but that's not what we got. We, who were paying good money to visit Grand Cayman and take his tour, got chided for how Hollywood portrayed some banking scandal. Chase and I knew nothing about any movie or banking scandal, and we were already in Cayman. If we had a bad opinion of it, we probably wouldn't be there. I have no idea why this guy thought it necessary to convince us that the movie was wrong, and I felt like I was being lectured. Don't even get him started on the iguanas...

Now to the fun stuff. We boarded the bus and went straight to Hell...a limestone formation. It's pretty much a photo-op so you can say you've been to Hell.

Stop two was the Tortuga Rum Factory...which was pretty much a gift shop. Our third stop was the turtle farm, and oh my goodness who could not love these little guys?!

One of my few regrets about this trip is that we didn't buy some kind of waterproof cover for our real camera or a cheap, new waterproof camera. We, unfortunately, took a disposable camera that we never used on our honeymoon. These pics are not good, but they're our only ones of our swim with the sting rays, so please forgive the terrible quality. Just imagine that I put a really cool "disposable camera" filter on them, and then I'm an awesome hipster who uses Instagram...or something like that.

When we pulled up, this was the view. It's a good distance from the coast (20 min boat ride at least), but it's a sandbar. Big boats take loads of people and buckets of food out to feed the sting rays, so when new boats approach, the sting rays flock.

All those black blobs underwater are sting rays swimming toward our boat.

They felt so slimy/smooth on the bottom, but like sandpaper on the top. With all of the waves, it was hard to hold on to one because they just were lifted out of your arms.

Minus the photo bombers (hellooooo, Speedo guy!), these pics turned out as well as could be hoped with our terrible camera.

  
The sting rays were probably my favorite single activity. I really enjoyed their slippery sliminess, and it was amazing that they just swam all around us and didn't mind a bit that we were there.

Cruise Excursions: Jamaica

The question I've been asked most after our cruise is, "Would you do it again?" While this question seems simple enough, it took me several days to decide what I thought. Cruising is obviously the perfect vacation for us because I like to sit around and do nothing, and Chase likes to plan the excursions and go, go, go. We both like to eat, and cruises are great for that, too! I think that I would recommend our cruise to someone else, but I would like to go on different cruises to see what else is out there. In other words, I wouldn't go on this exact cruise again, but I would cruise Carnival again and choose the Magic if it were going somewhere else. That being said, we did Carnival excursions in two of our three destinations, and an unaffiliated tour in the third. There were perks to all of them, and I'd say we were 98% satisfied with our excursions.

Ready to go on our first shore day!

In Jamaica, we wanted to see the real Jamaica, not just a pristine beach. I visited Jamaica once in high school on a mission trip. We went to the waterfall there and saw the beach, so I was fine with not seeing that again. Chase is also an off-roading junkie, so our choice to do a 4x4 tour was easy.

People in Jamaica drive like they've lost their minds. There is a strong possibility that some outside influence could be impairing their driving abilities (more on that later). Our driver like to call them CAJ's (Crazy ___ Jamaicans). The guy who drove the tour truck behind us was one of these...

Yeah, we were definitely moving when Chase took this picture...and he didn't have to zoom in. My reaction...

But our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable, and we got to see breathtaking views!

That's our boat in the background! 

Now, for some local flavor...as our tour guide informed us, this guy in the yellow, entrepreneurial fellow that he is, is building a wacky tobacky umm...shacky. The guy next to him is smoking some. Our guide narrated this scene with the disinterested familiarity that you'd use to point out a fast food joint in suburbia...use of the word "joint" was at first accidental, then serendipitous.

We got so many amazing pictures in Jamaica!

That was a lot more than I thought it would be...more to come :)

Good Bull (Part II)

I just couldn't fit everything into one post...it was an action-packed weekend!

Per Colin and Amy's savvy suggestion, we enjoyed dinner at Fish Daddy's on Saturday. As first-timers, Chase and I had to try the hush puppies. They were delectable and perfectly complemented our margaritas (we might've celebrated National Margarita Day all weekend). 

My favorite food of the evening was the fried catfish. I normally don't love the texture of fried catfish...it can be too chewy and just boring. This. was. perfect! The strips just fell apart...all flaky and steamy. Hungry yet?

Over the years, many, many hours have been spent at our next destination: The Hoover House. Chris and Christine (and their beautiful, amazing children Madison, Landon, and Colton) are family to us. They have helped us through the best of times and the worst of times, and we could not be more thankful to God for their presence in our lives. When we've been with them, we feel closer to the Lord every time. This visit was a bittersweet time to say farewell to the home that hosted one of our wedding showers, and has seen so many of our smiles, tears, and Sunday dinners. The Hoovers are moving on to God's next big plan for them in Huntsville soon, and it's a bit like the end of an era. We're selfishly happy that we'll get to see them sometimes on our way to and from Houston every once in awhile. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this family!

It was one thirty before our heads hit our pillows to end our  first fun-filled day. The warm sunshine of Sunday morning woke us, and we had breakfast and headed back to campus for what else? MORE PICTURES!

Responding to the rumbling in our tummies, we swung by Northgate before the baseball game for some Antonio's Pizza. The pizza was perfectly unchanged, and we all approve of Northgate's new, safe look.

Temperatures were in the mid-seventies. Basking in all the gloriousness of the day, we couldn't wait to get to the ballpark! None of us had visited the newly renovated Olsen Field at Blue Bell Park, and we were stoked. 

Starkly contrasting the atmosphere in Reed Arena, the atmosphere at Olsen was unchanged (as with most good things in Aggieland). The students still heckled the pitcher by name (we got up to 10 balls in a row at one point...Aggies understand what that means). We still heard humorous, appropriately-timed responses from the press box when something unexpected happened. Most importantly, the crowd seemed engaged and hopeful for a win. The Twelfth Man was a factor at Olsen. Loved watching the game even if the Ags were outscored.

We grabbed a quick bite at Sully's on our way out (hardly worth mentioning), and spent the ride home mulling over some thought-provoking road trip questions. We couldn't have enjoyed it more! Praise the Lord for sweet friends and a place to feel at home.