AdSimba Does the Impossible Again, and it's Going to be Wonder-ful!

Day 1 Flying into Seattle
5/18/2018

The adventure begins!

Two days before this trip, I got this fortune:
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I was about to leave on a rather luxurious vacation, I mocked it on Facebook, but in the end it proved sage advice.

My poor FIL didn't live with us, or even think of living with us until after this trip had been reserved paid for and it was too late to add him to our group (or cabin only slept 3), but he did ride with us to the nearest major airport (3 hours) and drive the car back for us. To thank him we took him out to a pretty nice lunch at Tucanos, a Brazilian grill.

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We drove to the airport thereafter and he went back home, to help someone set up chairs for a funeral of a person he's never met. (My FIL is a really good guy).

We waited in the airport for our neighbors to show up and played tiny Uno

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with luck that only my neighbor can muster, she and her people showed up 5 minutes before boarding.

When we got to Seattle, I was very confident from everything I had learned about Uber and Lyft (I've ridden in a couple before this but never hired or paid for one) I opened the app that I had previously downloaded and promptly was unable to submit a payment :headache:

We spent 20 minutes trying to use the apps with every payment source that we could think of. Eventually CL downloaded the apps on her phone, and they worked the first time.

It turned out that 6 people and their luggage would not fit in one Uber XL :scared:

We ended up needing to book 2 cars costing us $140 (whoever said Uber was a good deal??)
CL and I sent everyone else ahead of us, and waited for a second car, while we waited (and our driver stopped for gas) we discovered that the phone auto corrected the addresses to somewhere about 2 blocks away :sad2:. My neighbor tried to get into the wrong house!!! :scared1: however the people who lived there were incredibly kind, and helped move the luggage the few blocks to our place.

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We figured it all out by about 6pm, made it into our beautiful AirBnb and rushed to Pikes Place!

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Which is apparently closed by 5 on Fridays...

I was fairly disappointed because there was a chowder house that served smoked salmon and cream cheese chowder (I had never heard of such a thing) and I was eager to try it. Unfortunately, the parent company of the chowder house is open till 9, somewhere else (Pikes Place Chowder, which one might presume is in Pikes Place)

We did find some interesting pigs around the market place though...

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We ended up giving in and eating at the only place we saw open: The Athenian Seafood Restaurant and Bar

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This is my neighbor and her daughter btw. Her mother is with us also but off camera.

The view we were placed by did wonders to quell my disappointment.

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hmm, looking the other direction was much more open water, but I guess I don't have a picture of that... by the time we finished eating the Ferris Wheel was lit up. ::yes::

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My neighbor's family and C went on the wheel and we watched from the ground :littleangel:

Then we went inside the building next door, they had bathrooms, and a disconcertingly fast carousel.


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My neighbor's mom wanted to see the kids ride it so she paid :laughing:. At this point it was after 10 and we had a big day planned for Saturday. We got another Uber (now up to more than $200 in Uber fees for the day) and wen't to bed
 


sorry, this report will probably come along slowly, as I keep forgetting to get my wife's photos until I can't, and I should probably edit those photos too....
 
Ok so I got my wife's photos but I still need my neighbor's, but we didn't spend the second day with her so here goes:
 
Day Two: Seattle's international District

5/19/2018


Yea Culture!

Look Idaho, you're a good place, but you don't really meet all of my needs all the time and I guess what I'm saying is... if this is going to work for us we need this to be an open relationship:rolleyes1.

Being from California, my wife (CL) and I really thrive on a multicultural community. Idaho does not provide that. It does however provide low crime, kind neighbors and low cost of living with what we consider a beautiful landscape. This being the case, every 3-4 months we make a multi hour trek to Salt Lake City to experience other cultures and shop at the Asian grocery store. Every time we go I buy something new that we don't quite know what is and/or haven't tried before and take it home to try later.

about 9 months ago we found this:

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Little sheep brand hot pot base. (I now know that it is bone, or marrow flavored) I've heard of shabu shabu, and kind of understood what was involved so we bought what did turn out to be the right ingredients (or enough of them to make a good meal) My (at the time) 8 YO C declared that it was his favorite food (after sushi)! Since then we've bought it multiple times to bring back. I decided to look online to see if it could be bough more cheaply in multi packs, it can't, but I did find that there was an actual restaurant and this is it's home version!!! Then it turned out that the Seattle location was literally around the corner from our big planned activity, the Seattle Pinball Museum. It was kismet:worship:.

We didn't tell C in advance but he was very excited to find out when we got there.

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$80 seemed a bit steep for 3 people to get all you can eat soup, but this chance is unlikely to happen again.

They start you with a base of your choice (hot, mild or tomato or a combination pot with two sides) we chose mild.

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Then they give you a menu of things to cook in the soup base

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You are allowed to get up to 3 rounds which is technically not the same as all you can eat, but well get to that in a second.


As you can see the servings look fairy small (like 10 deli meat thin slices of beef or lamb) and it didn't seem like much for three people to share, but probably after 3 rounds we'd be more than good and there are a lot of things to choose from, I think we ordered about 2/3 of the menu for round one.

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yeah, apparently they send out that may pieces for each person... also (I don't have a photo sorry) this was only about 2/3 of round 1, when we cleared off enough room from the side car they attached to the table to hold all of the food, they refilled it with the rest of that round :scared:

I'm happy to report that we loved nearly everything on the menu, except the baby squid that C had to try :jester:

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The best thing they had was probably the kourobuta pork, which was like an alternate universe bacon, If I could only have one thing there it would have been that, we never made it to Japadog in Vancouver (who also had a little sheep) but their hot dogs are made from this kind of pork, so would probably be worth killing for.

Afterwards, somewhat uncomfortably full (a trend in the following reports) we walked around the corner (and across the street) to The Seattle Pinball Museum...

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Where, for $15 per person, you can buy unlimited game play on all 30~ pinball machines and 10 or so old school arcade games until you leave.

I was particularly excited to find this one!:

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An old Doctor Who Pinball machine. Unfortunately it turned out to be less than super fun, but it was really neat to see it.

My favorite machines for game play were strangely all singer/band themed (Elton John, KISS, etc...)

I don't know how long we played for but eventually we decided it was time to move on and check out some of the local international shops... after a rest at the park, again around the corner (very convenient Seattle).

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This park had amazing design and architecture (which is why I was intentionally drawn to it) then I realized that there were a decent number of giant games to play Including Jenga! so C and I went to watch a match while CL rested in the pavilion.

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It was amazing to be a part of a city community that only seems to exist on Sesame street. This is a screen shot from a video I took of a random White lady playing against an older Black man. Nobody cared about race and they trash talked each other like the old chess playing men in movies featuring Central park. It was just random fun for the sake of it. (there was a giant chess board but I guess I didn't get a picture of it.

I did photo ping pong though

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eventually CL came over to watch C and I play Jenga ourselves

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While we did a few old men started commenting on the game, always favoring C (as they should!) and offering advice. Every once in a while one would tell the other to be quiet and let him play, while they gently trash talked my moves and praised his :thumbsup2.

Eventually I did win though, but it was such a great environment that C didn't mind at all.

I rushed to get a photo of the International District gate and then it was time to pick up dinner to take back to the apparent to share with our neighbors.

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There is only one good Chinese place near where we live (but maybe 6 awful ones) and it usually has terrible service. And in Idaho it is understood that if you order Chinese BBQ pork it comes dry, and cold from a fridge and is served with ketchup and untoasted sesame seeds :crazy2: .

Needless to say we were thrilled for the opportunity to have the good stuff. Again around the corner (actually just down the street) we found Kau Kau on Yelp with great reviews.

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It was as good as we'd hoped, I just wish I had known that I could take the leftovers on the train the next day instead of throwing them away :sad2:.

We watched the new Pete's Dragon with my neighbor's family while they wished it could be good without being sad all the time and got to bed as soon as we could because it was going to be an early morning...
 
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ok, sorry for the absence, I finally got my neighbors pictures, and she only took about 50 photos all week!! a bit anticlimactic but now I know what I have and don't, the next post will be really short, sorry, but it's a travel day so....
 
The adventure continues:

Day Three: Taking the Amtrak from Seattle to Vancouver

5/20/2018

Finally get to use the passports!

Good thing we were heading on an adventure, otherwise I don't think it would have gone as smoothly to get 6 people out of a house with one bathroom by 6:30am

Having learned our lesson we took two Ubers to King Street Station which was surprisingly beautiful

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We got there just in time, a lot of people showed up right behind us, we just strolled through for the most part and met a few of our fellow cruisers. At this point it occurred to me that we were stepping into a Disney Channel movie, I had mixed feelings about this, some are good, but they are all really cheesy and tropey. I had a hard time keeping myself from identifying people as character types, but I digress...

Anyhow, it took about an hour of waiting to get out onto the train platform

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We quickly got into our seats and began our 4 hour trek to Canada

Before we got out of Seattle, we saw this Norwegian boat in it's berth

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Even though it wasn't our boat, we were all very energised at the sight of it.

The trip was almost as long as it would be to take a car (except that customs was much faster) but the scenery was beautiful and it was nice to be able to get up and walk around.

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We took the skytrain to the burrard station and after about 15 minutes of trying to figure out GPS on the phone without internet we found ourselves two blocks from the Days Inn downtown, our hotel.

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Our room was tiny but totally adequate. As a bonus, after the exchange rate it was the best price I've seen for the hotel. Sorry and thank you, Canadian exchange rate.

After getting situated, we all agreed that we were famished. So, disappointed that the Japadog truck was not where Yelp said it would be we found our way to a rather large food court underground at Canada Place.

My family chose FatBurger, which was still spendy (around $35) after the exchange rate, but they were excellent burgers.

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Afterwords I found the public bathroom nightmares are made of:

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I waited until everyone was out of the bathroom to take a photo, but this stall door is short enough for people of average height to see over.

We had a facebook cruise group meetup that night at the port, but currently I can't find any photos of that.

It was really fun to meet people in person that we've only talked to online.

We made an early night of it, our time frames were very out of whack and I ended up waking at 5am the next day anyhow, but more on that later.
 
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Following along! I'm from the PNW myself. (Seattle area, now eastern WA) I loved your Disneyland trip report and am looking forward to reading about your adventures! I've always wanted to take an Alaskan cruise.
 
We were thinking of flying to Seattle instead of Vancouver for our Alaska cruise next year, but 4 hours on the train gives me pause with 2 little guys. Might have to save Seattle for a different trip!
 
Day Four: "I live here now" or "Oh my goodness! you're AdSimba!"

5/21/2018


Sleeping on vacation is not my strong suite. It's a talent that I wish I could develop, but alas, I woke up at about 5am Vancouver time and being in the hotel I had wifi and looked at what the Facebook group was upto.

One couple from England had just mentioned that they were going to walk down to the dock and watch the boat come in. Everyone else in my room was out cold so, completely unlike myself I said I would join them.

Since our hotel was only about 3 blocks from the port it was an easy stroll, I took a few photos of downtown without people

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Before long I made it to the port

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This is where the boat would dock, but since I was too early I walked around the are we would need to go to board later this morning

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I couldn't actually get very far... oh well upon my emergence to the topside I ran into the couple who were lovely. I didn't take any photos of them at the time, but this is them

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It was very easy to remember their surname as it was two letters off from a Harry Potter characters name. Their son has an important position on the boat and as such they got to ride for free, the catch was though, that they didn't even know where they would be sleeping until after the muster drill.

Anyway we enjoyed one another's company as we watched the ship sail into port

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After it had been in the port for 20 minutes or so and we had taken enough looks and photos they invited me to join then for breakfast. it was about 6:30. In another uncharacteristic move, I again said yes (I may be a bit of a slave to the english accent).

we went to Scoozi's a cafe between my hotel and the port and I ordered something very simple, I though, since we would be gorging for the next week. I just asked for rice pudding with fruit. I asked to have no raisins, and they told me that was impossible, so I determined to soldier through them.

This is what came

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as much as I like to try new things, yesterday's cold and congealed rice pudding flipped upside down did not thrill me.

Fortunately I was absolutely wrong, even with the raisins it was quite pleasant, somewhat like a panna cotta.

When breakfast ended I realized that it was actually not too early anymore... oops, I rushed back to the hotel where CL was awake and annoyed that I didn't leave a note....

While she got ready for the day I joined another couple in the restaurant in the basement S and P, I didn't eat this time, but we met online before the trip and set up dining together with them every night. S has a very assertive personality while P is rather passive, but they seem to have a great relationship. And most importantly they love Disney!

Finally, 10 o clock rolled around and it was time to get to the dock!

The 8 of us made a motley crew of people with large luggage, the three blocks seemed much longer this time, lol.

Before we knew it porters had taken all of our luggage and we found our way to a long line, then we were told that there was a different longer line for first time cruisers

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it felt like forever, but really was probably closer to 25 minutes till we got to the front

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almost like a Disney customs service

about 40 minutes and 4 lines later we found ourselves outside of the ship

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It was nearly time for our cruise group meetup

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This experience was surreal, we had name tags and I would walk up to people in the group that I had gotten to know online, their eyes would light up and they would exclaim "YOUR'E ADSIMBA!!!??!?! Thank you so much!!" (or something like that) I've never been a celebrity like that before, even during the week sometimes people would stop me in the hall with the same thing. the weird thing is, for at least the last 6 months before the trip my avatar in facebook was this picture of Remy:

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I know that my fame was not earned but I was credited with the Facebook group being so active loving and engaging. When I got home and people asked what the best part of the trip was it was hard to relate that honestly it was the showers of love and appreciation for a week from almost random people all the time.

In deference to all of you experienced cruisers who say to go to Tritons for this meal, we rushed to Cabanas for lunch before it closed where it was too crazy to even think of taking any photos.

Still I had finally made it to the ship, a quest 3 years in the making. I was thrilled to find grilled lamb with mint jelly and my child began drinking horrendous quantities of soda.

Both my son (9) and my neighbor's daughter (12 on the next day) insisted that they could not leave their backpacks with porters at the front desk, but had no need for them as soon as lunch was over and they ran off to explore the ship together. Fortunately we found the kids in time for muster drill

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Unfortunately for CL, but fortunately for me, CL had a knee injury about 2 weeks before our trip, this let us sit when others had to stand and get special privileges to accommodate her needs.

We got out of the muster drill about 5 minutes before everyone else and I was able to secure a covered table for our party to enjoy it. As I rushed to the table, full of gratitude and excitement, a thought occurred to me, I live her now, this is my reality for a week.

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My child began his pizza addiction right away (yes shortly after lunch and before dinner) this is his first of dozens of slices on the ship. At home he usually doesn't eat almost anything. Personally I thought that the Pinocchio Pizza was kinda bad, but I'm glad he was happy.

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The sail away party was good, lots of energy but my neighbors were on cloud 9, this is why we brought them with us, they were so excited and shouting along with the music. I don't think I could enjoy sail away without them.

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We headed back to our room to wait for dinner and enjoyed our view from deck 2

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Dinner was at Tritons (which I have no pictures of :sad:, actually I failed to take pictures of almost every meal)

C finally tried the escargot, which he assessed as "fine" and truthfully I felt the same way, I ate the whole tray but I probably wouldn't order it again. Still I'm glad he can tell people he's eaten snails.

For dinner, between C and I we tried:

The Duck Confit: we found it dry and unplesant
Iced Lobster and Jumbo Shrimp: easily the biggest shrimp we had ever seen, can't go wrong
Escargot: as I said fine, but I found it more fun to talk about than eat

Oven Baked Salmon Royale: I don't remember what this was like
Crispy Roasted duck breast: This was excellent and everything the confit was not, even the parsnips it came with were excellent.
Roasted Rack of lamb: not surprisingly a much better cut of lamb than at lunch perfectly cooked
Chateaubriand flank steak: This is where my wife's addiction to bernese sauce with beef started (a surprising first for us)

and for dessert at the behest of our server Nathan:

Grand marnier souflee: a good souflee, but I couldn't detect much flavor, I wouldn't get it again
and the
Tahitian Vanilla Creme Brule: I'm a sucker for Creme brule and this wasn't too cold the way most seem to be

Having no need to see the Beverly Bells (a variety show) we headed back to our room to find and correctly put away all of the things our room steward hid when he made our bed up (we left piles of clothing on the bed in our rush to go to dinner on time)
 
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Looking forward to hearing your assessment of deck 2. We are booked on deck 2 to Alaska next year.

Since everything is reachable by elevators deck 2 didn't seem to be at all inconvenient, but I guess I'd need to stay on deck 8 for a true comparison. The one flight of stairs to after hours or 2 of the restaurants felt incidental, getting to the pool deck or the theaters would have been the same as if we were anywhere else. But we loved being so close to the water.

The one reason we wished for a verandah was that we were always too warm. Probably because we live in the north and are used to colder climates, so the hallways (and our room) always seemed stifling to us. By comparison, we overheard a woman who said she was from Mississippi and she was never able to get warm so YVVM.

So there you have it, except for the chance to open a window to cool off the room, we were thrilled with our room placement. Good luck =)
 
May I ask how much was Amtrak? We are toying with the idea of doing a train ride also.
 
Day Five: "You said this was a smooth cruise"

5/22/2018

Apparently too distracted to take any photos!:guilty:

Sorry, I was sure we took photos this day, but I can't find a single one, I'm sure we were all too taken in with everything to think of it (gotta see everything, eat everything, do everything right now!) :teeth:

I know that I spent some time tidying up the room, finding the things that mousekeeping "hid" from us. :rolleyes1

Oddly, as I look at the Voyage Navigator, I can't see a single thing that we did! we had nothing planned for this day and nothing rings a bell, but I promise that we were very busy all day! I know there was a lot of exploring and looking at the gift shops...

Anyway for dinner that night we were at Animator's Palate

For dinner, between CL and I we tried:

The Smoked Salmon Tartar: which I loved CL not so much
The Sliced Serrano Ham: Which neither of us enjoyed, but I am sure was excellent quality
The Black Truffle Pasta Purseittes: Which I am sorry again to say that we both just found to be fine, but nothing special. :scared: (sorry to all of the fans out there)

The Grilled Tuna Steak: Which our son said was the best thing on the boat, but despite asking was not able to get again on the trip.
The Ginger Wasabi Dusted Angus Beef Tenderloin: Also excellent, especially with the wasabi mashed potatoes
The Jumbo Shrimp Salad: good but nothing special

For desert we tried:

The Crunchy Walnut cake: I liked it CL did not (not a fan of walnuts)
The Chocolate Fudge Cheesecake: mediocre cheese cake in our opinion, not bad, but no need to finish it
The Cookies and Cream Sundae: one of the few times we had hard scoop on on the ship
The Warm Sticky Date Pudding, I didn't really like it but CL loved it
and The Lemon Icebox pie: which tasted more of gelatin and stabilizers more than lemon :sad:(this was a common theme with fun sounding pies, few tasted strongly of what the main item was supposed to be)

After dinner the boat got really rocky but while laying in the bed it was kinda nice, when walking it was less so. fortunately we were mid ship and had the least of it. By morning it was all over until our last sea day.

We also did room service this night, I got the Steak Sandwich (because obviously I hadn't eaten enough) it tasted good, but there was a big vein of gristle through the middle....



 
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Day Six: Endicott Arm Day

5/23/2018

Palo at last!

Our Palo time was 10am, first seating of the day.

But first I needed to rush to be ready for a picture with a couple of my favorite guys:

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See, I had to wear my Chip and Dale shirt to be with them! but the meet and greet was at 9, I had to rush back to our room to get gussied up for Palo.

at 10:03 we were by far the last ones there, here's a couple pictures of our brunch group

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Looking at these photos you might not think that they were in the same room, but I assure you, it is the private dining space.

Our meal was delicious, but not out of this world. it was like a combination of all of the best foods from the MDR's in one place. As much as we loved it, I don't think that we'll book a Palo brunch again (though if it were to be magically available in my home town, I might pay $70-$100 per person for the same meal). We had so many good things that it was hard to exceed the high bar the rest of the ship set.

Still, it was beautiful and wonderful:

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For our entrees (because this was obviously not enough food) I got the Veal Saltimbocca and the Artichoke Ravioli, and CL got a mickey waffle which she agonized over because it was what she really wanted but wasn't a very fancy food, then she felt even worse when she asked for plain maple syrup because the apple cinnamon sauce was too strong for her taste. I thought that the veal was so-so, since eating it, I have heard other reviews that it was less than hoped for, still with all of the other amazing things to eat, not feeling like finishing something large was not a problem, or even really a disappointment. The ravioli were equally lackluster.

One of the greatest things was that I annoyingly asked for Strawberry Soup, which as far as I know has been discontinued for a few years, nearly everyone at the table echoed my request, which graciously was granted.

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as we wrapped up our meal a few of us celebrating special occasions were singled out with edible greetings, this was ours:

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I know it's silly, but these little touches still make you feel really special, it's why we love Disney!
it was close to 12:30 when we got done with our meal, we were already in the fiord!

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We quickly went to our room to change (I was always too warm on the boat, perhaps because we are from the north) and set to the top deck to watch the view.

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While we were looking at vista's and seals, a ships officer came up to me concerned (I was wearing the same shorts, flip flops and t-shirt from the picture with Chip and Dale) he was from a tropical island and was freezing as much as most of the other people on the ship, who were wearing blankets over puffy jackets. I explained that where I lived that the outside temperature was still not as warm as the hallways on the ship, he walked away looking a little confused.

I proceeded to get my first Ice cream cone, clearly remiss in my efforts to eat everything as this was our third day on the boat. I was very excited as it was Mango Strawberry and I had high hopes.

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Unfortunately I thought that the mango tasted like lighter banana and the strawberry was so-so. Fear not, I ate a few dozen cones throughout the week, but not "mango" ones.


We eventually went back and rested in our room while watching the bridge view camera on the television, when it was almost time to get to the glacier we went back to the top deck, they played a fanfare on the speaker system as we rounded the last bend

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Trust Disney to milk every ounce of epicness out of a moment. (I'm sure that's a word)

Like the rest of the cattle, we all moved to the front of the ship for a better view, we weren't disapointed

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It's funny, those dark lines almost look like tire tracks on a snowy driveway, but the little (appearing) cruiser out there shows that those tracks are at least 40 feet wide

Dinner was at Tiana's place, and once again... no photos sorry folks...

We had the:

Boudin Sausage Fritters: which were fine but more bready than meaty
Prince Naveen’s Cajun Charcuterie Board: once again too salty for our palates
Sautéed Gulf Shrimp and Grits: This is the first time in my life that I enjoyed grits, I will absolutely get this again
Ahi Tuna Tartare: Clearly I have a thing for under cooked fish. This was excellent as well

Eudora’s Artichoke Ravioli: I think these were the exact same as from palo, still mehh
Cajun Spiced Sea Bass: Spectacularly prepared, my neighbor said it was one of the best things on the ship
Roasted Creole Half Chicken: This was good, but really just chicken, (listed as coming with Toasted Corn, Pecan Bread Pudding, Buttered Chard and Chicken Jus) the bread pudding, I was surprised to find was made with toasted corn and pecans, I expected those to be seperate things. Unfortunately my lack of enjoyment for things with corn in them (but not corn itself) extended to this dish.
Big Daddy’s Roasted Prime-Rib of Beef: a great piece of Beef, but nothing out of the ordinary.

for dessert we had everything on the menu

Tiana’s Buttermilk Beignets: as good as everyone says they are
Chocolate Doberge Gateau: I enjoyed this CL did not, it was rich and dark.
Mama Odie’s White Chocolate Bread Pudding: a shocking favorite of the night
New Orleans Bananas Foster Sundae: a suprining exception to my general distaste for banana flavored foods (except bananas) still I only had one or two bites of this (there was a lot of food at our table).
Southern Style Pecan Nut Tart: hard, not like the pecan pie I was hoping for, it's served with half of it standing on it's side.
Lemon Raspberry Mousse Bombe: If I remember correctly this didn't really taste like lemons, but the raspberries were excellent.

Seriously, what the heck, I know that the portions aren't usually that big, and we didn't finish almost anything between us, but wow, that's a lot of food for two people.

That night was the Frozen musical spectacular, which was indeed, very spectacular. I've seen far more frozen themed things and videos than I would ever like to see again, but this show was amazing and I loved it. It almost made the exact same story new again with the amazing storytelling of the actors. I will certainly watch it again.

After we got out of the show we were greeted with one of the most amazing sunsets that I've ever seen.

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We did room service again before bed, and I learned that the bacon that I don't really like at breakfast is great for a BLT.


Next time, we actually leave the ship!


 
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Day Six again: I found more photos of Endicott arm day!

5/23/2018

Seriously so pretty!

First of all a couple more shots I took that day:

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The water really was that beautiful!

I also forgot that this was the day we had our sock exchange! A member of our Facebook group suggested it and many people were interested (I was shocked at how many men participated)

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we all brought an individually wrapped pair of socks and everyone picked one that wasn't the one they brought. it really was fun and look at all of these fun socks!

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Additionally I wanted to share some of the best photos from others in our group: with vague permissions

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The National Geographic boat got in front of us at the glacier and stopped. Most of these photos were taken by someone who did the endicott arm excursion (to me it looks like it may have been worth it from the photos)

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and finally the picture everyone wants to see, yes even more than a whale:

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The glacier calving.

Ok enjoy, and hopefully this was an ok substitute for getting through the next day today...

 

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