Carnival Magic review with pictures!!!

great pics and all but what a bout the ship, you dont even mention it:(:confused:

LOL....Paul has horns!

sat here and looked at your whole review, which i enjoyed , but still no pics of the ship:mad::D

Stacy did post some pics of her cabin and balcony early on and she is doing this in chronological order and I must say quite well. Having done this itinerary twice - it is a very port intensive trip so you are not on the ship that much and when you are in a port for 9 hours you basically want to have dinner and head to bed. She will probably post pictures of the ship and ship activities later. I love the way she is taking her time to post this this way. It gives you a chance to savor the experience, much as you would on this itinerary.

OMG!!! I have to stop reading here and tell you this is so weird!!! My DH & I also dated 8years before we got married!! And in a few day we will celebrate our 11th month:D We got married April 30th. We wanted to do the Magic's first cruise but the timing wouldn't work out. We loved our wedding date and didn't want to change it, and there was no way we could get from Oklahoma to Barcelona by the time the ship left the next day! :eek: So we chose an Alaskan cruise. AND.. Get this we also booked an aft wrap!!! We loooooved it! So now we are crusing on the Magic for our 1 year anniv, and the Magic will turn 1 year old while we are on our cruise! Crazy I know, but I has to tell you! Loving your review so glad you are doing it! You and your hubby sound like a fun couple! I hope we get to meet on a cruise someday!!

Wow this is funny...I dated my wife for 8 years and we got married on April 25th we are booked in a Aft Wrap (Our First Aft Cabin) next month it will be our 20th wedding aviversary....

Keep it coming GREAT Review. my lovely bride has always wated to go to Paris but i have had reservations..Your review really has me thinking..um maybe the 25th anniversary suprise!!!!

Couldn't agree more Grammytan! I am absolutely loving this review and all of the port pictures! It is amazing!

After our fantastic time at the winery we made our way back to the Magic. We were sad to say goodbye to Florence and Tuscany but knew that the next day would bring a new kind of beauty in the Amalfi Coast.

Once back to the ship we went to dinner. At dinner that night we were sat next to another couple. They asked us how our day was and we told them what we did. The gentlemen said “wow, you must have spent hundreds of dollars on that tour.” We told them how much we paid and the gentlemen turned white as a ghost!

We learned that night to just start saying to people when they asked how our day was that we had a lovely time and not give to many details because the gentlemen actually got mad at his wife! They had taken a carnival tour for $90 to Pisa. It was a three hour tour that consisted of 1 hour in a full bus to the Leaning Tower with no stops, 1 hour to walk around the Leaning Tower and then a 1 hour drive back to the ship. I felt really bad after that. The wife did stand up for herself and say that her husband can plan the next trip if he didn’t like what she had planned (good for her). We did tell them about cruise critic though and how helpful it can be when planning excursions. Like I said before, we definitely learned just to keep our mouths shuts from that point forward as to

not upset others.

After dinner we met our cruise buddies Courtney and Randy again for some more Comedy fun. Tonight after the comedy show we went to the Red Frog Pub for some drinks and appetizers.

If you get the chance to take the Magic the appetizers in the Red Frog Pub are so yummy and only $2.99 each for everything on the menu. There are also some great drink specials on the menu and also their own beer which was fantastic. Every night they had live music form a great guitar/singer which gave a great vibe to the place. We also noticed that this was the place that the staff hung out at night when they were off their shifts. The place was always hopping a lot’s of fun.

We also went to the piano bar this evening which was also a ton of fun.

I know some of you are wondering about the ship a bit more and hoping for some more pictures. I do have more of those when we get to our sea day. It was very hard to come back and keep taking pictures at night after such long days.

After hanging out with our cruise buddies we went back to our cabin and enjoyed some of the wine we had brought back from Florence on our deck (not sure why they didn’t take this from us when we boarded the ship but we noticed they were more lenient in Europe then when we have bought booze in the Caribbean or the Bahamas).

Here are a few pics from our deck when we got back onboard and from that evening…

View looking down the side of the ship. There are hot tubs along the side and all of the balconies actually look down onto this deck. If you are thinking of booking this ship or the dream I would highly suggest staying away from a deck 6 balcony room, you could see right into them from the lido!

Wow this is funny...I dated my wife for 8 years and we got married on April 25th we are booked in a Aft Wrap (Our First Aft Cabin) next month it will be our 20th wedding aviversary....

 

Keep it coming GREAT Review. my lovely bride has always wated to go to Paris but i have had reservations..Your review really has me thinking..um maybe the 25th anniversary suprise!!!!

You SO should go!!! I think a lot of people think that the French are rude but thy SO aren’t. When you hear of people not liking it there it is probably because they were rude and were treated that way in return. We tried to always say hello in French and were gracious when speaking to the locals and couldn't have gotten treated any better while we were there.

They just want to be respected in their own country just like we do here in ours. A great example is when we were at a restaurant and our waiter was very pleasant and gracious with us. He spoke English and helped us with the menu. We made sure to say Merci (thank you) as much as possible.

There was a couple a few tablse away that were SO rude and almost yelling at the waiter like he was stupid. Tthe waiter spoke only in French and acted as if he knew no English with them. That just proved to us it was the manner at which you present yourself that makes the difference.

Anyway, that was a really long explanation but I think you would enjoy it more then you realize, just go prepared and practice a few key words before you go.

Happy 20th anniversary and I hope you have a great time in the aft wrap cabin, we did!!!!!!

Day 8 and we were going to be exploring the Amalfi Coast this day. I have to say that I was not as excited about this day as I was about the rest of them. Boy was I wrong!!!! This turned out to be my favorite day and I found the place in Italy I would go back to in a heartbeat!

We started this day with breakfast up on the Lido deck this day. We were kind of sick of cereal and danishes and thought a hot breakfast would be great. My favorite thing was the berry stuffed French toast, SO YUMMY!

After breakfast we got off the ship and found our tour guide waiting for us and met up with our same tour buddies. By now we had all gotten to know each other fairly well and it was really great touring with them. Cody and Paul were like old Pals and the rest of us Ladies were having so much fun together. Tanner and Ty also were great additions and made everything exciting and fun.

Our driver’s name today was Diego. We found out immediately that he was an avid fan of American movies and a proud father of two beautiful children. When we got into the Sprinter he confirmed our plans for the day. Originally we had planned on stopping at Pompeii first and then heading to the Amalfi Coast. After a little deliberating we decided we were all kind of tired of looking at artifacts and in museums and that a day just shopping and walking through the area would be a better way to spend the day. We also wanted to hit a limoncello factory at some point.

Diego agreed that was a fine idea and assured us that he would take care of us that day. We were about to pull away and Diego said he almost forgot something and pulled out a bottle of limoncello he had brought for us to congratulate us on our honeymoon! We decided to save it for the ride home being it was still 8:00am in the morning.

So we were on our way to the beautiful coast of Amalfi! Along the way we got a few shots of Mount Vesuvius…

As we drove Deigo said that he would be taking us to three different places. The first would be Sorrento, the home of limoncello. The second would be Positano, one of the more famous places in Italy and featured in many movies. The last would be the town of Amalfi which the entire coast is named after.

Diego also said that there would be many places to stop along the way for some great pictures opportunities and that the first one was just ahead.

Here are some pics from the first bluff we stopped on. It was overlooking some of the beach resorts and the bay looking onto Mt. Vesuvius...

Our tour group...

Paul and me in the sprinter...

I am LOVING this review! We did the inaugural Magic out of Venice and are going back on the Breeze this Oct. I've booked several tours with RIL (we took them twice last time) and I will agree, they are fabulous :)

After getting some great pictures form the bluff we headed out to Sorrento. I was very excited about this stop being it is where limoncello is made. We arrived and Diego showed us where he would pick us up when we were done so we could head to Positano and to get some lunch.

Here are our pictures from Sorrento…

Sorrento also has quite a bit of other citrus products around besides limoncello...

After walking around some of the shops we made our way to one of the many limoncello factories located in Sorrento. They were giving out free shots as you shopped, buy was it yummy!

The rest of the time in Sorrento was spent walking around shopping and taking pictures. I bought a ton of pastas and spices here and loved that this day was more relaxed than the others. We really had more time to just take in where we were and enjoy it.

The ceramic products in this part of Italy were fabulous! My mom would have gone crazy if she saw some of the shops here...

After getting our fill of Sorrento we found Diego and moved on to our next stop, Positano. Diego said he knew a great place for lunch on a bluff that overlooked Positano that had excellent food. As we started to drive we all realized that we were about to see one of the most beautiful sites we had ever seen! I simply cannot describe to you the views we had the rest of this day. The beauty of this place doesn't even compare in any of the pictures we took! We were joking with Courtney and Randy later about how we should all move here and open a shop up together. It really was paradise. Before we got to the restaurant we stopped for a few pictures...

There were also some great little produce carts right at the bluff where we stopped for some pics...

Apparently V**gra is something different in Italy:)

A HUGE lemon...

We had Ty hold it up for perspective...

We were finally ready for lunch and Diego took us to a restaurant with the most beautiful view I’ve ever seen and some of the best food!

Piture of the restaurants sign...

View in front of it...

And the view out the window next to our table!

And some more pics from our fabulous dinner...

When you are in Italy there really is no such thing as water in a pitcher or by the glass. They always bring bottled water and you choose fizzy or not fizzy...

We were actually pretty boring in Italy and ordered the same stuff a lot now that I look back. We know what we like and liked comparing the different cities take on it. Once again pasta and pizza!

It really was delicous...

Weirdly the restaurant had a cat that walked around and begged for food. I guess Italian cats eat pizza????

A couple more shots from lunch...

Once lunch was over we piled back in the sprinter to make our way down to the place we had been looking at throughout lunch, Positano! This is the place Diane Lang goes to see Mauricio in Under the Tuscan Sun. It starts at the Mediterranean and makes it way up the side of the mountain. The entire place was filled with those gorgeous pink flowers everywhere and the shops were very expensive. Paul and I spent some time shopping and walking around while the rest of the group decided to go down to the beach area.

There were flowers EVERYWHERE! Even above you on the streets...

We bought some of the beautiful art peices being sold on the street...