Detailed Photo Review of Carnival Sunshine 12-Night Mediterranean Cruise 9/8/13

[boaterette]

I am so loving your review.

[DiverDownAZ]

 

 

 

Loving your review and all the beautiful scenery, but this is one of my favorites so far.:D

[deladane]

Great review and pictures! Can't wait for more.

 

Thank you! More is on the way soon :)

 

 

I am so loving your review.

 

Aww thanks!!

 

 

Loving your review and all the beautiful scenery, but this is one of my favorites so far.:D

 

haha, if you like food photos, just wait!! There's plenty more where that came from ;)

[KristiandEvan]

Can't wait to read it!

 

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Forums mobile app

[deladane]

Hmmm, so were was I...

 

After we left the Basilica, mom picked up her backpack from the baggage storage room, and we walked back to the San Zaccaria vaporetto stop to take the #2 route to San Giorgio island.

 

 

 

The vaporetto stop is right outside the huge church, so we walked right in and headed to the back to buy our tickets to go up in the tower. The tickets cost 6 Euro each and they were well worth it for the amazing panoramic views! I considered going up in the Campanile in St. Mark's Square, but decided this would be a far better option because there were no crowds, and you can't see a view of the Square if you are IN the Square haha

 

 

 

 

Notice the Whale Tail popping up in the far left side of the horizon?...

[deladane]

The church itself was quite beautiful as well, so we spent about an hour exploring the church and enjoying the views from on top of the tower.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I loved the mosaic tiles on the floors all over Europe!

[deladane]

We took the same vaporetto back to St. Mark's Square and walked around looking for somewhere to eat dinner.

 

 

 

One of the best parts of doing an overnight on the ship in Venice is that it allowed us to eat a local dinner, and to see the city at night! We found a great little restaurant towards the back of the Basilica and they offered a price fixe dinner for 18 Euros.

 

 

Spaghetti with mussels, zucchini, and shrimp:

 

Mixed Fried Fish:

 

Apple Pie (I don't like tiramisu, so they let me order something else haha):

[deladane]

By the time we finished dinner, the sun had set and all the lights were lit around St. Mark's Square.

 

 

 

I also wanted to see the Grand Canal at night, so we took vaporetto #2 back to Piazza Roma and enjoyed the peaceful nighttime views.

 

 

 

 

Once we reach Piazza Roma, we walked back to the People Mover and rode that back to the cruise port, and then made the 10 minute walk back to the ship. We were back on board by 9:30pm, and spent the rest of the night unpacking and getting settled in the cabin. We finally got to bed at around midnight after a long but exciting day in Venice.

[Captain Carnival]

Great Review and Pics....it's like being there all over again - THANKS!!!

[Orpheo]

Such beautiful pictures. Love the detailed review.

Can't wait for the rest..!:D

[deladane]

Monday, September 9th - Sail Away Day!

 

My alarm went off at 6:15am, and I quickly got dressed and headed up to Lido for breakfast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[deladane]

I had left a lot of time for breakfast because I didn't know how long the lines would be and I wanted to make sure I was finished eating on time. Since there were very few people eating breakfast that early, I was finished in plenty of time so I walked around taking a few photos of the ship...

 

Looking down from Lido into the atrium:

 

Lido deck:

 

Pour Your Own Beer station in the Lido Buffet area:

 

Serenity waterfall (they removed the net from the pool a few minutes after I took this photo):

 

Serenity deck:

 

I love when the outside decks are totally empty this early in the morning:

[deladane]

Waterslides area on deck 10:

 

 

I rode the yellow water slide later in the week... it was fun, but not as fast as I expected:

 

Sports Deck:

 

Hot dog stand- I never saw it open, but then again, I doubt I would have eaten a hot dog if it were open at 7:30am haha:

 

Havana Bar seating area during breakfast (very aft of Lido deck):

[deladane]

I read many positive reviews of the Doge's Palace Secret Itineraries tour, so I knew I wanted to do that during our time in Venice. Unfortunately, the times of the English speaking tours were all in the mornings so we couldn't go on Saturday (since our flight didn't land until 11am) or Sunday (because we boarded the ship that morning). That left us with Monday morning as our only option, but we were a bit nervous about making it back to the ship from St. Mark's Square before the 1:30pm all aboard time for sail away. The tour was only supposed to be one hour and 15 minutes long, so we booked the 9:55am tour, hoping it would end by 11:30am at the latest. Once the tour ended, we planned to go straight back to the vaporetto and hopefully we would have better timing and be able to make it back to the ship in 2 hours.

 

The Secret Itineraries tour costs 20.50 Euros, which I thought was a great deal considering it costs 16 Euros just to enter the Doge's Palace, so the tour only cost an extra 5 Euros. If you want to take the tour, I recommend buying your tickets online in advance because the tours only have 25 people on them, and they do sell out.

 

We left the ship at 8am and took a free coach bus shuttle to the People Mover to save some energy and time. We rode the People Mover to Piazza Roma, and took the vaporetto route #5.1 around the outside of Venice (as opposed to the #2 route which went through the middle of Venice along the Grand Canal). Route #5.1 was a great option as it only took 20 minutes to reach St. Mark's Square (3 stops), and it offered beautiful views of Venice and St. Mark's Square (ironically, we saw the same views from a higher view point later that afternoon during sail away haha)

 

 

 

 

 

We arrived at Doge's Palace at 9:20am for our 9:55am tour. I exchanged our online vouchers for real tickets, and we spent some time exploring the courtyard area. Unfortunately, we did not have much time to view the public areas of Doge's Palace because they assume people will stick around after the tour to see those rooms, but we did not have time for that because we had to rush back to the ship. Oh well- I guess that's a good excuse to come back to Venice some other time!

 

 

[deladane]

Our tour had about 25 people, and Cynthia was our guide. She offered lots of interesting information, but it was a bit hard to understand her with her accent. We started in the basement of the prison and walked up several flights of stairs, stopping to see a few prison cells on the way, until we reached the palace library. She took us to see Casanova's cell and explained the story of his time in the prison and how he escaped. We were only permitted to take photos at the very beginning of the tour, but once we reached Casanova's cell, we had to put our cameras away.

 

a prison cell:

 

Not a bad view looking out from one of the prison cells!:

 

The view looking out from the palace library

 

I really enjoyed the tour and thought it was worth the extra cost. It was great to be in such a small group and away from the crowds, and I learned a lot of interesting tidbits that I wouldn't have known without the tour. The tour ended at 11:30am and we walked down the Golden Staircase to exit the palace.

 

 

[deladane]

We went back to the vaporetto stop for the last time and took route #5.2 back to Piazza Roma. We arrived at 12:10pm, took the People Mover back to the cruise port, and rode the Carnival free shuttle bus back to the ship. It took nearly one hour to board the ship due to the long lines, and they only had one metal detector opened on the ship which everyone had to pass through. That was very poor planning on Carnival's part, but I guess they just didn't have the space in the atrium bar area for more than one metal detector like they do when you board the ship on deck zero. We finally got back on the ship at 1:15pm. All aboard was supposed to be at 1:30pm, but there were still thousands of people on line behind us, and Noonan came on the overhead to announce that muster and sail away would be delayed until everyone was on board.

 

I went up to Lido for a quick lunch before the muster drill. I really wanted to try the wok at JiJi's, but the line was super long and I didn't think I would have time, so I opted for the pasta bar instead. It was okay, nothing great (especially compared to the fantastic al dente pasta I had the night before at the restaurant in Venice!). I ordered my lunch by filling out a paper menu, and it took them nearly half an hour to prepare my food. I brought my lunch back to the cabin to eat with mom- she had ordered a sandwich from room service since her food allergies prevent her from eating at both JiJis and the pasta bar. Here is my lunch:

 

 

Muster was held one hour late at 2:30pm. It was a necessary evil, but fairly uneventful. Sail away was originally scheduled for 2pm, but it was delayed until 4pm. Unfortunately, no one passed along that important bit of information to the passengers on the ship, so we all stood around outside for an hour anxiously awaiting sail away!

 

 

 

Finally, at 4pm, we felt the ship start to move! We stood port side on deck 10 and had great views (even though we had seen the same view many times from the vaporettos haha) I must have taken over 100 photos as we sailed around Venice, but I'll just narrow it down to a few photos to share with you...

 

Notice the Whale Tail shadow on the water?

 

 

[deladane]

We passed St. Mark's Square within an hour of sailing away, so I went back to the cabin to get ready for dinner. As I mentioned earlier, we chose the early fixed dining time at 6pm because we wanted to have the same wait staff every night because of my mom's food allergies. We also liked the idea of eating dinner with the same people every night and getting to know them over the course of the cruise. I briefly considered eating at the 8:15pm late seating, but decided against it because I knew we had to wake up early every morning for all of our tours in port, so I thought we would be tired and want to go to bed fairly early at night. By eating dinner early at 6pm, that left us a few hours to enjoy the shows and other activities on the ship before going to bed around 10-11pm each night.

 

We were seated at a table for 9 in the back of the mid-ship MDR. It felt somewhat strange to eat dinner in a single-story MDR, since I was used to larger two-story MDRs on my previous cruises, but this didn't really impact our experience. We always had a good view when the waiters did their dance numbers, and we could also see the maitre'd Ken as he sang a song each night before dessert.

 

 

I know the menus are widely shared in other reviews on Cruise Critic, but I will post them again anyway. Here is the every day menu:

 

 

And here is tonight's menu and what I ordered for dinner:

 

 

Mom ordered the chilled peach cream soup for her appetizer. I love how they pour it into the bowl right in front of you!

 

Smoked Duck

 

Fried Shrimp

[deladane]

Seafood Newburg

 

Dessert Menu

 

Warm Chocolate Melting Cake (my favorite! of course I had to order it on our first dinner in the MDR!!) and the Bitter and Blanc:

 

After dinner, we went to the casino for a few minutes, then played 3 games of trivia in the comedy club lounge. The first game was Rock and Roll trivia, then movie quotes trivia, and the last game was the most fun... they used the video screen to show two celebrity faces combined into one picture, and we had to guess which two celebrities it was. Here is one that everyone knew immediately:

 

 

A lot of the pictures were hard to decipher, so we only got about half the questions correct. Oh well! After that, we walked around the ship a little more, then headed back to the cabin to get ready for bed.

 

 

When we got back, this little guy was waiting to say good night!

 

Up next: Dubrovnik, Croatia!

[sgcass123]

Great review! Our family took a Med cruise on the Sunshine in July, and all your pictures are reminding me of our fun adventures! Can't wait to see what you did in Dubrovnik!

[skoi13]

Great review. Thanks for taking the time to write it. We were in Venice for a short visit (thankfully had a friend of a friend who went to university there to take us around-- dh, me, then 4 year old dd and 9 month old ds), but didn't get to see the inside of San Marco because it was closed for a concert. And it rained the whole time we were there, so your photos are glorious for me. Makes me want to save up, and head to Italy!

Edited September 30, 2013 by skoi13
Bleh-- mixed up pronouns-- Preview is my friend, I should use it.

[deladane]

Tuesday, September 10th - Dubrovnik, Croatia

 

We were scheduled to arrive in Dubrovnik at 10am, so I woke up at 8am to start getting ready. Mom ordered room service on the door tag the night before and it was delivered right on time at 8am. The Lido buffet was very crowded this morning, and the lines were very long for the two omelet stations in the Havana Bar. I ate my breakfast and went back to the cabin to finish getting ready for the day.

 

 

We arranged to meet our friends at 9:30am in the lobby bar area on deck 3 so we could share a taxi into town. We went out onto the deck to take some photos as we approached the port... unfortunately, those clouds didn't look very promising.

 

 

We went down to deck zero to wait for them to clear the ship, but they said we had to go back up to deck 1. We were the first to arrive so we just stood near the stairs and waited until they started letting people get off the ship. Soon after, a crew member put up a rope and a line formed behind us. By 10am, there were hundreds of people lining the halls on deck 1, anxiously waiting to get off the ship.

 

 

They finally cleared us to exit at 10:10am and we were the first people off the ship. We got a taxi right outside of the gangway, and he quoted us 15 Euros for the 4 of us to go straight to the cable cars. It took about 15 minutes to drive there, and when we arrived, there was a long line already formed. There were one or two other cruise ships also docked in Dubrovnik today, but they arrived much earlier in the morning so even though we were the first people to arrive from the Carnival ship, we still had to wait inline behind them (boooo!).

 

 

 

We pre-purchased our tickets online, but needed to exchange the vouchers for a real ticket at the ticket window.

 

[deladane]

It took about 30 minutes for us to reach the front of the line, and the cable car ride lasted about 10 minutes. They cram about 30 people in each cable car, and there were two cars running at a time, going in opposite directions. The views were beautiful from the first second we left the gate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[deladane]

Once we got off the cable car, we spent about 30 minutes enjoying the views. It was much cooler up on top of the mountain, and it was very windy and drizzling rain. They have a few different lookout decks, so we took lots of photos while we were up there. They also have clean bathrooms on the downstairs level.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a short wait to get on the next cable car going back down the mountain, and when we reached the bottom, we noticed the line wasn't very long to go up.

 

[cruiseonthebrain]

What an incredible review! Your pictures are incredible. Thank you so much for taking the time to share!:)

[deladane]

Once we exited the cable car station, we turned right, and then immediately after the bus stop, we turned right again to walk down the staircase.

 

 

 

We kept walking down until we reached a fork in the road where the fort was directly in front of us (there was a Mexican restaurant on our right). At the fork, we turned left and continued down the street about 50 feet until we could see the drawbridge. We entered the city here at the Ploce Gate.