Review of the Carnival Victory

Northbound on Victory

written by Aplmac posted on 27/04/11

Cabin 2314 on Deck 2 was our first interior cabin

since our memorable First Cruise on Destiny, when we simple didn't know any better!

You've heard the snobbish nonsense about "Once you go Balcony, you can never go back"?

-well, that's mostly rubbish!

An interior may not be the greatest, but my wallet feels a lot better about the whole thing.

Carnival beds are comfortable beyond belief, but everyone knows that all cruise ship beds are hard to get out of, come Morning, and ours were no exception to this general rule.

Leaving Barbados, we stopped first at St.Lucia

where we opted to simply walk around the town.

Not a great thing to do.

The town's kinda dumpy to be honest, and the taxi drivers pestered us constantly.

This would be a good destination to do a tour of some sort, but being we've lived in Barbados all our lives and know these Caribbean islands pretty well, we weren't too interested in hauling it down to the smelly volcano in South, etc,

so we bought a few cute things and were back on board in time for lunch

-my usual half-day thing ashore, unlike most of you winter-escapers.

Sailaway from St.Lucia was marred by dull weather lacking in lighting contrast

but that's beyond even my control - LOL.

St.Kitts was our next stop.

Again, we chose to walk around the town Basseterre, heading for SAHELY's store

-a veritable time-warp throwback to the early 1950s reminiscent of my early childhood

and therefore probably not high on your list of priorities.

Found myself a nice reversible Fossil gents belt I was looking for,

and the wife got a cool Fossil bag for work,

along with one or two other things at the Port Zante shops.

A baby monkey was rudely thrust right in front my face by one of the many louts who frequent the port area...be warned that these guys look for cruisers with cameras,

to try to charge exorbitant sums for the rare privilege of taking your photo with their monkey.

AVOID this scam, ignore them completely,

unless you're a willing sucker for cute baby animals and need to rid yourself of excess cash!

Again, we were back on board to cool air-conditioning -and lunch by about noon.

Call me the adventurous cruiser, but call me.

Sint Maarten was our next stop.

This was out 4th. or 5th. time ashore at SXM, can't even remember how many times now...

and as usual we took the water taxi over to Philipsburg, mainly because it presents so many photo opportunities that a land taxi couldn't possibly.

Wife spotted a gorgeous bronze-colored dress watch for me at Boolchand's -my usual source for camera gear -although this was their watch and jewellery store.

When they wanted only $108 for it, the card came out and the deal was done!

Found the Blanc du Nil all-white store again, where I bought another of their very tasteful shirts for $55 (hey, that a lot for ME to pay for a shirt!).

After that it was into a taxi for $9 each, to get over to Marigot on the French side

where it was getting kinda hot by the time we got there.

We poked around a bit, and then taxied it back to Philipsburg on the Dutch side,

onto the return water taxi and back to the ship by about 1:30 p.m.

Too hot outside and the ship is air-conditioned. Guess which one wins.

San Juan, Puerto Rico is where we terminated

-to spend a week with friends who have lived there for 20 yrs. now.

What a great island, if you have the luxury of a week with friends who know just where to take you.

You'll be seeing the scenic pictures in due course.

Disembarkation was the usual draaag, but we were off by about noon and into our waiting car.

No P.R. airport for us LOL!

So ended our four-night Northward cruise from Barbados to Puerto Rico.

Carnival Victory is as nice as ever: they've replaced many of the carpets,

but the dining room in the stern still has that weird royal blue and brown 'decor'

mixed with turquoise shadow lighting in the metallic-gold ceiling -who dreamed THAT up?

What a nightmare for the eye!

We're hoping that will all get ripped out, some future dry-docking renovation...

Seeing as this was our third time on VICTORY, we felt comfortably at home,

since I know all the access points to her bow decks and other advantageous picture-taking high points.

Dining room service is good, and the food was good.

As usual, Carnival is good value for money and that's why we were there.

What more can I say?

More later regarding the Southbound leg a week later, on our way home to Barbados, where we live.