Carnival Vista 2021 – Embarkation Day!!!!

Please be aware, throughout this blog, I will be writing about our experience with the new protocols in place. The protocols were not a problem for us. Now, let’s start today’s blog.

It’s finally here!!!! Today is the day we board the Carnival Vista.

Jim likes to start his day with a relaxing hot/warm bath. It prepares me mentally for his day. Unfortunately, that was not to happen on this day as there was no hot water!!! Oh well, I guess a cold shower will have to make do. I have repacked and rearranged all the packing trying to eliminate the unnecessary. I tend to be an over-packer. So now it is time for breakfast.

We decided to go to the Gumbo Diner for breakfast as it is next to the hotel. They open at 8am so we did have to wait for a bit, but that’s okay. It comes with being early risers. The breakfast selections on the menu were good. We were able to find something we wanted and when it arrived, it was hot and tasted great! The only issue I had was that my sausage was somewhat rare. But other than that one small issue, we were satisfied with the selections and the waitstaff was very attentive. We will definitely come here again for breakfast.

After we finished our breakfast, we packed up the car and checked out of the hotel. Our cruise check-in time is 10:30 to 11:00 and we wanted to make sure we timed things right. On this day, the Carnival Vista was docked at the pier primarily used by Royal Caribbean. No big deal. We dropped off our luggage and made our way to the Port of Galveston parking garage which is directly across the street from the Carnival cruise pier.

The walk to the pier was longer than we expected but we managed and arrived about 5 minutes before our check-in time. We showed our boarding pass, vaccine card, and negative COVID test and were in the terminal in line to board!!! The one thing I noticed is that this pier is hot inside. Luckily I had our handy-dandy necklace fans with me so I was able to keep us from sweating too much!!!

The line moved quickly and we were soon on the Carnival Vista! Our first stop was to our muster station. The E-muster is quick and easy!!! Before long, we were sitting on the Lido deck having our first Guy’s burger and our first drink of the day!!!! We also indulged in a bit of dessert sampling.

We stayed here until we heard the announcements that the staterooms were open! Since we booked a stateroom on the Lido deck, it was a very easy walk for us!. The stateroom was the typical port side balcony. And this is where we watched us sail-away from Galveston and just relaxed until dinner time.

For dinner, we selected Your Time Dining when we booked the cruise. We used the HUB app to check in for dinner and within a few minutes, we were alerted our table was ready. We made our way to the Horizons Restaurant, deck 4 aft. We definitely had a wonderful view from our table. But as is typical on the first night in the MDR, service can be hectic and maybe not as attentive as the remainder of the cruise. The first thing we noticed was a change in the menu. Instead of the bread being served as soon as you got there, the menu now has the breads shown on the menu along with condiments for the bread. Today’s selection of bread was Baguette or Multigrain Cranberry and the condiments were Whipped butter, olive oil & balsamic, and bacon pan drippings. We were served one of each bread selection and Jim selected the olive oil and balsamic while I had the bacon pan drippings. Jim had the Strawberry Bisque, Roasted Beef Brisket, and Tiramisu while I had a Caesar Salad, Broiled Strip Loin Steak, and Carnival Melting Chocolate Cake. For some reason, the steak I had was not that great. I ate but it just seemed off for some reason, but not reason enough to complain. Everything else was fine. Unfortunately I only remembered to take pictures of our bread, appetizers, and my dessert.