08.09.2012 – 08.09.2012  34 °C

Last day on the boat today :(… which is pretty sad for me cause I’ve spent more of my trip sleeping than doing anything! Anyway, I stopped taking my super sleepy pills today so spent the whole day up and about with the folks.

Our day started back up the front of the deck reading, D spent the morning up on the top deck on the slippery dip, another pleasure I’ve missed out on :(… D had gotten up early though, so we managed to snag a good spot up the front of the boat which we then occupied for the remainder of the morning! I also got stuck into a couple of non-alcoholic Pina Colada’s  (nothing alcoholic for me today with these high strength pain killers!!)—surprisingly pretty good… I managed to knock over a couple of them so couldn’t have been too bad!

My main goal today was to attend the art auction. I was slightly bummed that we had missed the other one, if I knew how long it went for, I would have made an effort to have had my lunch before I attended!!! Anyway, we arrived bang on 12pm (the start time) and mingled for about 15mins or so to look at the art on display (free champers helped coax M&D into attending!! :)). There was a particular painting that caught my eye so I was hoping it would come up in the bidding.. The main reason we’d attended the auction was in the hope that we would win the guessing competition.. If you guessed the price of a piece of art correctly (as per the artists recommended price) then you would win a collection of art pieces.. Sounded good to me… As it turned out, the three of us had heaps of fun at the auction.

Firstly, D took home one of the raffle prizes and so ended up with his own free piece of art. Both of us were shocked to find out that D’s actual prize wasn’t a crappy photocopied print by some artist but is actually a numbered and signed print!!! Right on! I got super sucked in and actually bought myself two prints at the mystery auction.. The mystery auction was actually heaps of fun, what happens is they offer you two prints (signed and numbered)—you don’t know what they are, you just know who they are produced by and you know a price.. In my case I picked up two prints by Igor Medvedev (sounds like a Russian Mafia boss huh?) for only $199—retail value of over $4000… Pretty happy with my first of hopefully many works of art by artists who actually earn a living, using their creative prowess.. Who knows, if I ever actually win the lottery, it could be Van Gogh or Dali next!!!

The three of us walked out of the auction pretty chuffed with ourselves, particularly D who had scored himself free shipping home (thanks to me buying a couple of paintings) and a free painting… What more could you ask for? The auction didn’t finish til well after 3pm and by this stage we were starving so we headed up to the pool deck for a hamburger and fries (ok but not fantastic) before I went back downstairs for a little rest.. All of the excitement of the auction had plain tuckered me out!!

Our day ended with another formal dining session.. my formality was putting on some makeup.. and a couple of rounds of Blackjack (where I managed to pocket 25 bucks). Before I talk anymore about our night, I want to stop and tell you about two other machines in the casino that we spent some time wasting money on. Firstly, they had a machine called the casino vault.. It is very reminiscent of the kids game with the claw, you know how you pick up a toy and if you can keep it in the claw you win the prize? Well it sort of works like that, except you have to make the key go thru the lock to open the vault.. Sounds easy, but not quite… Let’s just say that the old vault machine must have raked in the dough, everyone on board seemed to give it a go and at a dollar a turn (and I didn’t see anyone win a prize) they must have made thousands!

The other machine that sucked a good twenty dollars out of us was this coin toss machine. You buy a roll of quarters, $5 for example, and you put these quarters one by one into the machine. The machine then “tosses” the coins up onto a tray. The tray has these slow moving pushes attached to it, so over time coins are pushed off one tray and down onto another. The aim of the game is to get the pushers to push quarters down off the last shelf and down into your chute. The first time I gave the machine a go I actually went for ages on just one roll of quarters.. so plenty of fun for not much cost. The second time it just seemed to gobble up my money! So disappointing… But that seems to be the way the poker machines go, sometimes you get lucky, but most of the time they just gobble up your cash!

My night ended not long after my jaunt in the casino. M&D hung around in the piano bar and I think also went and watched a show, but I hit the sack not too long after my big win on Blackjack. All in all at least a pretty good end to an otherwise crappy cruise (well, for me at any rate.. D&M seemed to have a good time!)

To sum up a Carnival Cruise (for anyone who reads this who is thinking of doing a cruise with Carnival).. you get what you pay for! What i mean by this, is that this cruise was pretty cheaply priced and it showed in the little things.. Food quality was well below my standard for a cruise ship– I think I whinged about every meal I ate in the main dining hall– my cooking is better than the stuff we were served– I was expecting three courses of five star meals and got three courses of one star meals. Service was ok, but not brilliant.. Shows were ok, but not brilliant… Did we have a good time? Even with a crook neck you can’t have a bad time on a cruise boat… Would I cruise with Carnival again? Depends… If there was another company running a similar cruise at a fairly comparable rate= No.. Certainly would recommend you go to an art auction if you are ever on a cruise boat– (I think they gave away more prints than people who purchased prints!!)

Song of the Day– UB40, Kingston Town