Vic & Steve went to the Caribbean - part 4: Cruising, the ship and accommodation

our room above the 1st life-raft

It is fair to say we were apprehensive about going on a cruise, only a few people we know have been cruising so we couldn't really validate whether this would be a holiday for us or not.
Upshot for us was as a means of transport, accommodation, food and entertainment it's bloody good value for money. Would we ever go on one again? yes but only to achieve the same goals as we set out with in the Caribbean - to see somewhere that isn't easily accessible by another means, so maybe Alaska or the Antarctic and perhaps (just perhaps) more of the Caribbean.

The ship - Carnival Valor is a big ship, up to 3000 passengers and 1180 crew - we had ~2600 passengers. It is called a "Fun Ship" within the range of Carnival travel experiences, so not many old people, no zimmerframes, many families with kids of all ages and many many 20-30 year olds.

Docked in St Lucia

It has sooooo much stuff on board. Two restaurants for sit down menu dining, the lido deck for buffet dining, 24 hour deli + pizza + ice cream + coffee bar + 2 x poolside bars. There is a giant theatre for shows, a casino (where people can smoke), loads and loads of bars and cafe's all over the place,  a library, shops, a business centre with expensive internet, art gallery, gym, spa, running track, +21 deck, 2 pools, ~8 x spa pools, water slide, giant screen, laundry rooms etc etc.

There are 12 decks so to get around there are banks of lifts at the centre, fore and aft of the ship, we however tended to use the stairs using the climbs (like from deck 0 to 8 where our cabin was) as our primary exercise for the day. There is a running track, we walked around it but at 30+ degrees celsius the temperature wasn't conducive to taking a jog.

To describe the decor as American and garish doesn't do it justice. Everything is bright, so very colourful and tacky - decor will be a future ship selection criteria for us. There are a few photos in this post from inside the ship to give you an idea.
The corridors are narrow but the only time we felt cramped was walking from one end of deck 8 to the other. There is so much space on the open decks at the top you don't feel like there are 2600 people around all the time.

The accommodation - cabin 8823 was like a small hotel room, with a balcony, king sized bed, fold-out single, 1 chair, tv, mini-bar, safe, worlds smallest bathroom and a closet. It was comfortable and clean. Our purser, Nelson, was polite and chatted with us as we returned to the ship each day asking how we enjoyed our day. The room was made up twice a day by Nelson and his team. Each evening we got a running sheet for the next day including what was on tv, the big screen, the shows, specials in the shops, jackpots in the casino and most importantly - what time to be back onboard or you miss the ship at the end of that day. We also got a towel animal and 2 x chocolates.

our towel friends

Cabin 8823

Pink dining room

We thoroughly enjoyed having a balcony, stepping out into the wall of heat and moisture was a stark contrast to the cool airconditioned room, but we enjoyed reading and watching as we docked / disembarked from each port, taking photos and listening to the noise of the rest of the ship also hanging out on their balconies. If we cruise again we will have a balcony. I wasn't sea sick at all, we only had one rough day where we went up top to watch the Basketball final #4, otherwise I was fine in our room and with a comfy bed slept relatively well.
The cruise package includes 24 hour room service, we called it once to get a bottle of water and desserts - whereas others used it continuously with empty plates lining the corridors.

Next Chapter - continuing on the cruise, this time with our impressions of the food, entertainment and summary of the experience.

another towel buddy

some of the lifts

docked in Sint Maarten

Steve & Vic went to the Caribbean, Part 3: Best of IBM

Best of IBM is a wonderful elite event celebrating the top 500 performing IBM employees world wide, across all business units. This year the reward for those top employees and their partners was an all expenses paid trip to the Cayman Islands. IBM had the Ritz-Carlton at Seven Mile Beach (the fanciest resort on Grand Cayman) booked out for 1 week and the honorees split into 2 groups called wave 1 and wave 2, each wave stayed for 3 nights / 4 days and were wowed with wonderful food, drink, activities and entertainment. We were there for wave 2. To fly to the Cayman Islands we flew Auckland - San Francisco, California; then San Francisco - Houston, Texas; Houston - Grand Cayman.

Day 1 - we landed at George Town, Grand Cayman, the airport is tiny and reminded me of Langkawi, Malaysia both the wave of humidity and heat that hit us as we stepped out of the plane and the setting, coconut palms, flowering trees and airport staff casually standing around watching us traipse off the plane.
We were greeted and ushered into buses - most of our flight was heading to the Ritz-Carlton as well. On arrival we were offered drinks and escorted to our room by a greeter, it was a 10 minute walk so she got to point out loads of stuff on the way. We were wow'd by our room, it was awesome! after we settled in for a bit we headed down to the reception hall to check in with the event, get our name tags and goodies - a cool beach bag, underwater camera, sun block, after sun gel, chapsticks and various chocolate goodies to name a few.
Our first meal event was a pool side buffet dinner and welcome function where we commenced what I will call our week of small-talk and enjoyed our first taste of Caybrew the local beer and my first pretty drink - the event cocktail. It was hot and we didn't know anyone but met a lovely German couple, some Australians and joined a very cosmopolitan table from India, the Philippine's, the USA and a Canadian.
This was also the start of our 2 weeks of excessive food. Yum, yum, yum.

yummy lunch

Gluten Free food - this is meant to be my gluten free blog and the food is well worth a mention. The Ritz-Carlton did a wonderful job of labelling everything food and drinks. Every meal I had a load of options to select from that were gluten free, usually 1 dessert as well. Breakfast was great with fruit and eggs - the other meals lacked leafy greens, everything was delicious but I was craving salad and beans by the time we left - there was a GF fish dish every lunch and dinner which I loved.
To the left is my lunch day 2. Breakfast and Lunch were served in a giant marque with air conditioning and tens of wait staff.

Day 2 - After a leisurely breakfast we attended the first of two "business sessions" these were held in a large conference style room, also used for wedding receptions, beautifully decorated. These business sessions were 2 hours long were more of a show than a business session, full of music and action packed, they were filmed by giant cameras and if (like me) you watched the show there were tens of staff directing, producing, securing and filming the event.
At this first business session we were treated to a local Cayman calypso band,  an inspirational speech by Daria Musk - a singer who is an internet sensation, who not only told us her story but gave a performance with her Google Plus Hangout group all connected to the event in real time.
We also had a keynote from Alastair Fothergill, Executive Producer for the BBC Planet series - the ones narrated by David Attenborough - Frozen Planet, Blue Planet, Planet Earth, Life in the Freezer and Nature. He told us about a few of the many challenges his team faced filming these shows - enormous challenges with fascinating stories behind them.

the camera operators

After the business session we finally got to explore the resort and discovered where to buy coffee with our new Australian friends, bought and sent some postcards (that arrived post our arriving home) and went for our first swim. Our chosen activity was postponed due to wind so we got a whole afternoon on the beach and in the wonderfully warm water.
Our dinner Day 2 was at a local restaurant, we had to select the restaurant months beforehand and think we chose well with Hemmingways. Our table was on their deck beachside, I had local lobster - stronger than crayfish in flavour - and we enjoyed a yummy Californian Rose.
Our assigned Ritz-Carlton staff member for dinner was Soren from Transylvania, he was a wealth of information about both his hime town and the Caymans, and how he was selected for the Ritz-Carlton. After our taxi returned us to the resort we watched what became our new holiday hobby - NBA finals series, Heat vs Spurs - in the main bar with cocktails. Yum.

Steve Martin

Day 3 - the biggest day by far with a business session, swimming and snorkelling and a ball. The morning business session this time had a different local band, followed by Ginni Rometty, Chairman and CEO of IBM, 13th most powerful woman in the world. Ginni's speech was awesome and a direct contrast to most of her direct reports who used their 10 minute slot to push a corporate message (boring for the partners) and read auto-ques. Sadly we didn't get to meet her in person, she flew out immediately after her slot.
Ginni got Daria back on stage for an encore performance before introducing the  big surprise, Steve Martin. His routine is a standup / blue grass gig, his band were incredibly talented and the butt of his jokes. They played for about an hour and really were a treat.
Swimming with Stingrays - another benefit of the Best of IBM was to select an activity - we chose swimming with stingrays which turned out to be a 3+ hour catamaran sail out to a natural sand bar where the Caribbean stingrays hang out followed by sailing out to a reef and snorkelling. Our guides were awesome and told us the stingrays felt like a wet portobello mushroom which turned out to be quite accurate. Ours was one of many cat's out at the reef where over 100 stingrays reside. The guide companies name them and feed them and encourage them to be "people" friendly. I was amazed at how strong the large males were as they pushed against our legs. I was kinda freaked by the whole thing but Steve seemed to enjoy himself a lot more.  We are yet to get our photos developed.
Snorkelling - one of our primary goals of the trip was to snorkel as much as possible. The water as described in our last post was warm, buoyant and clear. What surprised us was the coral - it was colourless, nothing like Great Barrier at all. The fish were colourful and abundant, my snorkelling buddy (Steve) was painful, kept following fish and swimming away out of my sight. It was still windy out there so I found 30 minutes was exhausting in the waves but so pleased we went and equally pleased we took our own snorkelling gear over.

bbq's at the beach, lobster yum

The Ball - if everything else hadn't been amazing enough the ball was the icing on the cake. It was amazing, no expense spared, an awesome night of entertainment, wonderful food and fabulous wine - topped off with a fireworks display to rival the Wellington ones at guy fawkes. Held out on the beach we shed our shoes - so women like me walked around with their full length dresses hitched up. The sand is so soft it didn't matter. There was an LA covers band who had a hundred or more people up dancing to their 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s music. We sat with a group of new people more Australians, a Swedish couple and an English woman. The food was divine and watching the many bbq's cook the steak and lobster was cool too. Since we're not into choreographed dancing to Thriller we took a wander and discovered the entertainment included two local astronomers who enabled us to see Saturn through their highly powered telescopes - very cool! By midnight we felt like pumpkins exhausted from our day so took our wines up to our balcony and watched the night continue until the humidity got to us and forced us into the air conditioning in our lovely room.

the 3 kiwi's in our glad rags

some idea of the crowd

Day 4 and final thoughts - day 4 was pack down day for the IBM event, breakfast in the marquee and goodbyes. There was one other kiwi at the event, Yvonne, who works for the event management part of IBM so had been there all week and was staying in an apartment in the residences part of the hotel. We borrowed her laundry facilities to wash all of our clothes, her apartment was huge with a full kitchen and we sat out on the garden patio in the loungers reading our books while our washing finished which made a nice change.
Final thoughts wise, it was a wonderful holiday. We didn't "do" everything, there was a wall with Steve's name on it as an honouree where he could have been photographed beside, there were interviews we could have participated in, we could have been uploading our photos to the app and there were other meet and greet opportunities - but this week of small talk was tiring enough. In essence we enjoyed the IBM hospitality in a fantastic location with wonderful food and drink and used the rest of our time as though we were on a holiday alone.
We spent the rest of our final day in the water and sunbathing, we ordered nachos and cocktails to our beach chairs and enjoyed the wonderful service there before relocating to the bar when it rained (tropical rain) for about 2 minutes. That evening we ate out on another courtyard at the resort and enjoyed sitting outside for dinner again. It really is a special and spectacular location the Ritz-Carlton, we loved it there and really appreciate how spoiled we were by the event.

Next chapter is all about our cruise experience. We left Grand Cayman at 7am on day 5 and flew to San Juan via Miami to join our cruise, an adventure in itself. Below are some photos from that trip including the Bahamas as we flew over them from the plane. Beautiful.
http://myglutenfreelifeblog.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/vic-steve-went-to-caribbean-part-4.html

Bahamas from the air

Miami Dade Airport stopover

Caribbean Sea from the air

Vic & Steve went to the Caribbean, Part 2: Caymans and Ritz-Carlton

beautiful calm sea

The Cayman Islands are beautiful, so many things we could say - wow, tropical, picturesque, stunning, hot, warm clear blue buoyant water, yummy cocktails, exactly as we imagined the Caribbean to be. We were there for an all expenses paid fabulous reward trip for Best of IBM so our experience was sublime, we stayed at the Ritz-Carlton Seven Mile Beach (more about that below) and spent the bulk of our 5 days at the resort only venturing out twice - to a wonderful beach front restaurant and taking a catamaran trip to swim with stingrays / snorkel on a reef.

Coral rock

Seven Mile Beach is a stretch of beautiful beach lined with beach front accommodation ranging from the exquisite Ritz Carlton through to backpackers and scattered amongst them a few private homes. The sand is near white, quite fine (but not as fine as some NZ beaches) and soft so you sink into it as you walk, and is very clean - void of shells or weeds. There are however coral rocks buried underfoot ranging from tiny to fist sized, we met a boy with quite a collection who gave me the one in the photo above - his mother was concerned about their luggage allowance going back to the US with so many coral rocks. 

The water is way saltier than our sea water at home, very buoyant and completely clear, no matter how far we swam out we could still see the bottom. There is coral about 50m off shore and fish who stalked us as we swam. It was so very warm, bath like and other than one windy day completely calm. We walked a reasonable way down the beach and it didn't encounter any rubbish and saw cruise ships in the distance. 

The Ritz Carlton Grand Cayman is simply exquisite with a focus on customer experience beyond anything we have encountered in our lives. Staying there is an experience in itself and as a 5 star (and 5 diamond) resort everything was perfect - no chips of paint, crumbs on the floor, nothing out of place and everything looking new and fresh. 

view from our balcony

The hotel is massive with around 900 rooms, there are 3 restaurants, 2 pools, many bars, large function rooms, golf courses and huge manicured grounds. The stretch of beach out front has chairs and cabana's alongside a beach bar, waiter service to your chair and cabana men to bring towels etc. There are loads of watersport things to do - kayaks, jetski's, things to swim out to and jump off or sunbathe on. We swam and snorkelled, sunbathed and drunk cocktails on the beach.

There are permanent residences and a raft of expensive cars parked out front. Our room was on the beach front penthouse floor, massive for a hotel room with a balcony facing the sea.

The hotel staff are wonderful too, a key factor in the amazing customer experience. We met staff from all over the world - the Philippines, Croatia, Romania, Ireland - you name it. We learned from many of them about the extensive employment process they went through to get their jobs and found them all to be consistently friendly, engaging and incredibly helpful, some even remember our names - an excellent skill. We couldn't walk more than 100m or so without someone saying hello, asking us if we needed anything, giving us directions and even walking us to our next destination.

Find out more below are links to the hotel website and reviews on trip advisor:

http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Properties/GrandCayman/Default.htm

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g147367-d302259-Reviews-Ritz_Carlton_Grand_Cayman-Seven_Mile_Beach_Grand_Cayman_Cayman_Islands.html

We would love to go back to explore the Cayman Islands and stay at the Ritz Carlton Seven Mile beach. It was a fantastic location and the most amazing hotel we have ever stayed in. It was expensive too, after the IBM event we stayed 1 day + night which cost us $NZ1,000 for our accommodation, 2 meals and a few drinks. So we will need to win lotto to go back there.

There is so much more to see in the Caymans as well, more reefs to snorkel and beaches to swim at. 

Next chapter is on the Best of IBM event. 

http://myglutenfreelifeblog.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/steve-vic-went-to-caribbean-part-3-best.html

Poolside dining

beautiful 7 mile beach

Ritz Carlton Seven Mile Beach

Amazing caesar salad

Gallery walkway to our room

Steve & Vic went to the Caribbean - part 1

Yep we went on a holiday! YAY! Holidays are great but this was really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the Caribbean, sun, sea, heat, cocktails, relaxation and quality time together.
Steve is soooooo good at his job he was selected for “Best of IBM” 2013, the 500 top performers out of ~450,000 (as we were told more than once that means he’s .001 of a percent in IBM land). The reward a 3 day event holiday in the Cayman Islands including our flights, too good to not leverage we turned it into a ~3 week holiday (thanks IBM) in the Caribbean.

This is going to be a series of blogs to give you an overview of our holiday. This first one has links to maps of where we went. After this we’ll post them on our fabulous holiday experience, more about where we stayed, what we did and most importantly – photos, lots of photos.

The first thing we had to discover was exactly where are the Cayman Islands? and how do we get there from New Zealand? In short our trip involved 11 airports, unknown number of hours flying and in transit – a very long way from home. We flew via San Francisco in each direction with overnight stops to break up the journey and for me to fall in love with San Fran.

The Caymans are a group of Islands in the Caribbean Sea, near Cuba and Jamaica (near is relative distance wise) and not inside the Bermuda triangle. Here are some links to maps so you get the idea:

Where in the World are the Caymans - http://www.mapsofworld.com/united-kingdom/cayman-island/location-map.html
The Islands themselves on World Atlas - http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/caribb/ky.htm#.Udiu-lNSZe4

After the Caymans we flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico to catch a cruise. Our cruise took us from San Juan to Saint John, US Virgin Islands, Barbados and the West Indies islands of Saint Kitts, Saint Lucia and Sint Maarten before returning to San Juan. Here are some more map links of our route:

Caribbean Map showing everywhere we visited - http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/carib.htm#.Udix4VNSZe4
There are loads of websites that sell this cruise here is one with the map of our cruise - http://travel.travelocity.com/ecruise/CruiseDetailsItinerary.do?cruiseId=69949&Service=TRAVELOCITY

So that’s the overview of where we had our fabulous holiday.
Next Chapter will be the Cayman Islands and the Ritz Carlton!
http://myglutenfreelifeblog.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/vic-steve-went-to-caribbean-part-2.html

Since returning I have also written a blog on the importance of holidays, here is a link to that one:
http://blog.optimalhq.com/2013/06/26/as-a-leader-is-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do-ever-ok-to-say/

Happy reading, Vic

View from our room - Ritz Carlton, Grand Cayman

Lovely beaches, warm water, this one Sint Maarten

So many cocktails - yum

New discoveries in my home town

We haven't been on any mini breaks since Auckland last month, primarily because I am flat out at work and we had our massive, awesome office opening party this week which required a great deal of preparation - including painting in the weekends, below are our write-on walls (taken during clean up from the party), the write-on paint hadn't quite cured so we did some other creative stuff.

Staying here in Wellington has given me an opportunity to discover, and rediscover, some great food places. In no particular order we have eaten at:

• Phong Vu on left bank, Vietnamese, cheap and the cuisine for anyone who doesn't eat Gluten - rice / rice noodles in virtually every dish. I love Vietnamese food and we just rediscovered this pace last night - yummy.
• Cafe Breton (on Brandon St) has gluten free crepes, it's like GF heaven, with both sweet and savoury options. Only open for lunch, does a pretty good long black too. I have been there twice this month already - awesome.
• Khandallah Trading Company (formerly MBBK). For the non-Gluten Free among us it was great, with cheap eats and loads of options. For me sadly the staff have no idea what is and isn't GF and the menu is full of bread and sauces. So I stuck with meat and vege - disappointing.
• Fork 'n Brewer. Again great looking menu, we were there for a large party so didn't ask about GF just chose what turned out to be a wonderful Vege stack, honestly for a pub it looked fantastic and tasted great. Steve had Spicy Chicken Wings to go with his various beers and loved them - great.
• Cafe Villa in Ngaio - I have mixed feelings about our lunch there. My GF bread was soggy and eggs under done, while the bacon was almost burnt. My friends had eggs benedict which they loved, so had promise but for me - average.

Back to the office opening, which has been my focus for weeks. We got the food from Smith The Grocer, for the most part if was well received and the staff were lovely, their cocktail menu has loads of GF options. Later in the night as we cleaned up we got Hells - our new office tradition (yep twice makes a tradition) is to get a variety of vegetarian pizzas on gluten free bases - to meet the two variations of dietary requirements in one. They are great, good bases and yummy vege toppings - yum.

Some of my favourite people
I really threw this in to see if anyone reads my blog ;-)

our beautiful flowers for the party

Here they are setting up beforehand.

Final discovery this month was Garage Project. Shane my business partner thought it would be cool to have a local micro-brewery cater the beer, so we got 3 kegs from Garage Project. Everyone gave us awesome feedback and they were great, they stayed for about 3 hours promoting their beer and helping us on the bar (there were about 80 people so that's a few pints to pour). Not a beer drinker but I am told the Trip Hop was the most popular. 

What it looks like from the other side

I recently discovered twitter - I know pretty slow to join the social media world - and am slowly getting the hang of it all. Both my work and personal profiles have been a tad challenging to get off the ground, work wise (@Optimalhq) it's pretty easy to find good technical and news tweeters to follow but hard to find inspirational women and entrepreneurs. Personally (@mactoria) I have found about 20 of my friends to follow and found they didn't do much so almost stopped the interaction - until today. Today I realised I hadn't even explored the world of gluten free living on twitter, now via a couple of wonderful hashtags #gf and #glutenfree twitter has opened up a whole new world! awesome!

Another thing happened today, one of the team came into the office for a coffee and doughnut, the doughnuts have been in the office all week just sitting on the bench beside the apples (I have added a photo of our kitchen above so you can imagine where) tempting people it seems. I suddenly realised I hadn't even given them a 2nd glance, not because they're not yummy looking and smelling doughnuts but because my brain doesn't see them as food I can eat. I started to realise this last week when at a party watching people eating pizza, again I didn't really give it a 2nd glance until the gluten free pizza's were pointed out and wham - I couldn't stop eating it!

So what does this mean? is diet just mind-over-matter? without the physical reaction to eating other things that are "bad" for me can I still teach my brain to ignore them as well? Imagine the possibilities - chocolate? wine? coffee? - Nah it can't be that simple.

Here is a photo of our lovely coffee machine at work - now that's a whole other story - this week we are using Flight (@flightcoffee on twitter) coffee's Bomber beans - they are pretty good and mean it's unlikely I can convince my brain coffee is bad anytime soon. Nope my brain is imaging that lovely freshly ground coffee smell now, yum.

Auckland and losing my rose tinted glasses

Yep mini break again - lovely. This time managed to fit in a little work and relaxation in Auckland, visiting Sam and drinking awesome sangria in a spanish tapas bar.
We stayed at the Stamford Plaza again - we've tried most of the IBM rated hotels now and think the Heritage is our favourite but thought we'd remind ourselves about the Stamford (you can read my review on Tripadvisor.com). This time we spent a little time in the bar drinking Singapore Slings and Mojitos = yum. The irony of the situation is we went for a beer but with $10 bottles vs $15 cocktails the decision was a no-brainer.

After Wanaka and Queenstown my expectations of gluten free goodies were unrealistically high. Cafe's don't label their menus with GF like we are used to seeing here in Wellington (I had lunch at the Thistle today and even their menu notates allergen free dishes) and most didn't know whether a dish contained gluten or not - and honestly there are only so many poached eggs on GF toast a girl can have. Earlier in the year we made the trek out to Nosh in Glen Innes to experience their yummy goodies. The chef there (brilliant btw) told me that breakfast sausages don't usually contain gluten so I added them to the order a couple of times this visit.

The one yummy thing I did manage to eat in Auckland was an orange, almond and date friand from the Auckland art gallery. The gallery was fabulous as always but they have removed that beautiful red flower installation outside so here is a photo I have clipped if you hadn't seen it, and above is their beautiful moving flower installation inside (still there luckily):

I seem to have the coffee situation sussed but the rose tinting on my glasses is definately fading a tad, perhaps it was the cooler climate and the Wellington like winds? or we didn't go down to the wonderful bars in the viaduct or wynard quarter? or the excessive walking round Friday night looking for dinner somewhere that hadn't already turned into a nightclub?
Still - we're looking forward to our next Auckland visit - Radiohead, yay.