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24 Day Transpacific Cruise

From Los Angeles to Singapore
Hawaii, Guam, Malaysia & Vietnam
Carnival Splendor

Fun Day At Sea
Day 3 - Monday, October 7, 2019

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Click on each photo below for a larger image.

Carnival Fun Times Daily Guide

Tandoor Grill

Today I went up to the Tandoor Grill on the Lido Deck and selected some Indian food to bring back to our cabin. I selected some Chicken Malai Tikka, Tandoori Khumb (sizzling plump mushrooms), Gobi Masala (cauliflower), and Lasooni Dal (garlic tempered lentil). The food was excellent! It was very well spiced. I'm surprised it was so spiced as most people don't like food that spicy. Most Indian Buffets tend to "dumb down" the spiciness of the food to suit average American tastes. My wife and I like to go to buffets at Indian Restaurants where a lot of Indians tend to patronize as those Indian restaurants tend to keep their food more on the spicier side. Actually on our prior two cruises on the Carnival Splendor the Indian Food was not as tasty as it is on this cruise. All the food on this cruise seems to be quite a bit better than it was on our prior two Carnival Splendor cruises.

I am certain the people cooking these Indian Food items are not Hindu as there were two beef items offered and Hindus do not eat beef. The beef items offered were Goan Beef Croquettes and Beef Biryani. I have a number of Indian friends that are Hindu and some of them probably would not eat anything from this buffet for fear the same pans and cooking utensils may have been used for both the beef and other items.

The Carnival Splendor is the only cruise ship I have ever been on that has a food station devoted to Indian Food. Many cruise ships will often feature an item or two of Indian Food in the regular buffet area but I love that the Carnival Splendor features Indian Food every day at the Tandoor Grill. Unfortunately it is only open for lunch and never for dinner. I'm not sure why as I'd definitely be one to often get my dinner at the Tandoor Grill rather than the regular buffet or main restaurants. The main restaurants on Carnival cruises feature an Indian food dish as one of the vegetarian options almost every night for dinner. I will often select that option for dinner if that is the option that I like better than the other main entrees offered that night, but it does tend to be the exact same assortment of Indian food every time.

I think it is likely that Carnival will eliminate the Tandoor Grill during the retrofit of the Splendor in dry dock in Singapore. I am pretty sure that there is no Indian Grill in the Carnival 2.0 upgrades. I did not see any Indian Grill when I was on the Transatlantic cruise on the new Carnival Vista Class Ship, the Carnival Horizon.

Fitness Center

Spa Treatment Rooms

My wife purchased a spa package for $350 that allows her to use a number of the VIP Exclusive Facilities for the entire 24 day cruise. Normally we wouldn't purchase such a package but it seemed worth it for this long cruise. It comes to less than $15 per day. I'm not much into the spa experience so we only purchased one package for her. For a couple the cost is $600 so it actually only would have been an additional $250 to add me into the package.

Your Time Dining at The Black Pearl Restaurant




Barbara, my wife, at dinner


Our Main Dinner Entrees

The meal on the right is the Indian entree that I mentioned above. I also ordered the Root Vegetable Pie main entree but I wasn't sure I would like it so ordered the Indian entree also. It turned out the Root Vegetable Pie was excellent. My wife and I split the Root Vegetable Pie and I ate all of the Indian entree. I was so full from the main entrees that I had to skip dessert.

I'm working my way through the nine wines that I picked from the restaurant wine list going from the least to the most expensive. Before I made up my list of nine wines to try we did order the Duckhorn Decoy Cabernet Sauvignon on our first day on the ship and that has been the only wine that I have rated as "Very Good" on this cruise so far. That bottle was $47 and closer to the top of the price range that I intend to try. Two of the wines that we've tried for under $40 per bottle were good, but not good enough to order again. We still have one wine under $40 to try, four more wines under $50 to try, and one at $60 to try. I've had wines for under $15 per bottle that were excellent but there aren't any bottles of wine on this cruise in that price range. The above 2017 Old Vine Zinfandel from the Cline Family Cellars vineyard in Lodi, California, was good but not the best Zinfandel that Cline has to offer. Cline Family Cellars is known for their Zinfandels as Lodi and all of the Mendocino wine region in California is a great place for growing Zinfandel because of the intense heat. We were just at the Cline Family Cellars vineyard and winery in Sonoma a couple of weeks ago as a shore excursion on the Island Princess Pacific Coast Wine Cruise. We tasted some great Cline Zinfandels on that tour and even purchased a few bottles. This Zinfandel did not measure up to the ones we tasted at the Cline Winery.

El Mojito Bar (5 Aft)

I have some older maps that show this as the "El Mojito Wine Bar" and there are many references on the web about this being a wine bar. For example, this is the description from Cruisebe (www.cruisebe.com/carnival-splendor-el-mojito-wine-bar): "From the wine novice to the wine enthusiast, you'll find the perfect vintage of red, white, rose or blends at the wine bar. Order by the glass, or buy the bottle and unwind in this friendly setting. While vino is the specialty here, it's also a full bar serving up a wonderful array of spirits, mixers, and delicious cocktails." Unfortunately for us wine lovers, Carnival has de-emphasized wine throughout the "Carnival" brand. Do you see any bottles of wine in the above photo? The "El Mojito Bar" no longer has any reference in its name or the ship maps to it being a "wine bar". It no longer offers any wines by the bottle and just has the same below par wines by the glass as all the other bars on the ship. Carnival also no longer features any wine tasting events. Fortunately the new Carnival Vista Class ships at least do offer some premium self-serve wines by the glass in the library and I think they even call that room "The Wine Library". Other Carnival owned cruise lines such as Princess, Holland America, Cunard, etc., do still have wine tasting events and feature better wines by the glass at every bar.

In addition to being a full bar, the "El Mojito Bar" is the only bar on the ship where you can get a tasting flight of Martinis or a flight of Mules. One flight is called "Master The Martini - Mini Martini Tasting" and the other is called "Master The Moscow Mule - Mini Mule Tasting". I'm not sure why they call it "Master The Moscow Mule" since only one of the tastings is a "Moscow Mule". The other seven Mule tastings are not "Moscow Mules".

Master The Martini
Mini Martini Tasting




Before and After

Or, you could reverse the order of the above two photos as they looked more like the photo on the left after we finished our tasting, though not quite as clean as the mini martini glasses in the above left photo. This is the third time we've had the Mini Martini Tasting on the Carnival Splendor. We did this tasting on each of our cruises on the Carnival Splendor this year, one on our 14 day Hawaii Cruise and one on our 7 day Mexican Riviera cruise. It is fun trying all the different Martinis. My wife ordered the first four and I order the second (last) four so that we could share and both try each of the 8 different Mini Martinis.


Click on the above photo to watch the pouring of the 8 Mini Martinis simultaneously.

Believe it or not, but after the two Mini Martini flights we splurged and each got a Chocolate Martini! That and Espresso Martinis are really our favorites far and above any featured in the Mini Martini flights. If you look carefully at the above two photos you can see that the bartender painted each of our names in chocolate in each glass: Barbara and Stephen!

Notices We Received In Our Cabin


A notice about washing the balconies.


A notice about laundry services.

Another Towel Animal!


I think this one is a snake.

Click on each photo above for a larger image.

If in this report you see any typos, misspellings, factual errors or other types of errors, please let me know. Please include the web address (URL) of the report in which you found the error. Thank you! Send your email to:

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