Carnival Pride Europe Cruise Review: Day 6 – Sea Dayfeatured

There are a few indisputable truths that I know to be true. There’s obviously life, death, taxes yadda yadda. I know that American Airlines will, seven times out of ten, mess with my flights. I know that, no matter how amazing or long or terrible my day is, the sun will still rise the next day. And I know when I’m struggling with sleep, being on a cruise ship will cure all of my insomnia.

I woke up on our first sea day feeling gloriously refreshed and rested for the first time in weeks. The Balearic seas were a little choppy, just enough to ensure a solid night’s sleep. And as an added bonus, the sun was shining outside our window and the day was open to whatever we wanted it to be.

We’d usually pack up our beach totes and head up to the sun deck for a few hours of tanning, but we got too much sun riding around the Hop On Hop Off bus in Barcelona so we decided to keep it cool and shady and start the day off with Sea Day Brunch in the Normandie dining room. I love that you can now check in on the app and get a notification when your table is ready. In our case, we only waited about five minutes — just long enough to get from our room to the dining room! We redeemed our Platinum brunch drink for a round of Bloody Mary’s and enjoyed our brunch with some sea views at the aft of the ship.

Next, we headed to the Fun Aboard Fun Ashore talk with Cruise Director Felipe. Felipe had a lot of energy, a lot of prizes to give away and a lot of fun tips to share, but with so many ports, we couldn’t stay for all of it so we hoped that they’d air the rest on the cabin television.

I grabbed a cold brew from Java Blue and we settled in at Piazza Cafe for my favorite sea day activity — Name That Musical Trivia! The Fun Squad host asked if we wanted easy or hard and I hollered for hard so apologies to anyone else who was playing— this is my Olympics! We had so much fun guessing and singing along and…we won with a score of 34/40 — seven points higher than the next best score. Victory!!

We celebrated our victory with a mid-afternoon nap and emerged a few hours later for a late lunch. Tacos from the Blue Iguana Cantina always hit the spot — I love watching them make the tortillas fresh on the press!

I headed up to the sun deck after lunch and easily found a lounger, the wide open waters in front of me with the tunes coming up from the Lido deck. It was a bit cooler and windy so the pools were mostly empty, but it was sunny and I couldn’t ask for anything else!

When I came back to the room, Mom and Stephanie were going over tours and excursion options for the next few days. We poured over our options as we got ready for our first formal night onboard. Dressing up isn’t mandatory, but I’ve basically lived in sweats these past few years since my work went fully remote and I love the opportunity to get dressed in something a little nicer than my usual yoga pants and oversized sweatshirt.

Thankfully, dinner was not a three and a half hour affair. It was slower than normal — we could definitely tell the ship was suffering for lack of sufficient dining staff — they forgot my salad and we noticed the servers were less apt to making small talk — but we were in around 5:45 and out just after 7:00, so we couldn’t complain much. The other thing we noticed was that things weren’t as…fresh…as they usually were. The bread was stale and up on the Lido deck, we noticed that the offerings were less than usual and many of the made to order items had to be modified (especially at the deli). That may be a byproduct of sailing in Europe with a menu developed in America, but it stood out.

After dinner, we headed down to the Taj Mahal for the first Playlist Production show onboard — Heart of Soul. It was a last-minute change from 88 Keys but it was high-energy and the cast was incredibly talented.

We headed back to the room after the show and noticed that the sun was still out — I’d forgotten how late the sun sets in Europe during the spring. It was nearing 9:30 before the sun started to set and for about 45 minutes afterwards, we were treated to the most beautiful dusk. The best part, though, was the beaming sun pillar that appeared after the sunset. A sun pillar is an optical phenomenon caused by light reflecting off ice crystals suspended in the clouds, and only appears where you can see the horizon. It was something we’ve never seen before and just so special. We stayed out on the balcony for over an hour just watching it shift colors until it disappeared.

With our first port day coming up the next day, we decided to call it an early night and turned in to watch Six Feet Apart in our cabin (the name of the movie certainly hits differently now!). We poured over the things we wanted to see in Gibraltar and went to sleep excited for a new day in a new port.