We had some time to kill from when our flight landed and until we could board, we met up with Mark's Uncle and his wife who live in the area. They took us out to breakfast to this 50's style restaurant on the Santa Monica Pier called Ruby's. We split the cinnamon french toast as neither of us were very hungry, and the calorie count on the menu for that was 1200. So splitting it made us feel better. From the pier, we were able to see our ship off in the distance. David and Aileen were also generous enough to drive us to the port which saved us having to pay the cruiseline's transfer service fees.
The waiting/boarding period to get on was not bad at all. Just in case you're not already ecstatic to get on a cruises ship, they play beach type music to hype you up. Everyone is super friendly and very un-TSA like (until you de-board). I felt a little overdressed compared to what other people were wearing but we weren't sure if we we would get our luggage to change for dinner in time or not, so we played it safe. Come to find out, the first night was "come as you are" dress code. As a lot of people will report, they don't really enforce the dress code much anyways. But we didn't want to be the white-trash people of our table. We were really a little over dressed at our table most nights.
Here is an overall summary. Those who really want to know the details will probably hear them. For most of you that are just interested in pictures, I tried to pick the best ones of the trip.
Crossing the bridge. One more check of our sign&sail cards and we were free for 4 days!
Lido deck. Mark hates that name for some reason. So this is also known as deck 10. Just to my right is the little pool and 2 hot tubs. None of which we used but others looked like they were having fun.
Our stateroom. The bathroom was super tiny. But the room itself wasn't as bad as people warned us it would be. And our window was decent size too. The only downside is that we were awake by 7am every morning.
Surprised Mark and pre-ordered a plate of chocolate covered strawberries and delicious rice krispy-like cakes. The white ones were the best!
Our first night's towel animal (otter I think)
Sailing away from our ship. Pretty cool photo if you ask me.
It was warmer than I thought so after we got off the boat, I took off the windbreaker.
There's not much of a beach on the Avalon side of Catalina. The tall circular building was originally a casino which didn't mean gambling back then. It means meeting place really. We were glad we didn't walk down to explore it. Our dinner table friends said it was a disappointment. If we were to go again, we'd do the glass-bottom boat tour. There's not a lot to do here if you don't have an excursion. We shopped and browsed for about 2 hours and got back onto the boat.
Room service is included in your fare minus gratuity. So we had some fun and ordered room service for our day in Mexico. We got fruit, bagels and pastries. My favorite was their lemon centered pastry. It's a good thing our cruise was only 4 days. In those days alone I indulged too much with those! Their lemonade was also pretty yummy too. It has a homemade taste and texture to it that makes it pretty addicting. The unlimited soft serve ice cream was a little disappointing. I think the Cannon Center's is better.
Waiting to get off the boat in Mexico. Apparently it has the 2nd or 3rd biggest flag. Right behind us is the mini golf course. We tried to play on Thursday but the ship was too rocky and it was just too darn cold!
Horseback riding at Los Bandidos ranch! Mark unfortunately got the lazy horse so his knees were bruised from having to "encourage" the horse so much. My horse (junior) was perfect and mellow.
We survived Ensenada and the crazy bartering in the shops. I wasn't very good at it, and although you can get great deals, I don't like to be begged and pushed into buying something. I made one shop keeper angry because I was looking at shoes and decided not to get them after all. He had them in a bag, willing to let us only pay $20 for them and we walked out.
Best chocolate cake ever. Sadly we weren't hungry enough to devour it all. It was amazing though. I wish I could find a place that had copycat recipes to some of their foods. I also fell in love with their chocolate melting cake...if you've cruised with Carnival, you know what I'm talking about.
Our last night in the dining room. Yes that is water in the glasses. We actually sat with a nice Christian couple our age. The only wine they drank was one night of which it was their anniversary. The other couple was a bit more party-ish and into drinking. But we all got along just fine and enjoyed our nights at dinner.
Baked Alaska. Wish I got this on the first night because it was pretty amazing. Yellow, white and chocolate cake with strawberry ice cream, and a whipped topping on the ends.
Our last 2 towel animals. On the last day of the cruise we actually went to a towel animal folding class. I don't think they were interested in hiring us after seeing our work. It is really quite an art to master! In case you didn't know, towel creatures are actually made with a large towel and a smaller towel for the face of the animal. The bodies are all pretty similar. It's the faces that are tricky. Our steward had our dog sitting down, which made a lot more sense. They tried to have our dogs stand up in the towel animal class and mine failed horribly.
Because we are not big party animals, it took us a little bit and some stretching of ourselves to go out and do some activities. They had little events like US trivia, and Michael Jackson song trivia. (Pretty sure I would have won MJ trivia but this one guy had his family of 6 helping. Not cool man!) The 2nd round of song clips were much longer which gave the answers away more. I think my favorite part about the kid in charge of US trivia was he was Australian. So when they had to have a tie breaker, the trivia wasn't really about the United States since he didn't know a whole lot. But how can you be angry at an innocent kid who's far away from home for the summer?
We also went to The Gender Game and watched a Disco Dance class in their main show lounge. Although I was tempted to participate in the games, I was glad I didn't as they have you do some pretty embarrassing stuff (as well as awkward/inappropriate). But I guess when you're drunk, you don't care much as was the obvious case with a lot of people on board.
The ship's dance team also put on two shows. One was a Latin music celebration, the other was called Shout, which was a tribute to the early days of rock n roll. I have to give the dancers credit. The stage was at the front of the ship so it was pretty rocky during the performances. I couldn't imagine the practice it takes to do a double and triple pirouette and not fall over dizzy. I was just a little light headed trying to go up the stairs! I didn't worry though because even if I looked a little tipsy, we would have just looked like the more extreme end of drinkers walking about on the ship.
We had a blast on our cruise. It was crazy how fast the days go. It's a great cruise for first timers, just in case you're not sure that you'd like the cruising scene. Plus, even if you're not into gambling or drinking, we still found some activities to do. And there's always the wonderful fact that you can sleep whenever you want! We wouldn't say we came off "addicted" to cruising. But we are hoping perhaps we can go again maybe with friends in 3 years to celebrate when Mark is done with school.
