Whew. What a day this was. Talk about best of times/worst of times. There were several moments today when I was ready to catch the first plane for home, but common sense prevailed and we will be boarding the Grand Princess tomorrow as planned. But let me start at the beginning...
The port at San Pedro
Antonio is the one on the bottom
I set an alarm for 6am this morning. I really wasn't certain how much noise the Pacific Princess would make docking in Los Angeles, and didn't want to chance oversleeping. I took a quick shower and packed up the over the door shoe rack and my toiletries, then went to the Club Restaurant for a final breakfast (mostly to say goodbye, but I had a fruit plate while I was there). I returned to the cabin by 7:30am and helped G rearrange the furniture back to its original configuration. Without looking back, we gathered up our hand luggage and closed the door behind us. Weep!
It was a gorgeous day today in Los Angeles, and we went right to the terrace behind the Panorama Buffet to soak up the sun, have breakfast (G) and open our final bottle of Veuve Clicquot. Champagne flutes and orange juice made it into a celebration, and we peacefully spent our remaining time enjoying the views and saying more goodbyes. And texting and phoning. All was fine with family and friends. Yay!
At 9:45am we went down to the gangway on Deck 5. It was most appropriate that the last person we saw was entertainment staffer Xavier; he is the one who had first greeted us on the pier in that pouring rain after 22 hours of travel in Papeete. The terminal in Los Angeles has an outside sidewalk at about the same level as the Pacific Princess' Promenade Deck, and as we walked down it, several more crew members yelled their farewells, with "goodbyes" echoing off the wall of the terminal and the ship. We even saw deck crewmember Antonio from Portugal who had helped us on and off tenders probably 75 times. He was painting the ship from some scaffolding, and turned around at the sound of people yelling to add his own wave. We will miss them all!!
Once in the terminal, ours was almost the last luggage remaining. We didn't even have to go through immigration, since the last port we had stopped at was in the US (Maui). The whole thing was quick and painless, which was good, because...well, half a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, remember? The last thing we saw in the cruise terminal was an electronic sign, urging us to come back soon.
Is tomorrow soon enough? ;-)
We caught the shuttle to the Crowne Plaza hotel, just a couple of minutes away, and were thrilled when they had a room ready for us already. At 10:30am! What a gift! We had never stayed at the Crown Plaza here at San Pedro before, but friends (who are the reason we added this cruise this winter, but I'll go into that later) were staying here and had gotten it on Priceline for $100 plus tax. While we were on the Pacific Princess, as part of all our rearrangement of travel plans, I had downloaded the Priceline app and made a bid for a 3 1/2 star hotel in San Pedro. It appeared that the Crowne Plaza was the only one. It wouldn't let me bid $100 for some reason (it was a slider, and it wouldn't stop at $100)...so I bid $98 and got it! The full price of our room would have been $189, so it was a very good deal.
Our room seems huge (after our cabin on the Pacific Princess) and very luxurious (after the Hotel Tiare Tahiti in Papeete). We happily dropped our luggage, collapsed on the bed and G mindlessly watched TV while I mindfully surfed the Internet using the hotel's pretty slow (but, relatively speaking for me, lightning fast) wifi. Joy! (This was a Best of Times moment). It didn't last long...
My friend, the twin's mom, texted me. In the time it took us to actually get off the ship and get to the hotel, McGee seriously injured his arm in PE. Ohhhh buddy!!!!!! This is not the first time...in fact, it's the fifth time he has broken an arm (at 11 years old!). The last time it happened, we were also on a cruise ship (quelle surprise!) and I received the news in an email late one evening. I remember waking G up and telling him I needed to go home NOW but would wait until we got to port the next day if I had to. Only a video from them showing that McGee was, in fact, happy and going to survive saved the cruise. (The boys love that story). And I had that same feeling again today. Helplessness at being so far away. Empathy...I'd rather it be me than him. Worry. Lots of worry. This was the worst of times.
It didn't help that my cold seemed to have worsened in the past day or so. Neither of us was sleeping well due to my cough. I was feeling pretty puny by the time we got to the hotel, and as I was waiting for updates from home I seemed to be getting worse. I actually wondered aloud to G if we should just go home. I don't want to be sick for the whole nine days of our Grand Princess cruise (and maybe McGee's injury had a little to do with it, too). G agreed that he didn't want me to be sick either, but thought going home to cold and snow was not the answer (again, quelle surprise).
Finally, we left our room to walk to a drugstore only half a mile away, but first checked in the little store in the hotel lobby. They had Robitussin multi symptom cold medicine, exactly what I would have purchased at a drugstore. (I knew I needed dextramethorphan to quelch this cough.) That was as far as we went, and within 20 minutes after taking the first dose, I was coughing only a small fraction as often as I had been.
About 3:30pm we did finally leave the hotel to walk down to the waterfront by the Maritime Museum to watch the Pacific Princess sail away for its World Cruise. Except it didn't sail on time...or an hour late...or even an hour and a half late. It was starting to get dark at that point (5:30pm-ish) and we still needed to get some dinner somewhere. We went into the nearby Acapulco Restaurant, which must be popular because there was quite a wait for a table. Not interested in waiting, we walked back to and past the Crowne Plaza to where a Subway was located. Subway...now we are back on totally familiar ground. We split a foot-long sandwich in our room while we watched from the window as the Pacific Princess finally sailed about 6pm.
Finally, it's fun to look back at how we've gotten ourselves to this point, to sleeping in a hotel near the pier in Los Angeles to go on a cruise on the Grand Princess to Mexico. At first we thought we'd be getting home from Papeete on December 19 and then going on the Royal Princess out of Fort Lauderdale from January 8 to February 7. Then we decided to extend on the Pacific Princess and cancelled our first 20 nights on the Royal Princess (after final payment...thank God for Princess insurance).
When I had said on this blog that we were staying on the Pacific Princess until Los Angeles, we still thought we'd fly home and go on the Royal Princess for just one 10-night cruise on January 28. We had already committed to moving to the Caribbean Princess on February 7, the same day that Royal Princess cruise would end. I was not thrilled with the prospect of that Royal Princess cruise. When we had originally booked January 28 for 20-nights, we had a great price, but when we added the Caribbean Princess on February 7 and shortened the Royal Princess to 10-nights, the price was ridiculous.
Then friends from Edmonton we'd cruised with years ago and met for breakfast in Fort Lauderdale last winter- Grant and his wife Carol and Phil and his wife Jan- emailed us that they'd be in Los Angeles today getting on the Grand Princess for a cruise tomorrow and could we meet for dinner? We looked at the cruise they were taking; for 9-nights it was half the price of the 10-night Royal Princess cruise. We could do more than dinner...we'd take the cruise with them. Yay!
It's since gotten even better. Friends (and brand new grandparents!) Suzan and Greg booked the cruise while we were in Papeete. And Carolyn and Ken, with whom I did the Dominica Cooking Exoerience tour last February emailed that they'd be on the Grand Princess, too. It's going to be a party, and it's the very best part of cruising.
After two doses of Robitussin, and having been assured of McGee's survival by receiving a photo of him with his splint, I'm feeling much more in a party mood. I haven't coughed in at least 15 minutes...we'll both sleep better tonight. And tomorrow...good friends and another cruise.
My life is good...but poor McGee. :-(