Happy Christmas, New Year and all around holiday greetings!
I’m actually starting this post the day after Christmas while waiting at the ophthalmologist's office for serum tears to be made (and, right off the bat, trying to spell ophthalmologist correctly has me ready to give up). G has convinced me that I should at least start to blog, but hold off publishing the posts until I’m confident I want to continue. That way if it grows too onerous, I’ll just stop and you’ll never know there was an aborted attempt to resume blogging. So, if you’re reading this, go me!
First, a quick catch up…
November was, as anticipated, busy with cross country championship travel. McGee was an absolute star, and had a breakout season that I was thrilled to witness. However, I was definitely cruise-d and hotel-ed out in the midst of it. In fact, on the flight home from California the weekend after disembarking the Regal Princess in Galveston, I was texting McGee on his flight home and discovered the NCAA Regionals race two weeks later wasn’t going to start until 11:30am (they usually start at 9am) and was also going to take place at a course very close to the airport. I immediately cancelled my hotel reservation and instead flew out and back the same day. (Living in the middle of the country, though pitiful for cruising, works well for most other domestic travel). When McGee moved up nine places in the final kilometer of the race to finish third, I knew he’d be going to nationals. And he did, held in Missouri the next week, where we watched him and his team run in what was the final cross country race of his career (though there’s still track season to go). And after it all I was left feeling a lot like I did when McGuy’s final basketball season ended…now what do we do for fun?
Well, go on a cruise to start. G and I left the next weekend to join the Royal Princess in San Pedro for first a 7-night cruise and then a 14-night cruise, both to Mexico. While our entire winter cruising season has been a patchwork of trips pieced together one at a time, that 14-night cruise, originally scheduled to be Princess’s 60th anniversary Love Boat cruise, had been in place for over a year. We didn’t care so much about the anniversary aspect (which is good, because that celebration was dropped)…we just liked the idea of a 14-night Mexico cruise with overnights in two ports, and knew the cross country season would be wrapped up by then. And when I actually had firm dates, we added the 7-night cruise preceding it.
We hadn’t been to the west coast of Mexico in ten years, and I was ready to return. We had no delusions of doing a lot of sightseeing, but I felt pretty certain we could count on warm days and sun, and, really, that is the whole point of our winter cruising. Staying on the ship on port days is fine if we sprinkle in just a smidge of tourist activities. And that is exactly how those three weeks unfolded.
I’m not going to recount the details of all of our days, but do want to share a few pics and fun things we did. First, I truly did suspect I might blog on the 14-night cruise. After all, that itinerary was a rarity, and a bit more interesting than the standard 7-night Mexico cruises (understanding, of course, that all these itineraries are interesting, exciting, adventurous the first, second and maybe even fourth time you do them, but after that… Just sayin’, you gotta find your purpose, and ours is no longer to do something blog-worthy in every port). However, I set the Patter on the cabin floor the second day of that cruise to take photo scans of each of its four pages and the app was being difficult (it sometimes is) and I actually had a visceral reaction to it all. So I set it aside and instead went up to the Lido to watch Sunday NFL games on MUTS and, in the most perfect timing, ran into Deb of the Deb Days blog. Deb didn’t discourage me from blogging but also didn’t make me feel one bit guilty for NOT blogging. Then the next day, cruise friend Cheryl texted me, and, she, too, didn’t discourage me from blogging but definitely didn’t make me feel one bit guilty for not blogging. So you got blog bupkus. 😉
But, in hindsight, we had a fantastic 21 nights on the Royal Princess. First, we flew out the day of the cruise (oh just stop!), because…well, I was hotel-ed out, remember? But we flew into Long Beach (LGB) on a very early direct flight so I assumed we’d have plenty of time. And it did all work out in the end, but getting there was exciting. We woke to our first snow of the season, the kind that is icy and blinding in the dark of night, severely hampering travel even before it starts to accumulate into the several inch category. Factor in some engine trouble (we used a car service) with dashboard warning lights and forced vehicle slowing, slowing, slowing as a result and I was pretty certain in that moment that we were going to be missing our first cruise and THIS was the reason we should have arrived a day early. It was a very bad situation turned miracle, as our vehicle limped to an airport hotel that had a shuttle leaving in (literally) two minutes. We got to our gate just before boarding started, were delayed an hour when we had to de-ice, and still arrived at the ship by 11am. See, it’s a good story, and so wasn’t worth stressing about (haha). And we have yet another reason to love LGB as an arrival airport for cruises out of Los Angeles.
And after that, it was all good. Well, it was mostly excellent with just a couple of negatives. We loved the Royal Princess, the crew that we interacted with was just fantastic (they treated us like family), the food was as decent as it gets these days though the buffet food was not hot at all, the entertainment, though not always to our taste, was good, and we especially loved the mariachi group, the Diamond Trio, who really were the rock stars of the cruise.
For the first cruise, we paid to upgrade to a specific balcony cabin that became available after re-thinking the inside cabin we had initially booked (fairly last minute, there wasn’t much choice), as it was located more forward than the bridge and was a long way from the Horizon Terrace we enjoy so much. For the second cruise we were in M525 which I had booked over a year ago, thinking it would be perfect. The cabin itself was perfect (ample storage) but it was located right under the pastry shop area in the buffet, and every night from 10pm to 11pm or so and again from 5am to 6am they were apparently juggling metal food pans. Unfortunately, they weren’t very good at it, and dropped them. A lot. And then they must have been frustrated by their lack of skill and kicked them across the floor, where they clashed into each other. We are highly tolerant of noise from above, and have long heard carts rolling and chairs being dragged, as we love Marina Deck (and Riviera Deck and Aloha Deck, depending on the ship) cabins, but this was a bit too much. ATWEP (always travel with ear plugs)!
We didn’t always get off the ship in ports, but generally did, if only to walk around a little. Still, we definitely had some cruise highlights, including a pulmonia ride each time we were in Mazatlan. One time we went to the Golden Zone, where we were invited to sit on a covered wooden deck overlooking the beach while we dined on the best fish tacos I’ve ever had and enjoyed the parasailing and sail boating taking place just offshore
The Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception
Sunset in Puerto Vallarta
I had forgotten how beautiful Loreto on the Sea of Cortez, is. Though we spent our day there simply walking along the waterfront, the real attraction was our sail away at sunset.
For our Cabo San Lucas overnight, we booked a trimaran sunset sail through Viator. It was simply perfect. The scenery, the whales, the chips, salsa and guacamole and there may have been a little liquid joy consumed, too. We’d love to do a repeat.
The next night we didn’t sail from Cabo until nearly 9pm (we could have done the sunset sail either night), and watched another beautiful sunset from Deck 18 on the Royal Princess.
El Arco taken after dark using the iPhone 15 Pro LiDAR technology with the camera app.
Snowfall during caroling in the Piazza
The Diamond Trio leading us in Feliz Navidad
Our weather was not too hot, not too humid and always, always sunny. It really could not have been a more perfect cruise experience. Luckily, we returned home December 20 to amazing weather of our own, record high temps, definitely not a white Christmas, though the snow is supposed to find us (again) just before we leave. Next up: 52 days of cruising on the Emerald Princess. It’s not exactly like the pre-COVID days, but it’s definitely trending that direction.
Life is good. :-)
