Dec 27 - Disembarkation in San Diego, CA

 Dec 27 - Disembarkation Day in San Diego, 

Dec 28 - Home again and able to get back into the Blog!  I love technology when it works!  I hate it when it doesn’t!

Dec 20 - Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

 Dec 20 - Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

We have arrived in Puerto Vallarta!  77° and sunny!

But first, we must report that, last evening, our toilet flushing was restored!  So no Presidential Suite!  No skipping down the hall in our nighties to our ‘satellite’ potty in the middle of the night!  Oh well!  It was fun to speculate!

Today we had intended to go to the Malecón, but it turned out to be much more difficult than we had anticipated.  First of all, it was a lot farther from where we are docked than we remembered from 2020; we would have had to take a cab there and back with them charging $25 per person each way!!!  

That seemed totally ridiculous, so we considered another option - a city bus!  That might have been ok, but we soon found out that the cruise lines and the merchants have created a long, circuitous route through a mini mall to get to the street!  After winding through the mall and then realizing that the bus stop was still a long way off, this old dame decided it would not work! 😢 because we still had the walk along the Malecón and the return trip to the ship ahead of us.

So - Plan B was to reboard the ship and enjoy a relaxing day!  After lunch, given the gorgeous weather, we spent the afternoon on the Promenade Deck, reading, walking, people watching, and playing on our iPads!

And now we will soon change for dinner and see what lovely wine they are serving!  I wonder what liqueur Boots will bring tonight!!  

Not much to report when we are just lazing around on the ship!  And tomorrow is another sea day!  We certainly aren’t complaining as we have had a couple of weather updates from home!! The saying ‘ a bad day on a ship is better than a good day at home?’ comes to mind!!

Ciao for now!

The Lazy, Well-Rested Travellers

❤️❤️❤️

Dec 19 - At Sea

 Dec 19 - At Sea

Another day at sea!  And yet another adventure!!!

We had breakfast around 9:00 AM and then Mary walked the deck!  Dorothy, the sloth, came back to the cabin to read!

We turned on the TV to catch the January 6th meeting on MSNBC and decided to order room service for lunch so we wouldn’t miss the proceedings. And that’s when the next adventure started!  Sometime after noon we discovered our toilet wouldn’t flush!  Hmmm….   

We called Guest Services and they said they would send a plumber!  Well, by 3:30 the plumber had not arrived and we were crossing our legs! So we called again and they assured us a plumber would be coming. At 4:00 Mary went in search of a public washroom.  And at 5:00 I went down to Guest Services, stopping at a washroom on my way! 

When I inquired about the plumber, Milos, the person on duty, had a note specifying the times I had called, and he told me it was a general problem in our zone?? and they were trying to figure it out.  His temporary solution was to offer us the use of a washroom in an empty cabin down the hall! He thought the problem would be fixed soon! What does ‘soon’ mean?  In an hour?  After dinner?  Next week?  

Oh, and by the way, he gave each of us a $25 onboard credit for our inconvenience!

So we went to dinner!  Delicious as usual!  Mary certainly enjoyed her Merlot!

By the way, we have a new best friend, Boots!  She is someone ‘in charge’ in the dining room.  The first night we mentioned we wanted to watch our sodium intake, so every night she comes by to bring the menu for the following night so we can make sure there is a lower sodium choice for our dinner.  Tonight she came to our table after our main course, and offered to get us more wine and I told her I thought I would have a Bailey’s instead of more wine!  She just stood there - and I said ‘ Is Bailey’s too boring?’ And she smiled and said ‘Let me make you a White Russian!’.  A few minutes later, along came this smooth, delicious beverage made from Vodka, Kahlua, and cream! Yum! Cheers to Boots!

So now after wine and a liqueur, we will have the courage to go prancing down the hall in our nighties to cabin #B622 in the middle of the night to pee!  Yee haw! How many adventures can one cruise have?!?!

Our next step, if this is not fixed tonight, will be to request another cabin!  (We would have done that earlier, but the prospect of packing up and moving is not so appealing!  And we like our cabin attendant, Franklin!)  In any case, I will practise my negotiating skills, in case I have to try and wangle the Presidential Suite!  ha ha!

Tomorrow we will arrive at our first port, Puerto Vallarta!  After checking out the toilet situation and having breakfast we plan to go ashore and stroll along the Malecón!

Stay tuned!

The Cross-legged Travellers!

🚽🤪🧻😳

Dec 18 - Day at Sea

 Dec 17 - Embarkation day!

At long last we are boarding the ship today for our Baja adventure!  When we arrived at the pier there was a line a mile long!  The taxi let us out in the middle of the drive in area and we saw an attendant in an area that looked like a luggage collection point.  So we sweet talked her into letting us leave our luggage, pleading that my mobility issues meant I could not possibly stand in that long line for an hour.  ( Sometimes it’s not so bad to use a cane!!! LOL) Then we made our way to the check in line, and because we had no luggage, they assumed we had come from the very long line!!!  It really  was true - I could not have stood in that line!! 

Once onboard we found our cabin.  Luggage arrived shortly after. We went to the dining room at our chosen time and were seated at a table for two which we had requested…. But it was in a row of twos, so we were fairly close to a couple with a 2 year old and another couple on on the other side - all from Southern  California.  Not as great a set up as on the British Isles cruise.

We are certainly in the minority wearing our masks, but that’s OK!

Once again - an early night!  We move the clocks ahead so it’s not that early!!

Dec 18 - Day at Sea

Today is the first of several sea days on this itinerary, taking us south along the Baja Peninsula to Puerto Vallarta. 

After breakfast we went to the Port Talk where the excursion team presented information about each of our ports.  So many of the offerings involve hiking, horseback riding or snorkelling!  We have chosen easier tours in two of the ports and may add another.

Back to the trough!!  We went to the buffet for lunch and then at 1:00 PM we were off to the movie!  It was called Ambulance!  It was an shoot-‘em up action thriller -  not something we would normally choose, but it was amazing to think about how they filmed it, how many stunt men it would take to make the film, how much it would have cost for all those wrecked cars etc!  

We had a short walk on the deck before heading back to our cabin to shower and get ready for the first ‘formal’ night!  The ship is quite full and apparently there are about 300 children aboard, so it seems a lot busier than the last couple of cruises we’ve been on.  The ship is all decked out for the holidays,  crew are friendly and obviously happy to be back at work after what must have been a tough couple of years.

Tonight we put the clocks ahead one more hour, and tomorrow is another sea day as we sail to our first port of call!  Weather has been mainly sunny and about 63° F (17°C)!!  

The Happy Travellers

😃😃

Dec 16 - San Diego, CA

Today’s adventure… 

              the world famous San Diego Zoo!

After breakfast this morning we headed out to catch the Hop on Hop off Trolley Tour; the stop was a short walk from our hotel.  We had a great driver, Mary Beth - known as MB, who entertained us with the commentary along the route.

San Diego is quite a beautiful city.  As we crossed the Coronado Bridge we were able to see the harbour and how the city’s development occurred. We got off the Trolley at Balboa Park, a huge park that contains 17 museums. It was a fairly long walk from the bus stop through an area of the park that took us to a walkway to the world famous San Diego Zoo.  

Click this link to see the layout of this great park:

https://sandiegozoowildlifealliance.org/sites/default/files/2022- 11/11_01_22_SDZ22-Map-Front-no-qr_ForWeb.pdf

The zoo has several options for people with mobility challenges; we were grateful to be able to take advantage of the guided bus tour which gave us an overview of the different areas.  We caught glimpses of different animals as we drove through several sections of the zoo.  We also rode the Kangaroo Express taking us on the edge of four distinct areas, Africa Rocks, Elephant Odyssey,  the Northern Frontier and Asian Passage.

After completing those two included tours we stayed in the area around the Urban Jungle to observe the hippos, the giraffes, the zebra, and a cheetah.  From there we did the Monkey Trail and Treetops Walk to see several different primates…  baboons, mandrills, capuchins, gorillas, and others. 

By the time we finished that loop, I was done!  It was really an interesting four hours and fun to be so close to so many different species.  We took a cab back to the hotel and flopped on our beds!

It’s been a pleasant introduction to San Diego.  Tomorrow is Embarkation day!

The Tired Travellers

 

Dec 15 - San Diego

 Dec 15 - We’re Off!

After spending the night at the Holiday Inn across from the airport, our 4:15 AM wake up call got us to the 5:00 AM shuttle.  The airport was busy!!!  Long security lines and long, snaking lines in the Customs and Immigration hall!!  But the magic Special Assistance wheelchair allowed us to avoid all the chaos as we were wizzed past all the other people!  

Our flight was delayed by almost an hour, but by shortly after 9:00 we were on our way to SanDiego, California.  It was a pleasant flight and we arrived to cool temps and sunny skies.

We took the shuttle service to our hotel with a Southwest Airlines crew!  While we waited for them to check in we found ourselves at what we thought was a concierge desk to ask about the hop on hop off trolley.  Well…. We ended up agreeing to go to one of those time share presentation gimmicks!!

We let the guy at the desk rattle on about sightseeing and all the free stuff he could get for us!!  Next thing we knew we were in an Uber on our way to the presentation center for Wyndham!!  Yep!  Gullible!  BUT we got free hop on hop off trolley and free zoo entrance for tomorrow!!  So this will get us to the Zoo without taking a taxi, and we can do our sightseeing on the trolley.  Value of about $100 US each!!

The only downside was having to listen to the salesman try to convince us to spend tens of thousands of US dollars to buy points that would get us travel time!!!  We kept telling him we only like to cruise and our ‘window’ for travelling is not 25 years!  At the end, when he asked on a scale of 1-10, how likely we would be to go to another presentation in the future and we said ‘0’, he said he would get us an Uber back to the hotel!

By the time the guy finished with us we were exhausted from being up early and travelling for hours and we just  wanted to get to our room!

After a bit of a rest we went across the street and had a quick bite, and now we are looking at our watches every 5 minutes to see if it’s bedtime!!!  6:00 PM…. 6:05 PM…feels like midnight!

We never know when we set out what the next adventure will be!!!

Hopefully tomorrow will be an enjoyable day at the world famous San Diego Zoo!!

Night! Night!

🥱💤🥱