skylynx
DIS Sponsor in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2003
Cast of Characters
DH and I are fifty-something Disney fans who met at Disney and had our Disneymoon there. We are platinum Castaway Club members, annual passholders at WDW, and DVC members. So expect some Disney-loving bias. We have taken our now college-aged kids on many cruises, but this time they stayed home. We live in Loveland, Colorado.
Pre-cruise Day
Spent our first few hours in San Diego at the Miramar Air Show. DH is an aviation enthusiast and so off we went. The traffic getting into the base was pretty bad, and even though it was fairly early in the day, we had to park incredibly far away and hike up a long hill to get to the show. Once in, it was like most airshows…hot, hot, hot with no shade except under display planes’ wings. My mood improved when we found the beer garden. With a tent over my head, a place to sit, and a craft beer in my hand, the ear-deafening fly bys became way more tolerable.
I'm being a good sport despite the heat. Plus, we'd been to the beer garden.
Using the phone GPS we found our way to Shelter Island and our hotel for the night, the Best Western Island Palms. When we checked in, the lady working told us we got an upgrade. Bonus! We had a large room with a balcony overlooking the marina where we could spend lots of time drooling over the sailboats. Shelter Island is a very thin strip of land, maybe only 100 yards across at some points. On the side opposite the marina is the channel most of the boats, including Wonder, used to access the port area. So we were literally surrounded by water and boats! For dinner we walked on the harbor side path to Bali Hai. This was a bucket list item for us as tiki enthusiasts. They are famous for their Mai-Tai’s which have so much alcohol in them there are warnings all over the menu. So naturally, I had to have one. It was so strong I ended up pouring half my water into it so I could finish it. Then I had to have a Paralyzing Puffer Fish cocktail chaser, just because I wanted to drink something with a name like that. It was actually far less paralyzing than the Mai Tai. We were gifted a window table over the harbor where we could watch people coming in to “dock and dine” on their boats, most of which probably cost more than our house. It was a great meal and a good way to celebrate the excitement to come!
That's my souvenir tiki mug of "the Goof" to add to my collection of mugs!
Embarkation Day
Woke up at four a.m. and decided since we were awake anyway to go see if we could watch Wonder sailing into the harbor. We used two different websites which track the exact locations of ships and, sure enough, she came sailing big and bright but silently into the channel. We were watching from a fishing pier directly opposite our hotel. Pretty neat to see her knowing we were going to get on our cruise in few hours! We’ve watched Disney ships leaving Port Canaveral a couple times, but never the same day we were about to board! So now we are too excited to sleep, so we go eat an early breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant and drooled over the sailboats in the marina some more.
Sometime before five AM
Then it was time to bulldog our 150 pounds of suitcases into the rental car and return it. We figured we’d drop the bags off at the port first, then return the car so we didn’t have to deal with that ballast. The original plan was to take the rental car shuttle back to the airport and get a taxi to the ship, but when we saw how close the cruise port is to the airport and rental car place, we decided to do a first for us…we WALKED from the rental car place to the cruise terminal! Our day bags weren’t too heavy or clumsy, and there is a sidewalk nearly all the way. Plus you get to walk right on the harbor’s edge the whole way (and drool over the sailboats). Wonder quickly comes into your sight, so you have the incentive of her as a target, too. We paused for a couple minutes before going into the terminal to look at the marine museum boats on display. That’s one neat thing about nautical museums…you can make people pay admission to go aboard the ships, but you can’t stop them from looking at the for free! There was the cast iron Star of India and one of the ships used in the Master and Commander and Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Though rain was forecast, there were only slight little bits of sprinkles and by the time we went to go check in for the cruise the skies were clearing. We had brought only one bottle of wine which got inspected a couple times going through security to see if it was really wine. After the cushy atmosphere of Port Canaveral, the waiting area looked like an airplane hangar with folding chairs lined up by the hundreds. We were happy to have our first boarding group ticket clutched in our hands because we got to board around 11:30…pretty early! We quickly admired the pumpkin tree in the lobby, then continued on up to Beach Blanket buffet…it is our tradition to go right away to the buffet, get a good table with a view, and then take a big sigh of relief that we’ve made it! When you think of all the things that have to go right to get you to that point (besides paying for everything in advance) like having everyone stay healthy and the plane ride going as planned and there being no weather issues it’s pretty amazing.
We are getting close to Wonder!
Felt like a refugee camp compared to Port Canaveral
Here are our door decorations!
Our stateroom was 6624 on the starboard side by the aft elevators. It was a great spot, although a couple times a day (and night, unfortunately) there was this ferocious sound lasting a few seconds that sounded like a dragon coughing up a hairball. Something in the pipes, maybe. Went to the DVC member celebration for free booze and water, then the muster drill. Ours was in Animator’s Palate so it was mostly people playing with their phones during the drill and crew members telling people to stop looking at their phones. The sailaway party was good…we are 19 for 19 having good weather for sailaway parties. The ship’s horn went off just at the end of the countdown (which I love) and we pulled just out of the dock soon after…but then…the ship stopped moving. For a while. Then it started to turn back to the dock. Oh no! Then it stopped for a while. Then it spun around again really, really slowly. We imagined all sorts of strange explanations for this bizarre behavior. Something wrong with the ship? Argh! Something wrong with a passenger? Naw, they’d have sent out a pilot boat for him or her. Some kind of threat to the ship? Then they’d move her away from the city. Finally, Wonder started moving forward faster than the jellyfish below and we were on our way. Later we found out once a year or so the ships all have to have their compasses recalibrated by spinning around and taking readings. Wish they would have told us…there were lots of people afraid something was wrong with the ship and envisioning all sorts of horrific scenarios involving Isis.
Facing San Diego
Sailaway countdown!
First look at the Pumpkin Tree...it later got Jack O Lanterns and then they eventually lit up!
Here's the cute logo of the Halloween cruises!
Ensenada
This is one of the original “Love Boat” ports. We had a very early arrival and a relatively short time in port, so we opted to do the bargain $22 a head city shopping tour for adults only, which happily turned out to be the unofficial drinking tour of Ensenada. First we visited the former Hotel Riviera del Pacifico which is currently a cultural center with a very interesting and sordid history…it was built so Americans would have a place to go to get hammered during prohibition. People like Al Capone were investors and Jack Dempsey a manager (and probably a heck of a bouncer), so that will give you an idea about the kind of place this was. Allegedly, this was the actual, honest to goodness, verifiable birthplace of the margarita drink. Our tour guide made us all margaritas which tasted very good to me as a non-tequila enthusiast (largely because there was almost no alcohol in them-mostly lime juice). After that it was off to a winery for wine tasting, then a city street for beer. We had some time to walk around and be approached by every single shop owner we walked by including a guy selling cigars and a very pushy woman trying to hawk what we determined must be the official serapes of the NFL. All licensing fees surely paid. Not! What was really amusing was the frequent appearance of “Viagraman” statues outside pharmacies…he is kind of a super-hero in Mexico where you don’t need prescriptions for the little blue pill (or most any other pill, for that matter.) You could have your picture taken with this very, um, overstated fellow!
This one was in Cabo, but it was the same super hero.
Hotel Riviera del Pacifico
Our Tour Guide/Bartender/Architect making us Margaritas
Wine tasting at Santo Tomas
Papas and Beer...the most expensive place to buy beer in Ensenada. And we were there.
Resisted the temptation to buy bottles of vanilla at the last chance souvenir stand before boarding the ship as the layer of dust on them was so thick they probably expired in the eighties. Watched the sea lions from our verandah a while then realized after pushing away from the dock we were stopped again. For quite a long time. Now what? Eventually there was an announcement that the captain had felt a suspicious vibration and wanted divers to come check the propellers out, so we were going to anchor and hang around until we knew if there was damage. By this time, DH and I were sitting in Diversions eating wings, drinking beer, and watching a football game on the satellite tv. Nobody looked too worried. I was, because we were so looking forward to going to Cabo and I figured if there was something wrong, they wouldn’t take the ship further away from port, they’d just limp back to San Diego. I fretted over that a while before we looked out the big portholes and saw the ship was actually rocking along again. Didn’t turn out to be anything at all, so that was good. I bought the Halloween on the High Seas logo sweatshirt today and was very glad I did, as pretty much all the adult Halloween merch was gone by the end of the first full day of the cruise.
These clowns were right under our verandah.
Day at Sea
At breakfast at Parrot Cay, we had a cruise brochure moment where we could actually see dolphins jumping around in the water right from our table while we sipped our coffee.
Spent a glorious day occupying various horizontal surfaces and reading a sailing manual. Dressed up for Halloween and had some fun pictures taken. The Halloween tree now has lit Jack O Lanterns! Then quickly changed into our glad rags (tuxedo and gown) for an elegant dinner at Palo. Afterwards, on our Love Boat-esque stroll around the upper deck, my DH proposed to me again…with a beautiful star sapphire ring! He said lots of people renew their wedding vows, but we should renew the proposal. Of course, I said yes!
DH is, of course, Indiana Jones and I'm a German doll from It's a Small World
Cabo San Lucas
Glorious but hot day even early in the morning. We tendered over to the marina and started to wander down to Cabo Wabo Cantina because last time we were here, there was a vendor selling the hammered tin stars you can put lights inside of. We have a collection of them hanging over part of our deck at home and I wanted to add to it. Most of the vendor booths in the area in front of Cabo Wabo were vacant…perhaps their losses in the last hurricane were too great. So we partook in Cabo Wabo’s happy hour (which started at 9 am, when we arrived.) They had free Wi-Fi so we drank Pacificos and lime while catching up on Facebook and emails and checking up on our dogs and horses. From there, we walked further downtown to the fire department because they have these great t-shirts that support the fire brigade. I found a star in a shop and negotiated with the owner. He said the star was $55 and I said no and started walking away. Then he said $48 and I told him we saw many in Ensenada for $35. He said Ensenada has cheaper prices and I said then why wouldn’t I want to get it there, instead? I kept walking out and he said “ok, $35.” I probably could have gotten him to $25 but I don’t begrudge these people this way to make a living. I bought a lovely white blouse with gorgeous colorful embroidery all over it for $25 from a rickety old woman in a roasting hot booth after she asked for $28. I didn’t have the heart to go lower than that. Maybe I’m just a sucker, I don’t know. It just didn’t feel fun to bargain her down the way it did with the guy in the bigger store where I bought the star (who was asking $40 for a very similar blouse.) Wandered back to the marina area trying not to bang into everyone with my star and found the same little bar we enjoyed drinks in five years ago last time we were here. It used to be called DJoint but is now called Karlito’s. We got a table overlooking the marina and for $10 got a bucket of Corona’s, chips and salsa. That’s kind of the standard deal in Cabo around the marina, but this place was very airy and there was plenty to look at with boats coming in and out and sea lions and pelicans! We talked to the new owner who invited us to go on a private tour to Los Arcos in his boat. Um, maybe next time. We had an early departure time of 3:30 or so, and didn’t want to head back when the tender lines got too full. Got some great photos of Wonder on the tender ride back. She is a magnificent ship. Dropped off my loot in our stateroom, had lunch and then drank wine on our verandah while sailing out of Cabo. Since we were on the starboard side, we had a great view of the arches. A fine way to spend a Wednesday! Got dressed as pirates and then watched the show with the ventriloquist that uses a snake and a tennis ball as props. He was funny. Queued up for a photo with Jack Sparrow and watched the fireworks after dinner at the deck party. Another wondrous day in paradise!
Pretty nice view for breakfast!
At Karlito's on the marina.
Here I am with my star.
The Marina area.
On the tender heading back to Wonder.
Los Arcos
How lovely is this?
Hanging out with Jack
Day at Sea
Brunch at Palo this morning…oh my. We have done this long enough to know to pace ourselves but I still end up overindulging. After brunch we were treated to a private galley tour of Triton’s galley with the Chef de Cuisine. This was arranged by the food director who we had met on several cruises over the last couple years. DCL used to do scheduled galley tours when we first started cruising, but eventually stopped them probably because too many people want to do it and it is a very small space to move groups through. We felt very honored to get this privilege! After that tour we went on the Art of the Theme Show tour where we learned all sorts of things we never picked up on before about the ship.
While watching football in Diversions, Captain Robert came in and after speaking with a bartender, saw our friendly faces and came over to our table. We talked a few minutes about the cruise and other cruises we had been on and then he pulled up a bar stool and we enjoyed conversing about what’s different about DCL for the next fifteen minutes. What a charming man he was. How lucky could we get?
Had our last dinner with our crack server team of Ruben and Londrion who were kind of indifferent to us the first day but warmed up immediately when they realized we loved the crayon puzzle games.
Here's our servers on pirate night
Because we wanted to get an early start on our day in San Diego upon disembarkation, we decided to just drag our monster bags off the ship ourselves rather than claim them in the terminal and I am very glad we did, though we had some scary moments wondering if we could pack everything in. The star was a particular challenge.
Disembarkation Day
DH had to go to the TSA immigration check at 7:15 as he has a permanent resident card. It was so weird, because of all the times we have cruised, he hasn’t had to do that. Once we all had to do it when visiting St. Thomas, but never had to again. There was absolute chaos trying to get off the ship. Supposedly, everyone who had sent their bags off to claim in the terminal was supposed to wait until their character was called to exit the boat. That did not happen. We tried to get down to deck 3 from the deck 6 aft elevators and every elevator that arrived was packed to the gills. We dragged and bumped the luggage down to deck 3 only to find a complete gridlock of people waiting to get into breakfast and others just waiting for their character to be called. We ended up having to go back up the elevator to deck four, walk to mid ship, and then go down the stairs there. Then we could easily get to the express walk off line. Once there, it was then a challenge to get off with the bags because although there are ramps for much of the exit from the ship, at the end there are two flights of hard metal stairs and people were losing control of their suitcases and they were tumbling down and banging into other people. The elevators were, as you might expect, tiny and excruciatingly slow. We managed to find an elevator at the far end that no one was willing to walk to and so exited pretty quick. A taxi took us to the Dollar Rental car pick up place and we were in the car on the way to the zoo by 9:30. Pretty good! The San Diego Zoo is a marvel with koalas and pandas and a very lush environment. And Zoo Brew…where you can get draft craft beer. That made the near 100 degree day more bearable. They even have an aerial tramway…haven’t been on one of those in years! The tramway and buses that take you up the steep hills are included in the price of admission. For a Friday morning, the zoo was crowded as it was during San Diego school holidays and kids visit free for the month of October. We will definitely go back when it is cooler. Went to check back into our hotel and cooled off in the pool for a while and had our dinner overlooking the marina with palm trees all around us!
La Jolla and Brewery Day
We are the kind of folks who are willing to drag ourselves out of bed to get the early bird advantage, and we did this heading up to La Jolla. It’s less than a half hour from Shelter Island but parking is a challenge there so it’s good to go early. We were able to park right overlooking the cliffs and beach with tons of sea lions and spent the morning listening to them bark and watching them and the seals and people trying to swim in the vicious surf. Another day of draining heat, so stopped at both the La Jolla and the Coronado brewing companies for craft beer samples. Refreshed, we drove over to Coronado Island and had one more drink at the Sun Deck bar at the famed Hotel del Coronado for the sunset. Even at 5:30 on a Saturday night we were able to find free parking a ten minute walk from the hotel. So cross that one off the bucket list! It takes forever to drive from that side of the city past the airport and back to Shelter Island even without traffic because of the profusion of traffic lights which seemed to all be red, both ways. Brought all the suitcases into our hotel room for re-organizing in the morning.
Things got a little tense on the return morning despite our deftly being able to pack everything and keep all the bags well under the weight limits (yes, we travel with a luggage scale) because Southwest was having a technical meltdown and although we had checked in, we hadn’t yet printed our boarding passes. We’d planned to do that in the hotel lobby when we checked out. After about ten attempts, I was able to get a mobile boarding pass on my phone so we could use the skycap to check our bags…you can just imagine what the line to check in manually looked like at the regular counters. As our plane ascended out of San Diego, we got one more look at the city and even Wonder in port for the beginning of the next cruise. As usual, the only antidote to post cruise depression is having another cruise on the horizon or another booking reserved, and happily for us, we have both!
DH and I are fifty-something Disney fans who met at Disney and had our Disneymoon there. We are platinum Castaway Club members, annual passholders at WDW, and DVC members. So expect some Disney-loving bias. We have taken our now college-aged kids on many cruises, but this time they stayed home. We live in Loveland, Colorado.
Pre-cruise Day
Spent our first few hours in San Diego at the Miramar Air Show. DH is an aviation enthusiast and so off we went. The traffic getting into the base was pretty bad, and even though it was fairly early in the day, we had to park incredibly far away and hike up a long hill to get to the show. Once in, it was like most airshows…hot, hot, hot with no shade except under display planes’ wings. My mood improved when we found the beer garden. With a tent over my head, a place to sit, and a craft beer in my hand, the ear-deafening fly bys became way more tolerable.
I'm being a good sport despite the heat. Plus, we'd been to the beer garden.
Using the phone GPS we found our way to Shelter Island and our hotel for the night, the Best Western Island Palms. When we checked in, the lady working told us we got an upgrade. Bonus! We had a large room with a balcony overlooking the marina where we could spend lots of time drooling over the sailboats. Shelter Island is a very thin strip of land, maybe only 100 yards across at some points. On the side opposite the marina is the channel most of the boats, including Wonder, used to access the port area. So we were literally surrounded by water and boats! For dinner we walked on the harbor side path to Bali Hai. This was a bucket list item for us as tiki enthusiasts. They are famous for their Mai-Tai’s which have so much alcohol in them there are warnings all over the menu. So naturally, I had to have one. It was so strong I ended up pouring half my water into it so I could finish it. Then I had to have a Paralyzing Puffer Fish cocktail chaser, just because I wanted to drink something with a name like that. It was actually far less paralyzing than the Mai Tai. We were gifted a window table over the harbor where we could watch people coming in to “dock and dine” on their boats, most of which probably cost more than our house. It was a great meal and a good way to celebrate the excitement to come!
That's my souvenir tiki mug of "the Goof" to add to my collection of mugs!
Embarkation Day
Woke up at four a.m. and decided since we were awake anyway to go see if we could watch Wonder sailing into the harbor. We used two different websites which track the exact locations of ships and, sure enough, she came sailing big and bright but silently into the channel. We were watching from a fishing pier directly opposite our hotel. Pretty neat to see her knowing we were going to get on our cruise in few hours! We’ve watched Disney ships leaving Port Canaveral a couple times, but never the same day we were about to board! So now we are too excited to sleep, so we go eat an early breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant and drooled over the sailboats in the marina some more.
Sometime before five AM
Then it was time to bulldog our 150 pounds of suitcases into the rental car and return it. We figured we’d drop the bags off at the port first, then return the car so we didn’t have to deal with that ballast. The original plan was to take the rental car shuttle back to the airport and get a taxi to the ship, but when we saw how close the cruise port is to the airport and rental car place, we decided to do a first for us…we WALKED from the rental car place to the cruise terminal! Our day bags weren’t too heavy or clumsy, and there is a sidewalk nearly all the way. Plus you get to walk right on the harbor’s edge the whole way (and drool over the sailboats). Wonder quickly comes into your sight, so you have the incentive of her as a target, too. We paused for a couple minutes before going into the terminal to look at the marine museum boats on display. That’s one neat thing about nautical museums…you can make people pay admission to go aboard the ships, but you can’t stop them from looking at the for free! There was the cast iron Star of India and one of the ships used in the Master and Commander and Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Though rain was forecast, there were only slight little bits of sprinkles and by the time we went to go check in for the cruise the skies were clearing. We had brought only one bottle of wine which got inspected a couple times going through security to see if it was really wine. After the cushy atmosphere of Port Canaveral, the waiting area looked like an airplane hangar with folding chairs lined up by the hundreds. We were happy to have our first boarding group ticket clutched in our hands because we got to board around 11:30…pretty early! We quickly admired the pumpkin tree in the lobby, then continued on up to Beach Blanket buffet…it is our tradition to go right away to the buffet, get a good table with a view, and then take a big sigh of relief that we’ve made it! When you think of all the things that have to go right to get you to that point (besides paying for everything in advance) like having everyone stay healthy and the plane ride going as planned and there being no weather issues it’s pretty amazing.
We are getting close to Wonder!
Felt like a refugee camp compared to Port Canaveral
Here are our door decorations!
Our stateroom was 6624 on the starboard side by the aft elevators. It was a great spot, although a couple times a day (and night, unfortunately) there was this ferocious sound lasting a few seconds that sounded like a dragon coughing up a hairball. Something in the pipes, maybe. Went to the DVC member celebration for free booze and water, then the muster drill. Ours was in Animator’s Palate so it was mostly people playing with their phones during the drill and crew members telling people to stop looking at their phones. The sailaway party was good…we are 19 for 19 having good weather for sailaway parties. The ship’s horn went off just at the end of the countdown (which I love) and we pulled just out of the dock soon after…but then…the ship stopped moving. For a while. Then it started to turn back to the dock. Oh no! Then it stopped for a while. Then it spun around again really, really slowly. We imagined all sorts of strange explanations for this bizarre behavior. Something wrong with the ship? Argh! Something wrong with a passenger? Naw, they’d have sent out a pilot boat for him or her. Some kind of threat to the ship? Then they’d move her away from the city. Finally, Wonder started moving forward faster than the jellyfish below and we were on our way. Later we found out once a year or so the ships all have to have their compasses recalibrated by spinning around and taking readings. Wish they would have told us…there were lots of people afraid something was wrong with the ship and envisioning all sorts of horrific scenarios involving Isis.
Facing San Diego
Sailaway countdown!
First look at the Pumpkin Tree...it later got Jack O Lanterns and then they eventually lit up!
Here's the cute logo of the Halloween cruises!
Ensenada
This is one of the original “Love Boat” ports. We had a very early arrival and a relatively short time in port, so we opted to do the bargain $22 a head city shopping tour for adults only, which happily turned out to be the unofficial drinking tour of Ensenada. First we visited the former Hotel Riviera del Pacifico which is currently a cultural center with a very interesting and sordid history…it was built so Americans would have a place to go to get hammered during prohibition. People like Al Capone were investors and Jack Dempsey a manager (and probably a heck of a bouncer), so that will give you an idea about the kind of place this was. Allegedly, this was the actual, honest to goodness, verifiable birthplace of the margarita drink. Our tour guide made us all margaritas which tasted very good to me as a non-tequila enthusiast (largely because there was almost no alcohol in them-mostly lime juice). After that it was off to a winery for wine tasting, then a city street for beer. We had some time to walk around and be approached by every single shop owner we walked by including a guy selling cigars and a very pushy woman trying to hawk what we determined must be the official serapes of the NFL. All licensing fees surely paid. Not! What was really amusing was the frequent appearance of “Viagraman” statues outside pharmacies…he is kind of a super-hero in Mexico where you don’t need prescriptions for the little blue pill (or most any other pill, for that matter.) You could have your picture taken with this very, um, overstated fellow!
This one was in Cabo, but it was the same super hero.
Hotel Riviera del Pacifico
Our Tour Guide/Bartender/Architect making us Margaritas
Wine tasting at Santo Tomas
Papas and Beer...the most expensive place to buy beer in Ensenada. And we were there.
Resisted the temptation to buy bottles of vanilla at the last chance souvenir stand before boarding the ship as the layer of dust on them was so thick they probably expired in the eighties. Watched the sea lions from our verandah a while then realized after pushing away from the dock we were stopped again. For quite a long time. Now what? Eventually there was an announcement that the captain had felt a suspicious vibration and wanted divers to come check the propellers out, so we were going to anchor and hang around until we knew if there was damage. By this time, DH and I were sitting in Diversions eating wings, drinking beer, and watching a football game on the satellite tv. Nobody looked too worried. I was, because we were so looking forward to going to Cabo and I figured if there was something wrong, they wouldn’t take the ship further away from port, they’d just limp back to San Diego. I fretted over that a while before we looked out the big portholes and saw the ship was actually rocking along again. Didn’t turn out to be anything at all, so that was good. I bought the Halloween on the High Seas logo sweatshirt today and was very glad I did, as pretty much all the adult Halloween merch was gone by the end of the first full day of the cruise.
These clowns were right under our verandah.
Day at Sea
At breakfast at Parrot Cay, we had a cruise brochure moment where we could actually see dolphins jumping around in the water right from our table while we sipped our coffee.
Spent a glorious day occupying various horizontal surfaces and reading a sailing manual. Dressed up for Halloween and had some fun pictures taken. The Halloween tree now has lit Jack O Lanterns! Then quickly changed into our glad rags (tuxedo and gown) for an elegant dinner at Palo. Afterwards, on our Love Boat-esque stroll around the upper deck, my DH proposed to me again…with a beautiful star sapphire ring! He said lots of people renew their wedding vows, but we should renew the proposal. Of course, I said yes!
DH is, of course, Indiana Jones and I'm a German doll from It's a Small World
Cabo San Lucas
Glorious but hot day even early in the morning. We tendered over to the marina and started to wander down to Cabo Wabo Cantina because last time we were here, there was a vendor selling the hammered tin stars you can put lights inside of. We have a collection of them hanging over part of our deck at home and I wanted to add to it. Most of the vendor booths in the area in front of Cabo Wabo were vacant…perhaps their losses in the last hurricane were too great. So we partook in Cabo Wabo’s happy hour (which started at 9 am, when we arrived.) They had free Wi-Fi so we drank Pacificos and lime while catching up on Facebook and emails and checking up on our dogs and horses. From there, we walked further downtown to the fire department because they have these great t-shirts that support the fire brigade. I found a star in a shop and negotiated with the owner. He said the star was $55 and I said no and started walking away. Then he said $48 and I told him we saw many in Ensenada for $35. He said Ensenada has cheaper prices and I said then why wouldn’t I want to get it there, instead? I kept walking out and he said “ok, $35.” I probably could have gotten him to $25 but I don’t begrudge these people this way to make a living. I bought a lovely white blouse with gorgeous colorful embroidery all over it for $25 from a rickety old woman in a roasting hot booth after she asked for $28. I didn’t have the heart to go lower than that. Maybe I’m just a sucker, I don’t know. It just didn’t feel fun to bargain her down the way it did with the guy in the bigger store where I bought the star (who was asking $40 for a very similar blouse.) Wandered back to the marina area trying not to bang into everyone with my star and found the same little bar we enjoyed drinks in five years ago last time we were here. It used to be called DJoint but is now called Karlito’s. We got a table overlooking the marina and for $10 got a bucket of Corona’s, chips and salsa. That’s kind of the standard deal in Cabo around the marina, but this place was very airy and there was plenty to look at with boats coming in and out and sea lions and pelicans! We talked to the new owner who invited us to go on a private tour to Los Arcos in his boat. Um, maybe next time. We had an early departure time of 3:30 or so, and didn’t want to head back when the tender lines got too full. Got some great photos of Wonder on the tender ride back. She is a magnificent ship. Dropped off my loot in our stateroom, had lunch and then drank wine on our verandah while sailing out of Cabo. Since we were on the starboard side, we had a great view of the arches. A fine way to spend a Wednesday! Got dressed as pirates and then watched the show with the ventriloquist that uses a snake and a tennis ball as props. He was funny. Queued up for a photo with Jack Sparrow and watched the fireworks after dinner at the deck party. Another wondrous day in paradise!
Pretty nice view for breakfast!
At Karlito's on the marina.
Here I am with my star.
The Marina area.
On the tender heading back to Wonder.
Los Arcos
How lovely is this?
Hanging out with Jack
Day at Sea
Brunch at Palo this morning…oh my. We have done this long enough to know to pace ourselves but I still end up overindulging. After brunch we were treated to a private galley tour of Triton’s galley with the Chef de Cuisine. This was arranged by the food director who we had met on several cruises over the last couple years. DCL used to do scheduled galley tours when we first started cruising, but eventually stopped them probably because too many people want to do it and it is a very small space to move groups through. We felt very honored to get this privilege! After that tour we went on the Art of the Theme Show tour where we learned all sorts of things we never picked up on before about the ship.
While watching football in Diversions, Captain Robert came in and after speaking with a bartender, saw our friendly faces and came over to our table. We talked a few minutes about the cruise and other cruises we had been on and then he pulled up a bar stool and we enjoyed conversing about what’s different about DCL for the next fifteen minutes. What a charming man he was. How lucky could we get?
Had our last dinner with our crack server team of Ruben and Londrion who were kind of indifferent to us the first day but warmed up immediately when they realized we loved the crayon puzzle games.
Here's our servers on pirate night
Because we wanted to get an early start on our day in San Diego upon disembarkation, we decided to just drag our monster bags off the ship ourselves rather than claim them in the terminal and I am very glad we did, though we had some scary moments wondering if we could pack everything in. The star was a particular challenge.
Disembarkation Day
DH had to go to the TSA immigration check at 7:15 as he has a permanent resident card. It was so weird, because of all the times we have cruised, he hasn’t had to do that. Once we all had to do it when visiting St. Thomas, but never had to again. There was absolute chaos trying to get off the ship. Supposedly, everyone who had sent their bags off to claim in the terminal was supposed to wait until their character was called to exit the boat. That did not happen. We tried to get down to deck 3 from the deck 6 aft elevators and every elevator that arrived was packed to the gills. We dragged and bumped the luggage down to deck 3 only to find a complete gridlock of people waiting to get into breakfast and others just waiting for their character to be called. We ended up having to go back up the elevator to deck four, walk to mid ship, and then go down the stairs there. Then we could easily get to the express walk off line. Once there, it was then a challenge to get off with the bags because although there are ramps for much of the exit from the ship, at the end there are two flights of hard metal stairs and people were losing control of their suitcases and they were tumbling down and banging into other people. The elevators were, as you might expect, tiny and excruciatingly slow. We managed to find an elevator at the far end that no one was willing to walk to and so exited pretty quick. A taxi took us to the Dollar Rental car pick up place and we were in the car on the way to the zoo by 9:30. Pretty good! The San Diego Zoo is a marvel with koalas and pandas and a very lush environment. And Zoo Brew…where you can get draft craft beer. That made the near 100 degree day more bearable. They even have an aerial tramway…haven’t been on one of those in years! The tramway and buses that take you up the steep hills are included in the price of admission. For a Friday morning, the zoo was crowded as it was during San Diego school holidays and kids visit free for the month of October. We will definitely go back when it is cooler. Went to check back into our hotel and cooled off in the pool for a while and had our dinner overlooking the marina with palm trees all around us!
La Jolla and Brewery Day
We are the kind of folks who are willing to drag ourselves out of bed to get the early bird advantage, and we did this heading up to La Jolla. It’s less than a half hour from Shelter Island but parking is a challenge there so it’s good to go early. We were able to park right overlooking the cliffs and beach with tons of sea lions and spent the morning listening to them bark and watching them and the seals and people trying to swim in the vicious surf. Another day of draining heat, so stopped at both the La Jolla and the Coronado brewing companies for craft beer samples. Refreshed, we drove over to Coronado Island and had one more drink at the Sun Deck bar at the famed Hotel del Coronado for the sunset. Even at 5:30 on a Saturday night we were able to find free parking a ten minute walk from the hotel. So cross that one off the bucket list! It takes forever to drive from that side of the city past the airport and back to Shelter Island even without traffic because of the profusion of traffic lights which seemed to all be red, both ways. Brought all the suitcases into our hotel room for re-organizing in the morning.
Things got a little tense on the return morning despite our deftly being able to pack everything and keep all the bags well under the weight limits (yes, we travel with a luggage scale) because Southwest was having a technical meltdown and although we had checked in, we hadn’t yet printed our boarding passes. We’d planned to do that in the hotel lobby when we checked out. After about ten attempts, I was able to get a mobile boarding pass on my phone so we could use the skycap to check our bags…you can just imagine what the line to check in manually looked like at the regular counters. As our plane ascended out of San Diego, we got one more look at the city and even Wonder in port for the beginning of the next cruise. As usual, the only antidote to post cruise depression is having another cruise on the horizon or another booking reserved, and happily for us, we have both!
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