New Year's Day in Ensenada

Overall our day was fun but Ensenada, Mexico was my least favorite activity of the cruise. In my opinion, there were good parts and not-so-great parts and I will share both.

We awoke Wednesday morning January 1, 2014 to find our ship already docked at Ensenada, Mexico. Our side of the ship was against the dock. Right out our stateroom window we could see where we would be visiting that day. My first impressions reminded me of scenes from movies and were not favorable.  We could see the expanse of the town in the distance. There was not a tree in sight and it looked terribly hot and sun bleached, like a desert shoot-it-out scene from an old western movie. In the dock area near the ship was a lot of security fencing and guards with rifles patrolling back and forth. It reminded me of the high security around the nuclear weapons that you see in James Bond movies. We actually debated not getting off but realized it was another new experience and, after all, we had never been to Mexico.

We did debark, via gangway this time, not via tender boat as at Catalina, and passed through security. Vendors were taking pictures and wanting to sell them to you. I actually posed with a parrot perched on my shoulder, which was kinda cool, but we did not buy the photo. We took a 10-12 minute bus ride into the town. We tried to browse the shops there and what an awful experience! If you even glanced at something the shopkeeper was in your face about giving you a good deal.  If you tried to walk by without entering they blocked your way to direct you into their store. Little kids were around you begging for money in exchange for Chiclets. One attractive scene, however, was a very brightly colored entrance to a motel that I thought deserved a photo.

This made me think of the movie Fools Rush In in which the husband comes home to find
his Mexican wife's family has repainted the entire interior of his formerly neutral beige home. 

We met up with John and Marita and Dave and Janet for guacamole and drinks at a bar called Papas&Beers. The guacamole was freshly made at your table as you watched. It was delicious. The company was great. The weather was pleasantly sunny with a gentle breeze, much better than I had anticipated when looking out from our stateroom window earlier in the day. The entertainment was to watch a Papas&Beer employee perform a ritual on each person who volunteered, or possible even paid for the "pleasure". Tequila and beer was poured in the person's mouth and down his throat, his mouth covered and his jaw clamped in place, his head jostled back and forth vigorously, and then he was turned upside down and shaken. The crowd cheered and laughed and applauded this spectacle. Even though I thought the act a bit inane, I was impressed with how even the stoutest of men could be inverted by one of these employees who really had a grasp of the concept of center of gravity and moment arms. I never did participate in these type of college spring break shenanigans, even in my younger days. I thought they were pointless then and still do now. Voicing this opinion when you are young labels you as a "stick-in-the-mud". Repeating this opinion at my age dubs me a "fuddy-duddy". I wonder... is "stick-in-the-mud" to "fuddy-duddy" is a naturally recurring bio-cycle?

Walking back to the bus, Marita offered me a Chiclet she'd bought from a little kid at some point. "No!" I barked in irritation, nearly biting her head off. She retorted, "I was just going to give it to you; I wasn't trying to sell it to you..." I guess I was a bit worn down. Our route back to the bus passed through a very quaint courtyard area. I was drawn to the architectural features of the wrought iron railings. Frank and I posed for a quick shot with a rather bemusing caballero who was holding a beer and a serape.

I thought this staircase looked like it could have been right out of
the Cartwright's ranch house of the Ponderosa of Bonanza.

We're three cabelleros, three gay cabelleros, they say we are birds of a feather.
We're happy amigos, no matter where he goes, the one, two, and three goes.
We're always together.

I was fascinated by a street artist creating beautiful paintings with cans of spray paint. He put on quite a show since he dried the layers quickly with a blow torch and would even, very daringly and dangerously, light the paint on fire as it was sprayed from the aerosol can. I snapped a quick picture of his work in progress. The solar-system-like picture emerged from applications of spray paint, with some dabbing with cloth, and some random cans used as round templates.

A cross between an abstract and a space painting, the artist's creation is unique.

After we were all back on the ship we had lunch and played a round of miniature golf on the topmost deck. We did not keep score religiously and did not take ourselves seriously; we just had a good time. It is kind of revealing that I enjoyed sedate miniature golf more than youthful kegging.

En guarde!    Touché!    Foiled again?    Fore!    Whatever...

We passed some time before dinner in the Candlelight Lounge. In keeping with its name this lounge had candelabras scattered about. We had a rousing round of a game called Farkle which is played with six dice and some relatively simple scoring rules. It has a fun twist in that under certain conditions you can add the points the player before you makes to your score for that turn. A person can come from behind and win.

Farkle scoring is not complicated. The six dice game is very portable and travel friendly

After dinner, in the evening, we went to a "Love and Marriage" show patterned after The Newlywed Game except that the three selected couples had been married a few days, about thirty years, or over fifty years. One of the questions was to fill in the blank, "The ugliest part of my wife is _________". The oldest husband filled in the blank with, "You don't survive 52 years by being stupid!". We stayed for another game show patterned after Family Feud. The funny part about that game was the names the teams chose for themsleves. They were the Griswold's (the family from the Chevy Chase movie Vacation) vs. the Obamas (all white team members). We also did a small amount of dancing and had a cocktail in one of the lounges later in the evening. Frank and I posed for a picture at one of the ship's backdrops as an idealized reminder of Mexico.

Olé!

The next day would be our day at sea, with no shore excursions. Frank and I had signed up for a Behind the Fun tour of the ship and were looking forward to that experience and learning about the inner workings of running a cruise ship.

New Year's Eve at Sea

On board the ship people dressed formally for dinner New Year's Eve. As we were leaving the stateroom, Frank complimented me. Sort of. He said, "You know, for 65, you don't look very matronly..."  Granted I was wearing a very loose fitting knit dress chosen mainly because it packed well but ... matronly? Of all the adjectives he could have picked he chose that one! And he overstated my age by five years!

We went to the ship's theater production, Motor City, a tribute to music of the 60's, 70's and 80's. It had a cast of eight singer/dancers but enlisted more cast from the audience. Our group were VIP's (we were in line early) and so John and Janet got to dance and gyrate up on stage while the rest of our party got to watch from front row seats. It was a lively, very colorful, energetic production less than about an hour or so in length. It was not as awesome as a Reno or Vegas show but it was fun, especially being part of it.

Afterwards we walked the Promenade Deck 9 stopping at various lounges, attractions and shows. The Piano Lounge had a big circular bar formed liked the black and white keys of a piano keyboard that looked as if it were made of fondant. The Violin Lounge had columns with scrolls on them just like the neck of a violin and also featured a large glass display case of beautiful violins and violin like instruments of all shaped and sizes. We went to an adults only comedy show in the Candlelight Lounge. It opened by the comedian taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r- to set up, getting his coffee, adding milk and sugar, positioning and repositioning his stool. When the majority of the audience was restless (probably a good five minutes after Frank and I were) he innocently looks up and says, "What, do you start work as soon as you walk in the door?" It was a part of the act but I did not think it was that funny. In retrospect, maybe it was because that is the only part of the act I remember. There were photo sets with different backdrops scattered along the promenade and Frank and I posed for photos at some of some. Here is one. I liked the red chandelier.

The photographer posed us. It looks like I like Frank. After 38 years of marriage I still do!

When at sea the time of sunset depends on where you are. But for the transition from 2013 to 2014, as long as you are in the same time zone, midnight is midnight.  We had two choices for welcoming in the New Year. We could go outside on the pool deck where there was some sort of clock count down or we could remain indoors in the atrium and welcome the new year with a balloon drop. We elected the atrium. It had a great vantage point from the higher decks where we could watch all the dancing and celebrating below and we could look up and see all the glowing lights on the glass dome above. The cacophony at midnight was a lot of fun as people jumped around and danced, couples and strangers hugged, balloons fell and popped, streamers floated about, and everyone jostled everyone else. The sound of music, laughter, cheers, and clapping was everywhere. How Happy!

The Grand Atrium stretches from Empress Deck 7 up to Sports Deck 12,
and is topped by a glass dome at Sun Deck 14. Yes, I just noticed. There is no Deck 13.

Looking up you see the glass dome of the Grand Atrium.
Outside, up on SunDeck 14, a jogging track circumvents this dome.

Being on a cruise ship is certainly a more festive and fun way to ring in the new year. Had we been back in Livermore we would have been in bed probably before 11:00 pm. We still did go to bed soon after the merriment. Tomorrow's port of call was Ensenada. I had never been to Mexico nor ever used my passport. The shore excursion would be another first for me on this trip.

First Port of Call: Catalina Island

Tuesday, December 31, our port of call was Catalina Island. For this port there was no gangway and transportation to the island was provided by local boats that shuttled cruise passengers to fro. People walked down a set of stairs to board each tender, which held about twenty passengers. Here are Catalina as viewed from our yellow tender and Frank in the boat awaiting transport to the island.

This is our view of the harbor at Catalina Island en route there
from our cruise ship, Carnival Inspiration

Frank is gazing out at Catalina Island with our cruise ship in the background.

Seeing our ship from outside in the light of day gave me a better perspective and sense of orientation, something I seemed to crave for some strange reason. In the picture below our stateroom was on Upper Deck 6, which is the row of windows just below the red line. We were in Stateroom U125, slightly aft of mid-ship on the starboard side, the side opposite the one in the photo. Once I learned that odd and even numbers were on opposite sides of the ship and that the numbers increased from bow to stern I could make my way about much better since the stateroom hallways all looked alike. The galley was on Atlantic Deck 8 in the windowless section mid-ship above the red line. It stretches the full width of the ship and is accessible and passable to crew members only. Again, once I realized this, I was much better at knowing which elevator or stairwell to take to get to where I wanted to be. Deck 3 was the launching level for the boats to shore.

As we head toward the island we look back and get an overview of our cruise ship.
noting the four levels of staterooms. Above them are the galley, lounges, dining, pool, theaters, shops, etc.

Catalina was a picturesque seaside town. The weather could not have been better. Noticing the very light traffic I wondered if only the wealthy could afford cars since they would need to be transported to the island in some way. I asked a shop keeper about that and she said you needed a permit to have a car and they were rationed and hard to get, saying "Somebody has to die or donate you a permit in order to get one." A lot of the locals use electric golf carts to get around. We strolled through some shops and then walked around the harbor area on a small path (to the left in the photo below, and out to the Avalon Museum situated on the ground floor of the round Casino Building.

I copied this picture of the Catalina harbor from Google because it was such a great overview.
We did not walk far enough up the hillside beyond the town to get such a panoramic shot.

From our vantage point at the Casino building we could look out at our Carnival Inspiration ship and across the harbor to the town.

Beyond me is the Carnival Inspiration awaiting our return.

Beyond Frank is the harbor, the quaint shops at sea level, and the housing on the hillside.

We returned to the shop area for a bit and decided to have a late lunch back on board the ship. The night would be a late one, being the New Year's Eve celebration, and we wanted some down time in the afternoon before the formal festivities of the evening.

First Cruise - New Experience for a New Year

The Sunday after Christmas, Frank and I drove down to Long Beach in preparation to leave on our first cruise ever on Monday afternoon. The itinerary was departure from Long Beach on Monday, port of call at Catalina Island on Tuesday, port of call at Ensenada, Mexico on Wednesday, at sea on Thursday, and arrival back at Long Beach on Friday morning. On the pre-cruise Sunday night we booked a stateroom on the Queen Mary.

There is a beautiful mosaic rendering of the Queen Mary at its entrance.

In retrospect, why sleep on a ship the night before a cruise? Because it was a convenient walking distance to our Carnival Cruise departure location. But the Queen Mary was hosting a huge Southern California winter wonderland themed event called Chill.  Assembled in one half of a huge dome structure which co-houses the cruise terminal, Chill boasted six ice tube slides, 2.5 story high ice sculptures, panoramas of the Nutcracker in ice, an ice skating rink, and other holiday decorations. Apparently it was THE place to be. The crowds about the Queen Mary were enormous and the place was a zoo! Our timing was non ideal. We did not have tickets to Chill. They were all sold out and we were relieved we did not have to feel guilty about being this close and missing the "opportunity". We had dinner on the Queen Mary and explored the ship. The golden woodwork throughout was warm and welcoming and a reminder of an era gone by. Despite the chaos of Chill outside the ship, we enjoyed the ambience of all the holiday decorations and lighting aboard. In that respect our timing in coming near Christmas was good.

Frank is in front of one of the many Christmas trees on board.
You can just make out the Queen Mary sign over his shoulder in the background.

Sunday evening we explored the ship a bit of our time but I was distracted. For some inexplicable reason I was totally paranoid about our first cruise ever the next day. It was not a fear of being in deep water even though I can not swim. It was more a uncomfortableness about the logistics. "Where did we go to board? Where did we check in? How was the luggage handled?" This last question was a valid one since the Queen Mary porters told us the Carnival porters came and picked up our bags and the Carnival porters said the Queen Mary porters brought the suitcases over. Since we would be the ones living in the same clothes for four days if the luggage fell into the between-ships-crack, so to speak, we decided to transport it to the ship ourselves. This involved trekking all over the Queen Mary and Cruise Terminal parking lots trying to find the appropriate drop off point. To complicate matters, gates were configured differently than they would be the next day in order to manage the crowds from Chill and I was limping along on my sore ankle due to my graceful garage floundering episode on Christmas evening. Frank was extremely frustrated with me through all my paranoia and rightfully so. It was hardly a romantic evening aboard a luxury liner. Our conversational exchanges were lively but not in a scintillating sexy way.

The following morning, in keeping with the Chill theme, our stateroom on the Queen Mary had no hot water.  The showers are heated by the steam boilers on the ship and the ancient piping was sporadic and fickle in where it delivered hot water. On a positive note though, the weather was gorgeous. We had upgraded to an outboard stateroom with an awesome view out the port hole window.

Here is a view of the port of Long Beach from our Queen Mary stateroom.

During the night our Carnival Cruise ship had slunk into port.  I say slunk because both Frank and I slept through it.  How can something that big be so quiet? Didn't the dock personnel at least speak to each other? I stood tip-toed on a chair and leaned way out our port hole window to take this picture of the back end of our cruise ship.

The stern of our Carnival ship Inspiration is just visible for our stateroom.
She had to have passed right by us during the night.

Our scheduled cruise departure time was 4:30 pm so we would have had plenty of time  to take one or two Queen Mary tours. But my obsession with "Duh, which way do we go? Which way do we go?" kicked in and we spent the morning locating our departure location details, finding where to drop our luggage, and checking into the cruise early. When you fly you check yourself and your luggage in at the same place – not so with a cruise. You go one place to check in yourself and a different place to check in your luggage – weird and inefficient in my opinion. This cruise was a whole conglomeration of learning experiences. It was my first time using my passport, too.

We boarded early. Per Frank, "Let's just get on the %!@#$ ship and maybe you'll calm down." Since it was a New Year's cruise, we each were handed a glass of champagne as we boarded. Another crew member pointed us toward the pool deck where the first-day-of-the-cruise buffet lunch was being served.

I am holding my first drink of the cruise, champagne.
The Queen Mary, which we were just on, is in the background.

Our first meal, a buffet lunch, awaited us just beyond the pool.

We had planned to go on this cruise with three other couples we knew from our ballroom dance studio. A few weeks earlier we had enjoyed a Christmas Ball with them. Unfortunately, at the last minute, one of the couples, Carl and Sachi had to cancel, but Frank and I still had two other partner-couples in crime. We met up with Dave and Janet and John and Marita in the central atrium of our Carnival Ship Inspiration at 3:00 pm to start our journey and resume our good times together. I finally calmed down a bit once on board. Food and liquor and friends probably helped in that respect. Or maybe it was just the realization that there was no going back now.

 From left to right are Dave and Janet, Frank and me. John and Marita, Carl and Sachi.
This photo was taken at a Christmas ball a few weeks earlier.

I am not sure quite what I expected about the departure but I was somewhat surprised (maybe even a bit disappointed?) that there was no fanfare, no horn blowing, no huge bon voyage farewell scene. I never knew the point in time when we actually set off from shore, never got to see it receding in the distance. Sometime just before dinner I sensed a bit of motion, something vaguely familiar – like an earthquake in California. Although I had come prepared with Dramamine I did not need it. We had an early seating for dinner at a table just for the six of us and from the dining room windows I could see the motion of the waters outside. We strolled the various decks of the ship and returned to our stateroom for the night. The lights from the Lido Deck (pool deck) four levels above us shown down on the waters, illuminating the wake of the ship as we cruised along. I found the pretty foaming waves of white mesmerizing and watched them a bit from our window before turning in for the night. It had been a long day. Tomorrow our port of call would be Catalina Island, another new experience.

Christmas in Livermore

With Thanksgiving so late in 2013, Christmas just seemed to sneak up on me. Since by definition Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November, the 28th is the latest it can be and that was this year! I spent the twenty days before Dan and Carrie's scheduled Christmas arrival recovering from Thanksgiving travel, buying for and mailing packages to Oklahoma, and stocking up on food and presents and handcrafted gifts for home here in Livermore. There was little time for writing blog posts so I am catching up now.

We Skyped our Christmas with Robin and Jeremy and Autumn the Friday before Christmas because we wanted them to have their presents before their trip. They were to spend Christmas with Jeremy's family and were going to leave the next day to drive the ~900 miles to Grand Junction, CO from Oklahoma City, OK.  Autumn is really into books now so here is some of what we sent.

Autumn has quite eclectic tastes in her books. We mailed a variety for Christmas.

Jeremy has a fondness for zombies. I thought this shirt came close.

Their trek was challenging with a 14 month old who upchucked either from car sickness or altitude sickness in the mountain passes going through the Rockies, but they made it safely there and back. Hmmm. They are reconsidering flying next time.

Dan and Carrie drove up from Southern California with Snoopy the Saturday before Christmas to spend it with us in Livermore. We enjoyed the  the Niles Canyon Railway's Train of Lights with them the next night, Sunday. The festive trains leaves from Sunol, a town about 10 miles southwest of our home and the 13-mile roundtrip takes a little over an hour. It is decorated within and without.

The outside of each car is decorated. The train itself is about a 1/4 mile long.

The inside of the cars are decorated, too.

The train has a very special visitor riding along. He does not look as jolly as Frank and me in this photo.

Christmas eve we filled paper sacks with sand and lit candles within the luminaires all around our cul-de-sac. We followed this with a dinner of spaghetti with sausages and evening Mass as is our tradition.

Carrie (mini-Carrie internal), Dan, me, Frank, and Alex Christmas Eve
in our cul de sac with our house and some curbside luminaires in the background.

Carrie and Dan and Snoopy just before Christmas Eve Mass.
No, Snoopy did not go to church!

Christmas morning we opened gifts and played some games. Dan got the game Suspend by Melissa & Doug. Suspend is a balancing game that is as easy to understand as it is difficult to master. The game comes with 24 notched, rubber tipped wire pieces that hand form a tabletop stand. With each turn a new piece is added to the transforming vertical sculpture, causing the balance to shift and the difficulty to increase. Frank, Dan, and I played it. Here is our creation.

Frank won this game being the first person to successfully hang all his wire rods
 without collapsing the tower.

We played Ticket to Ride, which Dan won every time. Dan and Carrie gave me Deluxe Super Scrabble with twice as many letter tiles and regular Scrabble. Frank and I did not play this until mid January. Our game lasted several days- not continuously, of course! It took us a bit of time each day to use use up all the tiles. 

It seems my love and skill at Scrabble are well known.

I spoke too soon. My Scrabble skill failed me. Frank won 738 to 697.

Santa brought Alex a tall parking meter bank that he really seemed to like and was very engaged with throughout Christmas day.

Alex had fun unwrapping his tall parking meter bank.

Alex cheered after dropping each coin into his bank.
Aren't we all this happy when paying for parking?

I made a turkey dinner. Then, in the evening Christmas Day, Frank was leaving to drive Alex back to his group home. I'd gathered up his gifts and clothing items from his visit to send with him. As Frank was backing out of the driveway with Dan and Alex, I noticed that one of Alex's gifts had been left behind. Parking meter in hand, I went running out the door between the family room and garage to catch them. Intent as I was on my goal, I totally missed the two steps down to the garage level and went sprawling, crashing my left knee down onto the concrete floor and wrenching my right ankle that had apparently gotten hung up on the threshold. I was so lucky I did not break anything!

When I was still limping two weeks later I went to the doctor who diagnosed a high ankle sprain. If you have to be stupid and a clutz, it is good to be simultaneously lucky. Per the doctor... 1) no, I had not been worsening it by putting weight on it for all this time, 2)  no, it did not have to be in a cast, 3) movement was a good thing that enhanced healing, and 4) most people heal from it in two to six weeks so I was within the range of being better already. Now that lemon at the close of Christmas Day was well on its way to being lemonade! Carrie made me sit down and she did all the dishes after Christmas dinner. Now that extra sugar sweetened the lemonade!