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.