I am still home sick but if I don’t get this out soon…well, who knows what might happen. Flying fluffy balls might fall out of the sky to spite me. (Yes, flying fluffy balls. So sue me, I’m still sick.)
On to the blog…
So last Wednesday was Kevin’s birthday. I did something I’ve never been able to do for more than a day and that was to keep a surprise from Kevin. On Friday morning I got him up for work at our normal time, putzed around making us late, and then promptly took him to breakfast where I let him know that not only did he not have to go to work that day (or Monday) but I was also taking him on vacation. Kevin, of course, did not believe me and made me call up his boss to make sure that he really did not have to come in. I also ended up not telling him where we were going but he pretty much guessed it when we made the turn off for the San Pedro docks.
I had bought the tickets for the 3-night cruise to Ensenada on Royal Caribbean’s Monarch of the Seas ship back in October and it had been killing me not to tell anyone because I was so excited. Thankfully Kevin seemed excited as well as this was his birthday present.
Stepping on to the ship we were met with the first buffet meal of many. If nothing else, you have no one to blame but yourself if you go hungry on a cruise. We than proceeded to our very small cabin (People complain about the size of the rooms on a cruise ship…why? You’re only there to sleep after all, and if not, you’re doing something wrong)(just saying) to drop off our luggage, then promptly took a tour of our home for the next 3 days. While I’ve seen commercials and pictures and whatever else of cruise ships, it still amazed me being on one that this boat had a pool and a rock climbing wall and a full sized theater and multiple restaurants and a mall and…well, you get the picture.
At 4:30, before we set sail, we had to go through an emergency drill. Everyone met at the Muster station on deck 7 in their life jackets while the captain speaking in some sort of unrecognizable accent over the loud speaker let us know what to do if the ship sank. Since no one could hear the captain or for that matter was paying attention, I’m pleased to tell you that the ship did not in fact sink. Thank God. The little flashlight on my life vest was broken; I would have been totally screwed.
Seriously, no one is listening to you CaptainThe rest of Friday night was pretty much settling in. We ate, we gambled, we bought duty free liquor, we played the most expensive round of bingo ever, and we even saw a comedy show. But since I was starting to get sick already (though I was still in denial at this point) and we had gotten up so early, we ended up going to bed at 10 that night. I am also embarrassed to say that 10 PM on Friday night was the latest we stayed up the entire trip. So much for those salsa lessons they had.
EnsenadaSaturday morning we arrived in Ensenada. I tried really hard not to do the tourist thing and had us walk 12 blocks out of the way to a ‘local’ part of town. I’m not really sure what I was planning to do in the local side of town. Eat maybe? Unfortunately the ship fed us so well that there was no need to try our gastronomical luck on the local cuisine. Shop? We weren’t really out to buy anything. We ended up just walking around for a couple hours until we found this hole in the wall dive bar. Our Spanish was enough to order us two beers (“dos Coronas por favor”) and two more after that (“dos mas, por favor”). A fellow who sat next to us attempted to get us to have some soup they were serving, (“Esta FREE! Free! Free!”) but again, we really weren’t that hungry. After accidentally walking into the men’s room (Kevin: “Damas is ‘Ladies’ by the way”) we decided to move on. We next stopped in a place a few blocks down, which was incredibly touristy, but we still got the best shoeshine in our lives by our new friend, Manual.
Manual and KevinFinally, we stopped in my favorite place of the entire trip…the local pool hall. The owner of the joint gave us the stink eye the entire time (if you look hard enough in the picture below, he’s sitting in the corner), but we were well behaved. We played pool, had a couple $1.50 beers, and headed back to our ship…
Pool Hall. Kevin is losing.…where we had dinner and fell asleep. At 6 PM. On a Saturday. We didn’t wake up until 7:30 the next morning.
Sunday is kind of a blur. We did so much, but not much at all, if that makes sense. We ate BBQ, we drank out of pineapples, we played trivia, we saw the Sexy Legs Competition at the pool, we gambled (I was up in roulette but lost it all at poker), we shopped, we ate some more…so on and so forth. And we were back in bed at 9 PM like the grannies that were in the room next to ours. The next morning we were unfortunately back in San Pedro.
Overall we both loved the cruise. It was more expensive being on the ship than we thought, but there was plenty to do. We both agreed that two more days longer would have been perfect. This is definitely something I would do again.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go lay down.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Looking out from our State Room
That is, until I cut into it. It also wasn’t very fluffy. In fact, it was kind of wet, like scrambled eggs. Kevin and I ate it anyway…it wasn’t too bad, but nothing I’d make again. Since I’m pretty sure that I screwed up somewhere, I’d like to try a real soufflé for comparison sake.
