Cruise

Cruise- Sept 20-27


John and I decided we wanted to road-trip to California instead of taking a quick flight. So, we packed up our stuff and headed south. Our intention was to stop in San Fran, but as we approached the city, I got overwhelmed, and decided we better just drive on through (better to go back via plane, and commute through the city on foot, taxi, public transit). We stopped a couple of times on the way, one stop we did a little damage as we stumbled across an outdoor outlet mall that was quite nice. We left our house at about 5 am, and got into our Hotel RIGHT before the clock struck 12am. It was a LONG day of driving. I was resistant, but looking back I am now eager to take another trip. John and I always have fun together, and it was also pretty neat to see the weather just get warmer and warmer, and we felt so accomplished when we made it to our destination. Of course we made one very important stop on the way... In & Out burger, which I don't particularly like, but John would go crazy if he didn't have his Animal Style.

Our first day in Long Beach with Dad & Barb:

SHOPPING DRINKING SHOPPING!

We walked all over long beach, shopped our little hearts out. I did some damage at their Nordstroms. Long beach was fun, we ate a lot of good food, went to a bunch of different restaurants, spent a lot of money. We did this for two days in long beach.. Relaxing, shopping, drinking, spending money. Rinse, Lather, Repeat. Even though we are what you call "veteran cruisers", it was still a little bit of a shock to get on the boat and eat all you want and not have a bill at the end of the meal due to our money spending excapades in Long Beach. The Hilton we stayed at had a really nice pool, so we did some relaxing and swimming there also.

Highlights of Long Beach: Waitress @ Taco Beach (bird shit on her while she was taking our order, full on hilarity ensued. we had A LOT of laughs about this), Multople drinks & watching football at Smooth's, Breakfast @ "The Omlet Inn"--- DELISCIOUS!

Lowlight of Long Beach: John getting HIVES!!!! ("My armpits are itchy...")Running 10 blocks from downtown LB, to the hotel to find the gift shop BARELY still open in time to buy him some Benadryl..

Day 1 (September 20th) : Cruisin'

Today we got all of our stuff loaded up in my car, drove to the embarkation port, unloaded our lugage, pulled our our passports, and before you knew it, we were on the boat and sunbathing!

 

The boy's had their shirts off in no more than 15 min after stepping foot onto the boat. As you can see, us ladies opted to stay classy and keep ours on. We had to wait some amount of hours before we were allowed to go to our staterooms, as they finished the hustle and bustle of soarting luggage. In the meantime, we watched as our enormous boat (biggest in the entire fleet) departed Long Beach and started on the Journey, as well as checked out our new home for the week. As soon as we thought it was safe to head to our Riviera Deck, we did. All our rooms weren't too far away from one another. Dad & Barb found some surprises waiting for them in their room, so we met up and had some bubbly with them!

Dinners soon became our favorite part of every single day, as we would often go do "our own things", and every night at dinner we would all meet around our huge table and do some serious EATING. Additional to the food, our waiter Sekson (who very shortly into our stay informed us that since his name- pernounced Sex-Saan, was difficult for some, we could allow ourselves the liberty of calling him "Sexy", and we did. He was the best. Here are a few of our finest from the first evenings dinner:

The next day/day's we had "At Sea" time... AKA, lay in the sun and drink LOTS of beer days (or for me, try the strange "drink of the day" or strawberry daq's with lots of whip cream), explore the boat days, eat a lot days, swim days... These days are best put in photographic evidence form, as words don't really do it.

Following this night was our first formal dinner. I think we all had a blast @ dinner, ate a lot, and did unlady like, un gentileman like things while we were all looking so lovely.
<---Our food Babies

John's one bite challenge... Behind him, is our lovely waiter Sexy.

Following our formal night John & I found our second home at the poker table. It was a fun little interactive gaming table that I had a lot of success at and John didn't have a lot of success at. Either way, we both had fun. These are pictures of us getting ready to go out for the night which included playing poker, watching comedy, and we even found KODA in our room after dinner..

Similarities?



The next day.. More Pool/Drink time & a FUN dinner.

I think it is important to mention that at this point, Curtis and Suzie haven't really made an appearance in any of our photos.. This is because most of the time we had no clue where they were. We even had radio's we used while on the boat, and often times Curtis was in his room sleeping while we were all out in the sunshine...
A good ending to our evening, we found a cute little elephant, and then watched movies in our stateroom as we fell asleep. Luckilly on this cruise they had three movie channels, all with new releases playing. Kept us entertained while we recovered from our days full of dehydrating sun & booes.

The next day was our first port of call... Puerto Villarta!

As you can tell, it doesn't look like much is going on in the first shots as everyone gets off the boat and is mulling around what the hell we are going to do.. Finally we decide to just take off down the beach. As you can see the sky isn't blue, but that is no indication that it wasn't hot... Because it was, Hot and Muggy.

I will try to narrate the pictures that may need it..

So, Curtis & Suzie made their fist appearance here... We went to a cute little resort that was right off the beach. After a LONG walk, and passing some of Puerto's finest security systems. We also saw a sad dead little puffer fish, and John was crawling on a rock with a bunch of jumping crabs.. At the swim up bar we did all kids of fun things, my favorite was recieving a 75 min massage for 35 USD. AMAZING! I wish we had those kinds of deals in the states.
Highlight of Puerto Villarta: Knee Racing, laughing until crying, bloody knees, also playing mortal combat in the pool, apparently I also missed Curtis knocking the wind out of Kristen...... LOL
Lowlight of Puerto Villarta: Overcast.

Pre Dinner & Mikes 1 bite challenge.
FAT & SUGAR FREE PUMPKIN PIE THAT SEXY REQUESTED HE NOT EAT.... MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Next Day: Mazatlan!

In Mazatlan, we took a cab to El Cid... Beautiful hotel, we purchased ALL INCLUSIVE for the day... I got wasted. The boys drank basically nothing, which was hilarious because on the boat when the drinks are extreemely expensive, and at the other ports they drank like fish... As soon as they had the allure of unlimited already paid for drinks they said "I'll take water"... Kristen and I were baffled by this.

I tried to demonstrate just how wasted I was, and just how sober John was...

Highlight of Mazatlan: BOOGIE BOARDING, Sorry no pictures... Macarana, BINGO in the pool, The exercise buff who I almost ran away with, the Nachos, and the unlimited drinks...

Lowlights of Mazatlan: Overcast.. I also tumbled over in a wave and snorted a nasty amount of salt water... ICK.

Dinner this night, I have almost fully recovered. John looking like he spent all day recovering from the first part of the week... At this point, I can't believe that our cruise is coming to what feels like an end! However, we talk a lot at dinner about visiting Tobasco's, and being in CABO..

Cabo day started awesome. Beautiful sky... A nice trip over to Cabo, high hopes for our most highly anticipated destination:
We saw some very stylish men right when we got off our catamaran and stepped foot into Cabo.

We treated Mike & Kris to the Marlin'... Both John and I have done this in our past trip's to Cabo. This is my third time to be in Cabo, so I sat out of the tradition and watched while Mike & Kris took a tripple shot upside down..

Then, as we left the Giggling Marlin, a VERY SERIOUS EVENT HAPPENED:

RAIN!!!!!!

 WE got soaked. It was pouring! Luckilly, We went to "Da'Right Joint" and turned our monsoon into a really fun day.

We got back on the Catamaran, and headed back to the boat. We survived the flood. We survived the Rain.

Highlights of Cabo: Da'Right Joint

Lowlight of Cabo: No Tobasco's... :(

THE LAST FORMAL DINNER: Bow Tie!

We had such a blast!! The next day we woke up, got in the car, and started our Journey home... Before we got too serious about driving home, we stopped at the LA Zoo, and played around. John drove straight home, just as he drove straight there... We stopped at Denny's and ate some good food in Sac town, played all kids of alphabet games, and most of all had a safe and fun Journey home. I think on the way back we might have wished a little bit that we had flown there, however, that faded pretty soon after we hit the pillow.

Highlight of the Trip: Smiling, Laughing, Sun, Fun

Lowlight: Having to go back to work. :)