Cruising in Style

Well - Our long awaited "babymoon" vacation has come and gone.  Despite a few mishaps, we had a great time on our cruise to the Mexican Riviera.  


Last Saturday, on my birthday, we packed up and caught a plane to LA and boarded our ship.  It went very smoothly and we determined that the ship was no where near capacity.  That was good and bad, there were no crowds but also, we had a tough time finding other young people.  At 5:30 (after waiting for two late comers) the ship finally set sail from a cold and rainy LA.  We had an 8:15 dinner assignment which we ended up switching to anytime dining because 8:15 is just too late for a pregnant woman to eat dinner, plus, we were missing a lot of the late night shows.  Anytime dining was the way to go.  Well, that first night night I ordered pasta with tomato sauce and I know what you're thinking, you can have anything on that menu, and you chose pasta?  But I'm a picky eater so this was the safest thing for me to partake of!  Unfortunately, we have determined that it was probably the least safest thing for me to eat because I was sick for the next two days.....bummer!  We made the best of it and still tried to go to everything the ship had to offer.


Day's 2 and 3 were sailing down to Puerto Vallarta.  Here is our lovely formal night, thanks to my mom I had some nice things to where.  My apologies to my mom as this picture was right before I had to run out of the dining room to throw up in a tree/on her dress as the bathroom was too far away!  From this day forward I mainly ate cereal and bread for each meal....well, until I had that pasta again (big mistake!).

In Puerto Vallarta we caught a taxi downtown and did a little shopping.  We didn't really care about souveniers, but we had a desperate need for vanilla so that is what we got.  Then we strolled around the beach for a little while.  Right along the board walk there are statues, street performers and people building immaculate sand sculptures so we just enjoyed some of the sights before we shared a taxi with some other people back to the ship.  Then, I'm embarrassed to say, we walk over to Walmart to get some forgotten necessities, yes, we went to Walmart on our Mexican vacation!


Mazatlan was our next stop.  I think we will both agree that this was our least favorite stop.  We didn't really plan anything but there is a resort there that lets cruise ship passengers use their bathrooms, pool and hottub so we caught a taxi to it and then hung out on the beach.  You can't go 2 minutes without someone wanting to sell you something.  I understand, it's how they are making money but it's just annoying, especially when it's the same people coming by to sell you stuff, even after you've said no.  I mentioned to Pat that they should try selling something better then the junk that they sell.  If they really thought of the demographics they could make a lot of money - what they need to do is buy a cooler, ice and a bunch of cokes, beer, etc. and sell that.  They could sell it for $1/bottle no problem.  They wouldn't need to approach anybody, people would be flocking to them.  Just a thought.


Cabo was our third and final day in Port and probably the BEST day we had (I started feeling better after my second bout of ordering pasta - that's when we figured out not to order it anymore!), it was warm and just great.  We hired a glass bottom boat, The Sex Machine was it's name, to take us out and around to the pacific side and to El Arco to see the rock formations.  Our captian, Captain Flash dropped us off at Lover's Beach so swim at the beach.  Lover's beach is an out cropping of land that faces the gulf of California so the waters are calm.  The sand is soft and debree free, and it's very sheltered from the wind.  It was awesome.  There are a bunch of rocks you can climb on a play in and then you can walk to the other side of this out cropping to Divorce Beach.  It's on the Pacific side, the waves are definately not calm, they come crashing to the shore.  Captain Flash made us promise not to play in the water on Divorce Beach, though we had such great memories of last time we were here and how much fun it was to let the waves crash into you.  

We now have a tradition to right our names in the sand on Divorce Beach (I know - kind of odd, seeing as it's Divorce Beach, but it has the right sand consistency to do it).  So, we busied ourselves with that, plus we made one for the new addition to our family too!  She was on the trip with us so she might as well have her picture too right?  When we got back over to Lover's Beach Captain Flash and the Sex Machine were waiting for us, bummer because we had such a nice time but our day at port was short and we had to get back to the ship.

Here's a picture I took for my M&M loving family - lucky I did too since my mom had a bag of peanut butter M&M's waiting for us on our doorstep when we got home!


We cruised on Princess and the ship was huge - TONS of pools and they were fresh water, no saline in them at all, that was a plus!  Here is a view of 2 of 5 pools:

All in all, we had a wonderful time on our last baby-free vacation, now time to start getting our house ready!!