The cruise is about what I expected – loud, crowded, lots of people. Hard to find a quiet corner to relax in. The boat is hard for me to navigate and find my way around. We stop and ask directions but the crew is so familiar with the boat that they don’t realize their directions are impossible to follow if you don’t speak Boat Language.
We were going to go to the sit down restaurant for breakfast but gave up after asking four different people for directions and being unable to find it. Made me cranky! We finally figured out tonight that some floors you can’t get to the other side of. You have to go up or down a floor and walk to the other end of the boat and then up or down a flight of stairs to get to where you want to get.
We found breakfast in a buffet service place that was noisy, crowded and full of unconscious people taking up space talking and making it hard to get around them. We finally found some food and had to take it out of the restaurant area to find a place to sit down and eat.
It was very foggy this morning so we waited until later in the morning to go to Catalina Island. You have to get boat shuttle tickets to go to Catalina Island. We had to wait about one and one half hours before they called our number so we could go to Catalina Island. It was a bit of a disappointment to me. I had anticipated a white sandy beach a mile long and that is not what they had.
Ellexia did some shopping and spent a big chunk of the spending money her parents had given her. She was ready to come back to the ship after that. It was about a 20 minute wait for the boat shuttle to return us to the cruise ship. Then it took about 20 minutes to debark as we all had to go through the security screening before we entered the ship.
We went to a place that had chicken for lunch. It took another adventure and lots of walking to find the place. Not sure it was worth the hunt.
I spent the afternoon in the room resting. Ellexia came and went all afternoon. She is comfortable roaming around the ship. She didn’t find many kids on board though as I am assuming most spent the whole day on Catalina Island.
We went to the fancy place for dinner tonight. It was elegant night so Ellexia got to wear the new dress she had gotten for the trip. We ate early to avoid the crowd. The food was OK but it was nice to have table service. The waiters were very good. As we were eating we saw dolphins swimming and jumping in the water and even spotted a whale spouting off a couple of times.
We have been out and about checking out what is going on a couple times tonight. Not many kiddos hanging around this evening. Ellexia has changed in and out of her dress a couple of times. Most people still have on their elegant wear and she wanted to fit in. Made no difference to me!
Not sure cruising life is for me. Too many people in a small area. Ellexia seems to be having fun most of the time though and that is what is most important on this trip.
Our room is very small and has one bed. The other bed was pulled down from the ceiling and has a ladder to it. It makes me feel claustrophobic to sleep in the lower bed as the upper bed is over the back part of my bed. We have a nice housekeeping guy though. He learned our names the first day and when he sees us in the hallway he calls us by name – impressive. We can hear the music from the lobby while we are in our room.
Tomorrow is the day in Mexico. I am hoping they have better beaches and more to do. I also hope we can get off and on the cruise ship without having to use the shuttle boats. We shall see what the day brings.
Grateful for this time with Ellexia and for the memories we are making together, grateful the fog of the day lifted and the skies turned blue again, and grateful for the almost quiet in my room.