I took the kids west for Halloween. We’ve done it for the past two years (this makes three) and it’s a lot of fun, plus it’s a great chance to see the grandparents before the weather gets too bad.
The trip over was pretty uneventful until about 5 miles before our turn off where we got caught behind a tree that was blocking all lanes of travel. Bummer. But the kids did pretty good through the 30 minute wait and then we were on our way. I decided to go all the way to Bremerton to stay overnight with my sister and then head back to Issaquah today. It’s a long drive to Bremerton. 5 hours. It will be about an hour and a half back to Issaquah. Hopefully we can catch a ferry, I told the kids we would ride on the boat, but we weren’t in time yesterday so we went around. I’m not sure what time we will leave so it might not work out today either. (Update: We did catch the boat, the kids LOVED it!)
They play pretty well together too. Yesterday there was a friend of my nephew’s over so the 4 kids played and played for several hours. Today its just my two and my nephew. Unfortunately that leaves Miss I out of lots of stuff, but she handles it pretty well. Plus, its warm here, compared to the east side of the mountains anyway. We left 35* weather and its probably high 40’s here. (Update: it was actually in the 60's!!)
Onto Mexico. Our cruise left out of San Diego.
We woke up Sunday morning to see one huge-ass boat outside our hotel room window. WOW! The cruise line people are very organized. It was amazing how many people they got through in a short amount of time.Our room was … a room. It had a king size bed (nice!)
and a balcony (really nice, go for the balcony!) 
The ship was very gaudy. Lots of gold, and marble, and painted ceilings, and busy carpet. Not a quiet place anywhere – well, except our room. 
The pools were interesting lots of colorful tile, the water was sucked in from the ocean so it was very salty, and the water sloshed out a lot! The casino was pretty nice, a little bit of everything. The restaurant we frequented was also nice, the service outstanding and 
the supper club was fabulous! We found a nice little bar we liked where they remembered us after only two visits (they are amazing!). There was also a disco, yes, we went once to say we had gone, but all they were playing was Michael Jackson. There was a theater where they did shows every night, bingo several times a day and other large group presentations. Our first night we had a comedian I had seen on Comedy Central, one night was a guy singing big-band-type songs and another night was a juggler/comedian, he was funny too. I missed the magic show due to SEA SICKNESS. Yeah. I was totally in denial. I probably could have prevented it, but I refused to believe that I was actually sea sick so I didn’t take any medicine. OOPS. I paid later. For the rest of the trip I took a little pink pill every day! I still can’t believe I get sea sick. I love the water, I love boating. Stupid.
The ports of call were Acapulco, Ixtapa and Manzanillo. They were all very different from each other.
Acapulco was very colorful, lots of people accosting us on the street selling everything. At 
Ixtapa they had to boat us into the city 
on tenders to do any sight seeing. It was a much nicer city, cleaner, less people harassing us. And
Manzanillo was also kind of dirty, but the ocean was full of huge waves. 6-8 footers. (LSL, you would have LOVED IT.) It felt pretty safe, the water was warm (probably 80* or warmer) and that was the place I relaxed the best I think. The day was not too warm, but overcast and it was just very nice. Again no one harassing us unless we wanted to be harassed and there were bits of black sand too. Apparently there are two volcanoes nearby. They also do a sea turtle rescue in Manzanillo.That was one of the cool things they did on the excursions. They would hire these guys to tell you about the city as you were going to your destination. I am pretty sure they took us the long way around to get everywhere, somehow it took at least an hour and a half to get there, but only 20 minutes to get back. That part of the excursions felt like a rip-off, but the tour guides were usually very funny and knew a lot about their town. But I was more in a “get me to the beach” mode than “take me on a two hour tour of your town and tell me stuff I could care less about” mode. But it all worked out. Like My Honey said, they knew us gringos shouldn’t be on the beach for more than a coupe hours anyway so they stalled getting us there.
Since its October, they also had a dress up night. No, we didn’t dress up, but you should have seen some of the costumes! Strawberry Shortcake and Blueberry Muffin, a Greek god and goddess, the crew of Gilligan’s Island, the Adams Family, the Mad Hatter and his Pixie – strangely, Pixie had a male voice …. And the winner
was a gal in a white robe with one of the towel animals on her head. She was great. It was a lot of fun. We didn’t really “meet” anyone, we sat with a few different people and chatted a few times, but really we were just there to hang with each other. It would be fun to do a cruise with a group though, but maybe not for 8 days!
And that was the cruise. Very relaxing, very colorful, very fun! There are a lot more stories, how I wheeled & dealed with the "businessmen" on the beach, stories about the shows, stories about my many trips to the spa and our bar bill, but I will save that for face-to-face visits.
Luckily, I came back with a LOT of days off until I have to go back to work so I can get acclimated to my real life :)
1 comment:
I'm glad you had such a nice time. And I would have loved those waves! :)
The places I go in Thailand and Bali always have those towel animals. I love 'em.
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