Day 3-Ensenada Mexico

Wednesday we woke up in Ensenada Mexico!

We wanted to try the sit down breakfast that day instead of the buffet, and it was delicious! I had yummy waffles and bacon and eggs. :) We signed up to do the La Bufadora Adventure tour at 9am, so as soon as we ate, we headed off the boat.
There was a big flea market that we walked through on our way to our meeting point that we made sure to look at when we got back. We met with our group, and we headed on a bus!

Our tour guide, Irma, was really nice and really funny.

She made sure to tell us the good things to buy at the flea markets, and we learned all about their city on our 45 minute bus ride to the blow hole. When we got there, she led us down to where the blow hole was. We had to walk through the BIG flea market to get down there, and all the shop owners made sure to let us know what they were selling and to stop by on our way back up. :) We made it down to the water and watched it blow way up in the sky. It was so beautiful, and we even got a picture of us right when the water was shooting up. Yay!

 

 

 
We stopped at the restroom before hittin the shops, which you have to pay for! We  had to pay 50 cents each to use the restroom. So you give the man your money, there are piles of toilet paper sitting on the table so choose one and head into the bathroom. There is a lady in the bathroom standing there who hands you a paper towel after you wash your hands. She had a bucket on the sink that said, "Your tips are my salary". That made me so sad! She stands there all day hoping that people will use the bathroom and give her a tip so she can make money. It made me really grateful for what I have here in this country.
 
Well, it was time for us to make our way back up the hill through the flea markets and see if there was anything worth buying! I found some cute earrings made out of pretty shells. Chris looked at some cowboy hats but they seemed to want way more than we wanted to pay. There was a shop that had really pretty bowls that they made and would paint by hand. We got some salt and pepper shakers from that store for our new apartment! We had some friends tell us that we had to buy the vanilla down there, so we bought a big bottle of vanilla for when I bake, and we also brought them back a bottle as well.

That's pretty much all we bought. If we had brought more money, we definitely would have bought more things like a cool hammock, a cowboy hat, taken a picture with a lion, and probably some prescription drugs! Haha not sure what kind of drugs, but they seemed to be proud of their pharmacies down there. :)

We made it back to the bus, but before we got on, we HAD to try their fish tacos! I wanted to at least try a real Mexican taco with homemade tortillas. Mmmm I got a fish taco and Chris got a chicken taco, but they were surely YUMMY! We got on the bus and waited for everyone else to make it back on. We were told to be on the bus at 11:15am, and by 11:30am there was still one couple not back! And we left! They don't mess around! If you dont' get back in time they don't care :) I hope they found a way back somehow! It was a long drive over there!
 
We drove through the town and saw how the people lived there. It was a little depressing to see.

 

 

 

We saw a Mexican Mcdonalds!! That was pretty cool. Chris thought it was so cool how the stop signs said Stop in Spanish. :)

We finally made it back on the boat, got some lunch and then wanted to lay out the rest of the day. It was perfect weather for a tan! They had a part in the back of the ship that was just for adults with tanning chairs and hot tubs, so we got our suits on and headed back there! Chris loved looking at the sea lions at the shore. We had to shoo away seagulls quite a bit. :)

 

Dinner was yummy again like always. But I had eaten so much that day, that before they could even ask us what we wanted for dessert, I had to leave cause my stomach was so full it hurt bad! Right outside the casino, they had a couple of these games where you put a dollar in and you move this key side to side and up and down to where you want it, and then when you let it go you have to see if it fits into this key hole where you could win $100, $200, $500, $500 AND an Ipad, or $1000! We watched people put in 20 dollar bills after another and win nothing. We each tried a few times, but didn't win anything. It always seemed to be just a little off. It seemed pretty impossible to get it right in the hole, but we did see someone finally win $100 after trying like 8 times. That was our entertainment for the night. HAHA We went back to our room and watched a movie till we fell asleep. It was a busy day!

Day 2- Catalina Island

We woke up Tuesday morning and our boat was docked in Catalina Island! It's only like 30 miles from the California coast, but it felt like we had traveled to the other side of the world!! :) haha okay, maybe not that far....Anyway, we got some breakfast from the buffet and then went to get off the boat! They had little boats waiting for us to take us to the Island since the ship had to dock out in the ocean a ways. It was a cute little town.

 

 

 

Lots of shops to look at and cool looking houses. There aren't many cars on the island. Everyone mostly gets around by golf cart, and while we were walking around we found this awesome thing!

 

Haha Guess you gotta watch where you park your golf cart or this thing will be taking it away! :) I loved being by the ocean and made me miss all of our trips to the beach when I was younger. Chris loved the ocean too! He can't wait to go back. We took pictures by my favorite kind of tree:

 

 
Played by the water

 
Then we sat on the dock and waited for our time to to SNORKELING!! It was both of our first time snorkeling. Chris was scared he was going to get eaten by a shark. :) I was just scared the water was going to be too cold. Haha But our group showed up, and we headed to Lover's Cove to get ready! They gave us wet suits to wear which made me happy, we got our fins, and our masks, had a little orientation, and then they sent us in the water!

 

 
It was an awesome experience and hopefully we can do it again one day. There were tons of fish swimming around us, and TONS of kelp. Our guide would feed the fish every now and then which brought them from all over into this one spot and they would eat like they hadn't eaten in forever. :)

Chris taking a picture of me

 

Chris Swimming

 

I tried to get a picture of both of us....haha didn't work too well :)

 

But they just let us swim around for like an hour and it was really cool. I would love to learn now to scuba dive so we could go scuba diving on our next cruise! :)

When we were all done, we went and got an ice cream cone, a big bag of candy, and headed back to the ship for lunch. That swimming wore us out! After we ate we went and took a long nap. When we woke up, it was already time to get ready for dinner! It seriously felt like we were eating all the time on that ship! But we loved it! That night was our formal night in our dining room, so we got all dressed up and went to our table! We ate lots of shrimp and lobster and salad that night. For dessert I got the chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream. Mmmmmm All of the waiters put on a little show for us with music and lights. They sang songs while waving their napkins around. And by the end, we were stuffed to the brims!

They were having some comedy shows that night, so we went and got a good seat for it. The first 2 were Family friendly shows that were pretty good! They made us laugh a lot! But then the last 2 were Adult Only shows. We stayed to see how those were going to be, but ended up leaving after the first 10 minutes cause he was very crude, and NOT funny. It just makes me wonder why people think that kind of language, and talking about women in such an awful way is funny. But I am glad we left. We were able to sit out on the deck and enjoy the ocean and cool breeze.

The next day were were going to be in Mexico!

Day 1

We pulled up by the water, and saw the boat! It was HUGE!! You always dream about how big it is, but it's so much bigger in real life! And I guess ours was even one of the smaller ones. I can't imagine how it will be when we go on another cruise on a bigger boat! WOW! The check in process was really fast. We gave them our bags to take to our room, showed them our Boarding Passes and Passports, went through security, got our room keys, and headed to the boat!

We walked inside, and there is people everywhere. You have no idea which level you are on, where things are, or how to get there. All we knew was our room was R15, and they were serving lunch on the Lido Deck......WHERE was the Lido Deck?? Well after walking down a few hallways, we found an elevator that had a big map of the boat next to it, so we were able to see where we were and where we needed to go. :) They have a big lobby with pretty elevators and lights and people singing. It looks really cool at night with all the lights lit up.

Well, we found the Lido deck that had all the food on it :) They had a yummy "Italian" themed buffet with lots of pasta and salad bar and dessert! This was a typical meal for Chris:

As you can see he has a burger, nachos, cake, heaping bowl of salad, chicken strips, fries, and a soda. Haha The food was definitely good! We loved their burgers and had one like every day for lunch. :) After we ate we went and found our room! It was a cute little room at the very front of the ship on the 4th level. We didn't have a window in ours, but it kinda looks like we did huh? It was a good sized room, with a itty bitty bathroom. :)

 

 

We browsed around the ship for a little bit. Bought a watch since we realized we had no way of telling the time since we had turned our phones off. We got lanyards to put around our necks to hold our cards on. We didn't want to lose those since they were our room key as well as our credit card for anything we wanted to buy on the boat!

 

 

 

This is us waiting for our "Safety Orientation" to start where they told us what to do incase of an emergency and then took us out to see the lifeboats.

By that time it was time for the boat to depart, so we headed to the front of the ship to watch it pull away from Long Beach!

We then went and got ready for dinner! Our assigned time was 6pm each night. We got to our table and got to meet all the other people who we would be sharing our table with for that week. They were all really nice! Our waiters were also really nice and funny, and made our dinner experience awesome. Each night we got to choose an appetizer, our main dish, a side, and dessert! And of course you can always choose more than one of each :) Dinner was one of my favorite things about the cruise. By the end of the week the waiter didn't even need to ask Chris what he wanted for his appetizer cause he always got the Shrimp Cocktail. And they all called us by our first names and gave us super fast service.
When we finished dinner, we went back to our room to find this!

Each night our room attendant would make our bed, pull the sheets back for us, turn the lights on above our bed, and leave a cute towel animal and our schedule for the next day. We then went and watched some Karaoke that was very entertaining and fun to watch! We were exhaused but very excited for what the next day would bring us!

Day 2 was our day on Catalina Island, and we bought a waterproof camera to take with us there since we were going snorkeling. I am supposed to pick up the pictures tomorrow, so I will do that post as soon as I get those pictures!