Webb Family Blog

It is now Wednesday morning, our ship is in Ensenada, Mexico and I’ve just woken up. Here is how our cruise has gone so far.

My sister Vicki dropped Kellie and I off at the boat dock around noon on Monday. We checked in quite quickly. We then proceeded to board the ship. I thought it was interesting, the building Carnival uses to check people in at… I’ve been inside the building before, but the last time I was in the building, there was a big, wooden sea-plane designed for cargo and troop movements, designed by Howard Hughes… known as the Spruce Goose. The Spruce Goose has since relocated to Oregon. The original Queen Mary ship is “permanently” docked next to where our cruise ship was docked. The Carnival Paradise dwarfs the Queen Mary. Now, once aboard our ship, we needed to find our room. It is “Empress Deck” Room 69. We saw a sign saying that the deck we walked onto the ship on WAS the Empress Deck. We then saw a sign saying rooms 69-219 were down the nearest hallway. An employee of the ship asked us what room we had. I looked up to see the first room down the hallway was room 69. I just said “That one.” We moved in OK. They have an “Internet Cafe” where we embarked the ship, which is, as earlier mentioned, just outside our room. They say that they provide wireless Internet at the Cafe, but nowhere else on the ship. Thankfully, since we are so close, I can connect from our room. Unfortunately, it isn’t free. They charge by the minute. A LOT! You have to buy minutes in advance. I got the “cheapest” plan, which was a 60 minute block. It cost $24… $0.40/minute! Needless to say, I’m using my Internet judiciously. Thankfully I don’t have to be online to write my blog, since I use Qumana, which allows me to be offline until ready to post. (I will later edit this post to make links like I usually do in my posts, but I have to research out what links I want to use, which takes a bit of time. Since time is quite literally a lot of money, I’ll wait until after the cruise to do that… I just wanted to post something for people to read now.)

Once settled in, on the ship, Kellie and I started to go exploring. We went up to the Lido deck and found the buffet restaurant. We grabbed something to eat. We had to wait awhile for the rest of our group… Crystal, Tiffany and Pam to arrive. They flew down and took a shuttle to the boat. They got here shortly before we took off. As the ship started moving, we had to go through the US Coast Guard mandated emergency drill. Since Kellie is either in a wheelchair or crutches we had to let them know. If there is an emergency, we’re not supposed to use the elevator, but we really don’t have a whole lot of choice in the matter. We learned that for us, we just stay at our room until a staff person comes to help, if there is an emergency. The ship headed out to Catalina Island, but I think we did a lap around the island, as we were in motion most of the night, but we were anchored by sun-up. That night, we attended a show in the main show room on the boat, known as the Normandie Lounge. It was mostly lame, but it was also a little educational (regarding the ship.) After the show, it was just about time for our formal diner… at 8:30 PM. The line was very long to get in and we were relatively close to the front of the line. We had assigned seats. When we got to the diner area, we found that our seats were on an elevated portion, where some of the room was at a “ground level” area. It was quite embarrassing to Kellie as several employees pulled out a ramp and they proceeded to try to get her up there. To make things worse, our table was round and packed very tightly. It was difficult to get legs under the table. Needless to say, dinner was a failure. I asked if we could get a change in table assignment for the rest of the cruise. They obliged and found us a different table for the rest. We did very little after dinner.

Tuesday morning began with the dilemma about going to Catalina Island. The ship doesn’t pull up to a dock, but rather is anchored off-shore and tender boats ferry people back and forth. They come up just below the 3^rd deck. Normally, the elevators only go down to the 4^th deck, without special access… most people have to take stairs down to the 3^rd deck. We had to get the access to take the elevator to the 3^rd deck. Once there, we had to take some stairs down to the waiting tender. We all helped Kellie get down, and we progressed over to the island. We started looking in some of the gift shops, but not all that impressed. We did find a Cold Stone Creamery. We then decided to take a tour of the City of Avalon. That was $15.25 for the 50 minute tour. It was interesting. After the tour, we ate at Antonio’s El Galleon. It was pretty good food… it seemed to be a mixture of themes, rolled into one. After eating, we headed back for the ship. The crew for the tender didn’t seem as helpful or friendly as they had earlier in the day, but we DID get back and aboard the ship. We kind of did nothing for the next few hours. At 7:15, we attended a “Captain’s Cocktail” event in the Normandie Lounge where they introduced the senior staff aboard the ship and had pictures taken with all the guests and the captain. After this event, we had a few pictures taken before we ate… at 8:30. We were now at a different table… a much better table. There was a family at our table that we got to know. We actually hit it off well. They had two kids, but they went off to other events instead of staying there the whole time. Once the kids left, we all started talking and having a good time. Our food seemed to be much better, although our attitudes were better, so it may have influenced perspective. We ended up being the last to leave, as we were having such a good time with our table-mates. We got back to our room around 10:45 PM. We changed clothes and then proceeded up to get a couple slices of pizza before the comedy show began at midnight. The comedian was pretty funny, but I was quite tired when it was over. We came back and went right to sleep.

As mentioned earlier, we are now in Ensenada, Mexico. Kellie is still asleep as I type this, although it is now 7:45 AM. We are allowed to disembark the boat shortly. I hope today goes well.

Today is the day that Kellie and I head out for sea. Together with Kellie’s friends Pam and Crystal, and Crystal’s cousin Tiffany, we are going on a Carnival Cruise ship, Paradise. We leave this evening from Long Beach and head out to Catalina Island. We’ll spend tomorrow in Catalina, then proceed down to Mexico, to Enseñada. We will return to Long Beach on Friday morning.

So far, Kellie and I traveled down to Huntington Beach Saturday evening to stay with my sister Vicki. Yesterday, we went down to the Huntington Beach Pier and went out and ate at Ruby’s. It’s somewhat of a tradition when we come to Huntington Beach. Since it was quite a ways, we took Kellie in her wheelchair. When we got our table, it was up on the second floor. They have an elevator for handicapped patrons, so we tried to use it. First off, no one seems to know how to operate the elevator. It has an interior accordion-style door and a normal entryway-type door on the outside at both the top and bottom. BOTH doors have to be closed for it to work, but people were leaving the accordion-style door open when they got off, preventing the “call” feature to work. Once we DID get the elevator, it was too small for Kellie to remain in her wheelchair. She had to stand up and I had to tip the wheelchair up in order to close the accordion-style door. The food was good. They had something new on the menu… Jalapeño Cheese Sticks… they were quite delicious, but too small for 3 people to share… I’d advise a group to get at least a couple. I enjoyed the trip.

We did little but watch DVDs upon arrival back to Vicki’s. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to update this during the trip, but if not, there will be a summary post afterwards.

Last night, Kellie and I went out to eat with family at Sizzler. There were 11 of us total. There was Phil and Donna (Kellie’s parents), Leslie (Kellie’s sister), the Martins (Donna’s parents), Darlene (Donna’s sister) and Skip (Darlene’s husband), and Katie (Kellie’s cousin) and her boyfriend. Katie JUST turned 16 this past week. The diner was non-eventful. I had the “salad bar,” at least I left full. Donna brought a camera, so we have some pictures.

Hopefully nobody objects to having their photo here.

I found an interesting article, by happen-chance.  It made me think of my sister Debbie and her family living in Mali.  It was from the New York Times website.  It is titled The Siren Song of Mali.  It is an article about music and life in Bamako… the capital of Mali.  At the end of the article… the last two pages, it listed the author’s recommendations for places to visit in Bamako.  I’m curious to know if Debbie knows of any of these places.