Cruise - Carnival Pride: Mexican Riveria
The cruise offers Wi-Fi service, but it’s a service that is offered like a wireless phone carrier. You pay per minute. Unless you purchase a small bucket of minutes, the charge is like $.40 - $.75 per minute of usage. Instead of signing up for the minutes, I decided to journal my cruise on a Word document and then post the results when I got back home.
Click on the title to read the whole post.
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Sunday – Day 1
We left Seattle at about 8:00 am. It was a short flight to Los Angeles. I was seated in the very last row. While we were waiting, I was listening to the flight attendants in the back. Apparently, we had a person on board who was being “non-compliant”. This person was also quoted asking a flight attendant about how much fuel was on board in case of crash. Needless to say, that did not make the flight go over well for me. Once we landed in Los Angeles, we had to wait about 45 minutes for our bags to arrive. Who knows what caused the delay.
Once we had our bags, off to the shuttle that took us right to the boat. The Carnival Pride is huge!! You don’t realize how large these vessels are until you are up close to them. The lines to get checked in seemed like they went on forever, but surprisingly enough, they went relatively quickly.
Emotionally I was up and down. On the bus ride over, I just so happened to sit next to a couple that was married the day prior. You could tell they were on their honeymoon. Some of the other folks on the bus were commenting how “happy” they looked. I couldn’t help but think of my time with Name_Removed. Seeing them made me really miss Name_Removed. I can’t lie; I have been missing her dearly. I spoke with her in the morning before the ship left port. She was at home watching the dogs.
So far I have been remaining relatively positive. What happened is all for the best. Not just for me, but for Name_Removed too. I need to be fair to myself and allow myself to have a good time on the trip. It’s a gorgeous night at sea and I am going to make the best of it.
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Monday – Day 2
Today and tonight were much better for me. I definitely had a good time. We didn’t really do anything special, but hang out and drank. Today was another day at sea. I think I started drinking today at around 10:00 am. Maura and my mom took a little nap on the sun deck and I was out wondering about the vessel. During the evening we drank so more. After my mom decided to retire early, I went back out and did some bar hopping myself before retiring for the night. We don’t make our first port of call until Wednesday, so I expect tomorrow will be the same for me ;-).
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Tuesday – Day 3
Ouch….I got sun burned. I put some sunscreen on, but it was applied after I was out on the sun deck. We had a good time today. We spent the day soaking up the rays and drinking cocktails. While sitting out on the sun deck, we were chatting with some folks from Utah and Oregon. My mom and Maura noticed this one older dude that had his belly-button pierced. We also noticed that he had nipples that seemed like they were 5 inches long. It was gross! I think all 3 of us got a little hammered. Tomorrow morning we are scheduled to arrive in our first port of all; Puerto Vallarta.
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Wednesday – Day 4
Puerto Vallarta is not what I expected it to be. In all honesty, I was expecting to it be like the Mexican Paradise that you see pictures of. In all honesty, it was a disappointment. The town itself was much larger then I expected, but I didn’t see any places that I could go swimming in. Take Catalina for example. The Carnival Cruise lines do have a short cruise that docks in Catalina. Catalina was clean and you could come right off the ship and go swimming. The people of Puerto Vallarta were very nice. They didn’t seem as pushy as I expected them to be when you would walk past the merchants. Most of the day for me was spent veggin’ out. My mom and Maura went on some town tour of Puerto Vallarta where I just hung around the ship for the morning.
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Thursday – Day 5
The morning has been spent watching some movies and going up to the sun deck while I wait for my mom and Maura to come back from there walking trip. I am totally excited for tomorrow. Tomorrow we are going to be in Cabo San Lucas. We have a snorkeling trip planned.
Mazatlan is huge!!! When you look out, you see all the houses and buildings. Mazatlan is actually relatively nice looking from the ship. This is a much better destination as compared to Puerto Vallarta.
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Friday – Day 6
Welcome to Cabo!! Finally, I have found the Mexican paradise that I keep hearing about. The scenery was amazing. Cabo is definitely my favorite place I have been in Mexico. Only one downside though. Since Cabo San Lucas is like the “American Mexico” in a way, the prices are the same in Cabo as they are in the USA. Once we arrived, we went out on our snorkeling strip. The trip was a blast! Maura got a little too close the coral and got cut up a tad. All is well though with that. The snorkeling boat we were on was a party boat. They had beer, booze, and tunes. On the way back to the port, the guests were all dancing on the bow and singing along. The captain was crackin’ jokes and making fun of some of the guests. Once we got back to the main port, we decided to go walk around and do some shopping. We had lunch at Margaritaville and also had some wonderful mango margaritas.
It was a wonderful day! I had a great time. I new there was a reason that I was so excited.
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Saturday – Day 7
Last day on the ship. Today is a “fun day at sea” according to our morning Carnival Capers (newspaper passed out every morning). We were out on the sun deck for bit after breakfast, but then the ship ran into some fog. The moisture was coming into the sun deck pretty heavy and at times it appeared to be raining. While that was going on, I went into my stateroom and watched some college football while packing up a bit. The fog really only left us for maybe an hour. After that, we were right back into it. It got cold, windy, and it almost seemed like it was raining. We all hung out in the cigar bar and had a few drinks before bed.
Our bags need to be outside our rooms no later then midnight tonight. We are supposed to be in Long Beach at around 6:00 am. I think they begin disembarking the vessel around 7:00 am. Thinking of the logistics on this ship is mind boggling. They will have 2000 people off the ship by 11:00 am and then the next group of passengers will be boarded by 2:00 pm the same day. Think about the all the bags, food, people, etc.
This is the last night of the cruise. Overall, the cruise was wonderful. I definitely needed to get out of town and just relax. It was good to have some laughs and some drinks.
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