I love it when we’re cruising together

So Erin and I went on a cruise last week. It was all part of our ongoing quest to rid ourselves of all our youthful qualities and leap directly into being elderly, confused and delighted by buffet meals. The quest is going quite well.

We went with Princess Cruises, which did, in fact, make us feel like princesses. My camera is dying a slow death, so I don’t have a lot of pictures — and the ones I do have are pretty terrible — but I’ve posted what I’ve got. It’s not like a cruise ship is particularly photogenic. Sure, it’s beautiful, but all you really need to do is close your eyes and picture a blend of water and opulence. That’s really all there is to it.

We left out of San Diego, CA on the Dawn Princess and cruised down to the Mexican Riveria, with stops in Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta. Here’s a quick summary.

Day One

Erin and I need to wake up at 4 a.m. to catch our 7:15 flight out of Pearson. Erin sleeps, but I stay up all night playing Wii games. At customs, Erin is detained for over a half hour, likely because she has a Masters degree and is thus a threat to the American way of life. Things look dicey as she sits forever in the waiting room, but she’s cleared in time for us to make the gate.

The rest of the flight is uneventful as I take several Gravol and pass out in my seat. At San Diego airport, Erin’s luggage does not show up. She has terrible airport luck. Miraculously, her bag does come in with the next flight. One day in, we’ve already dodged two bullets.

Getting on the cruiseship is quick and easy, even though we are clearly clueless and don’t even have our boarding passes. The ship looks like this. We wander about and drink beers, still kind of baffled by this whole thing. The ship leaves port, we eat dinner, and head to bed early, exhausted.

Day Two

In the light of morning — and the blazing heat — we sit pool side but have no sun screen and end up with wicked sunburn. It’s still nice, though. I read a book for the first time in months. Then another. Then another. That’s really all I wanted.

It’s formal night on the ship, which we really haven’t prepared for, so we get some free room service and eat on our bed in our room. Our room is small and, without a window, seems to exist outside of time. But it’s cleaned twice a day and is comfortable, so I can hardly complain.

Afterwards we hit the bar and watch elderly people dance to the classics, which is truly one of life’s great joys.

Day Three

Ship docks in Cabo San Lucas, and we take a little boat to the beach to hang out for a little while. Mexico is striking in the shift from tourist-focused industry to abject poverty, but that’s kind of to be expected, I suppose. It was a really nice day, even if we did get harassed by so many people selling trinkets on the beach that eventually we just went back to the ship and sat by the pool some more.

Later in the afternoon we discover that the ship does afternoon trivia, which we actually win on our first attempt. Unfortunately we don’t really quite understand the rules and fail to claim our prize. We played every day after and, even when we joined forces with other cruisers, never managed to win again. Devastating.

At night we get a nice dinner in the dining room then go see Kevin Jordan do stand-up in the lounge. It’s way funnier than I expected.

Day Four

The ship hits Mazatlan, where we decide to go on a relativity cheap trolley tour. I took a zillion pictures of our tour guide and the things we saw, mostly because this was the one day when my camera actually worked reliably. There is also a crazy sequence where the tour guide, upon seeing a fish market, jumped off the bus and showed us lots of live sea creatures.

In the end, the tour is actually an elaborate ruse to get us inside a diamond store. Feeling betrayed, Erin and I meet up with a nice lady traveling with her wheelchair-bound mother and grab a cab back to the ship. I use the five dollars I was going to tip the guy as cab fare. This is my unique brand of Mexican justice.

Back on the ship, we do more poolside things, then lose at trivia, then go see another comedy act in the lounge. Only this one is a comedian-slash-magician, a mix that has only made me laugh once. The show’s terrible, so Erin and I leave early and get another good dinner and hit the bar for a while. The ship network is showing Transformers, which I’ve never seen, so I watch that until I fall asleep.

Day Five

Puerto Vallarta looks a lot like San Diego. It’s very urban. The ship even docks right across the street from a Wal-Mart. We walk around a bit and then go inside said Wal-Mart to buy the highest SPF sun screen we can get. Mexican Wal-mart is just like Canadian Wal-Mart except that nine-year-olds work the tills. Also: Spanish.

Back on board, we see Comedian Jim McDonald in the lounge. He’s good. We also lose at trivia, drink lots of Rum & Coke and then, once it gets dark, experience FIESTA NIGHT on the deck of the ship. Jimmy Buffet is played. Drinks light up. Men young and old whip their shirts off and dance together as some sort of sick, perverted contest. It’s great.

Day Six

Back at sea, there’s nothing to do except read, relax and lose at trivia twice. Erin is sleepy after fiesta night so I’m left alone for a few hours, in which I wander about the ship. On the deck near the front, I get to see three gray whales swin by. It’s neat.

It’s formal night again, so we eat in the Pizzeria. The entertainment is a ventriloquist who is actually kind of good, for a ventriloquist. There is definitely a limit to how funny ventriloquism can be, and this guy had clearly reached it. We make it back to the room and (shamefully) watch Enchanted in its entirety before going to bed.

Day Seven

Last day, and at sea again. It’s getting cold as we approach California, so we spend a lot of our time indoors, drinking and reading in the atrium area. The entertainment at night is a talent show, wherein an elderly man gets up and recites The Cremation of Sam McGee, complete with actions and lighting effects. It’s the best. Erin stands up and cheers “Whoo!” when it is over.

We enjoy a last-night dinner in the ship’s steak house, where we both have some pretty fantastic steaks and a bottle of wine (that I order as “your cheapest red”).

Day Eight

Making the long flight home is exhausting, especially as a bunch of snow fell on Toronto when we were gone. I manage to get my car stuck in the laneway behind our house at 1 a.m. and then swear a lot. Erin does a good job of pretending everything is cool. We go to bed with the car still stuck. I dig it out the next day.

Even with that, though, the trip was a lot of fun. I probably wouldn’t want to go on a cruise for all my vacations like some people do, as it’s a bit low-key and there’s not a lot in the way of culture, but for what I was looking for with this trip, it felt pretty perfect.

Rest of the Pictures.