Is it Over Yet?

As I was eating dinner in a hotel restaurant in Seattle tonight (grilled cheese sandwich, please) I had to stop myself. A horrible thought came into my mind. A terrible thought. A less-than-appreciative thought and one counterintuitive to my I choose joy and Live deep and suck out all the marrow of life tattoos.

I can't wait for this year to be over.

I’m sure it came about because of our travel this year. We’ve spent:

• 69 days in elevators full of pushy, rude, and downright obnoxious passengers. In all my years of riding elevators in real life, I have never, ever come across the kinds of behaviors I see in cruise ship elevators. 
• 55 days cruising on the Royal Princess where we walked a minimum of 2 miles every single day. It's a big ship! But these old joints need a break.
• Way too much time going through airport security. Despite having TSA precheck, I complicate things by having knee replacements. Even though they tell me that's not what is showing up on the full body scanner, 10 times out of 10 I get patdowns. During those full body patdowns every inch of every single body part is touched. And sometimes places they have no business touching. So not fun.
• Too many days of seeing too many out of control kids on cruise ships. When kids are running around and screaming - and running into other people - it's probably a pretty good time for someone (a parent maybe?) to step in.
• A three hour flight sitting next to lap infant just a few months old. One mom couldn't manage. Ear plugs would have come in really handy today.
• Too many minutes standing in line (or on the phone) trying to get other people's mistakes corrected. Things would run so much more smoothly if businesses looked for ways to be proactive instead of reactive. If I hear one more I'm sorry. It's not supposed to be this way. I'm going to scream.

Traveling for long periods of time can do that to you. While it's exciting and fun at times, it can also be frustrating and exhausting and even monotonous. It can wear you down. Make you want to hide in a cave, never to be seen in public again. 

But we can't do that right now. 

Our travel year is far from over. In fact, our biggest, baddest, most adventurous adventure is coming up soon. One which will test our strength, stamina, and patience. We'll be traveling to a part of the world we've never been before, doing and seeing things we could never have expected. It'll be a former history teacher's (ie hubby's) dream itinerary. It's a bit scary to go all out like this, in a bit scary part of the world, but as J, the blogger at Yellow Fish cruises frequently says, "We are not getting any younger, the flights are not getting any shorter and the world is not getting any safer."

So we must suck it up, push on, and put on a brave face. 

I'm sure there is so much more to add, but I'm tired, in an airport hotel, and don't have my luggage with me. Tomorrow will be my third day in the same set of clothes so I'm a bit grumpy and a bit spent. A good night's sleep will hopefully clear my head a bit.

Royal Princess 10 Day Mexico Cruise Catch-Up

I haven't been doing a "live from" this week but figured I might as well stop by and give an update on things.

 

While our turnaround day in San Pedro started as a beautiful one

Morning view from our balcony

the in-transit process was a pain in the you-know-what. Head to CBP, go outside the terminal, walk down the sidewalk, back into the security tent to line up behind all the new embarking passengers, then head back into the terminal to sit and wait. Not looking forward to next week for sure.

We did have to switch cabins again. Three weeks, three cabin changes? Yep, it seems to be our pattern. Staff do a great job of making the move, though. We take everything in the drawers and toss them into the suitcase and keep the things on hangers. The steward arranges with their supervisor to get things moved without us having to move it down the hallway ourselves.

We're in a handicap accessible mini suite cabin this week so hubby can again take a shower. Woo hoo! It's actually a Club Class mini suite so we've been having dinner in the Club Class section of the dining room every night.

This itinerary has another overnight in Cabo. We considered going out after a special Sabatini's dinner with friends, but the couple who invited us are much younger than we are and we knew we couldn't keep up. They left on a tender at 11 pm and wound up returning after 4 am. We're too old for that.

There they go, on their way to a wild Cabo night.

We spent our night time sleeping (like normal old people) and spent our days admiring the views, including this one from deck 7. I had to use of of those somewhat-secret doors I've talked about before in order to get this picture.

We also have Loreto on the itinerary.

We've never been to Loreto before and didn't really know much about it. It's a tender port so it makes it a bit of a pain, 

but so many people on the ship - the guy working the Guest Services Desk, the server out on the Horizon Terrace, and even the ladies sitting next to us in Club Class - raved about the town. After visiting we can see why.

They only have three ships visiting this year, so you can probably figure out how non-commercialized the town is. I did a check for next year and found they have 20 ships visiting. If you are considering a visit to Loreto the time to go is now. 

In Puerto Vallarta we were thinking about going out with someone but there was a crew drill and so she was delayed. We waited on her I'm done with drill and off duty until _ o'clock call but it came late so we just stayed onboard. It was so very hot and humid in Puerto Vallarta. Whew.

We had thunderstorms after leaving port.

Manzanillo was another port, but we woke up and felt like someone had played a dirty trick on us. 

We usually see this cruise ship pier. The one where you can just walk off and go grab some food or do some shopping...

But instead we wound up at the cargo port. A cargo port that is a 45 minute walk from the town. 

A cargo port with a military presence. 

Right below our balcony

The alternative to walking was grabbing shuttle tickets starting at 6:45 am. Thankfully after the first few groups they abandoned the idea of having to get tickets first and let everyone head out whenever they wanted to catch the 15 minute ride to town. We chose not to go and instead remembered the good old days when we could easily get to and from town.

A previous picture of mine from Manzanillo when we docked right in town

Dolphins accompanied us as we left Manzanillo.

Here are some other random things about the week:

They did balcony maintenance one day so we got the chance to see all the balcony doors opened for a change.

We did laundry and yet again the token machine was out of order.

We have tried to see the Good Spirits show three nights in a row, but despite it being shown in the Patter, advertised on the TV, and having a separate special menu it has been a dud. It was even worse than last week's cruise. All I can say for this ship is, unless there is a personnel shift, don't expect to be entertained or see, hear, or learn anything about the special drinks during the Good Spirits hours. Now that's a waste of some money.

The sale in the dining room had a line to check out stretching all the way to the back of the dining room. No thank you.

In the middle of the night the other night right after my bathroom trip, our phone in the cabin rang. It was the guest services desk telling me the alarm in our bathroom was going off. Uh, no. That someone had pulled the cord or pushed the alarm button. Uh, no. They weren't able to turn it off from their end so it was up to me to turn it off. Uh, no.

Even after putting on my glasses I couldn't find anything that had been pushed. Anywhere. I knew there was an emergency cord in the shower but I was positive I hadn't even come close to it. I looked everywhere.

Knowing the loud beeping the guest services desk was having to hear (I heard it over the phone and it was LOUD), in a panic (remember, this is in the middle of the night) I started tearing the bathroom apart. Towels and toilet paper and tissues went everywhere.

And that's when I found it. 

Our cabin steward had replaced our tissues with a new box and had put that new box right over the top of the alarm button. I must have touched the tissue box when I was going to the bathroom and the tissue box in turn decided to press upon the alarm button. 

See the alarm button hiding there now that I've moved the tissue box?

One more thing worth mentioning is something that may be impacting my travel plans. This week I received a jury duty notice in the mail at home. (If you haven't signed up for USPS Informed Delivery yet, you should.) Thankfully the reporting date is on the outside of the envelope, but unfortunately those dates are during our month-long Rome to Singapore voyage. I was able to go online and request a jury duty postponement. If I'm approved, yay. If not approved, jury duty is a covered reason under my Princess Vacation Protection Plan. Either way, it is an UGH situation.

Update: I received a postponement. Barely. After almost 40 hours of flights, stop overs, and layovers as I make my way back from Singapore to Boise, I will be starting jury duty within hours of arriving back home. Yeah, double UGH.

One more sea day until... 

We're back to San Pedro.

Another beautiful morning in San Pedro.

Here we go with another turnaround day. More immigration and walking and security lines as well as a whole bunch new guests coming onboard. So I guess this blog post really became a cruise wrap-up.