Day 12 - Sea Day

A completely lazy day at sea today. Despite that we were up early and I was at the gym at 6 am. This ship has the best gym I’ve seen on a ship – great equipment and lots of it! After my workout we had breakfast and then spent a couple of hours exploring the ship. We have not been on the Splendor before and will say that we like the layout very much. There are two pools and 5 or 6 hot tubs, as well as a kids “splash” area and the waterslide. They also have an outdoor big-screen. During the day they show TV programs and, on certain evenings, they play “movies under the stars”. Unfortunately it was only 55F/13C at noon today so a bit chilly to swim! There are a few photos posted below.

Before lunch Andrew closed up the portholes to form his preferred nap environment (think cave) and I headed up to the Promenade deck to get a latte and read. We had lunch at the burrito bar, which is something we haven’t seen on other ships. Tasty! This afternoon we were able to find a spot on the Serenity Deck (the adults-only area of the ship) out of the wind with direct sun so we were able to sit out and read for a few hours. We did find it ironic that Carnival has designated an area for adults only, named it “Serenity”, and then put the kid-magnet mini-golf course directly above it! It was less than serene, to say the least.

Tonight was our first formal night, although we are “semi-formal” at best. We used to dress up more, however bringing Andrew’s tux takes up a lot of room and he finds the dining room too hot for a tux. We both had strawberry bisque and lobster – all delicious, as usual! Now we’re back in the room for the evening. Tomorrow is our first day in Cabo and we’re scheduled to do 2 dives so we need to get a good sleep. More tomorrow!

Day 1 - Embarkation (continued)

Well, we made it to the port about 10:30 am. Unfortunately, customs was overly-zealous with the passengers leaving the ship today and we were not able to board until about 2:30 pm. It was chilly out for SoCal, about 50F, and we had to wait outside so it was long and frosty. The Splendor was docked right next to the Queen Mary so we walked up to take a look at her. We're planning to tour her next Sunday when we return to Long Beach.

Queen Mary

Once we boarded the ship we grabbed some long-overdue lunch and then got in to our cabin. We have another porthole cabin, like we did on the Imagination in November. This one, however, seems to be larger and has a couch and an actual counter in the bathroom. We'll be very comfortable in this cabin for the next two weeks, and well taken care of by our cabin steward who asked us to call him "Mr. T", much to Andrew's delight!

View from the portholes towards the cabin door.

View from the cabin door toward the portholes.

Shower.

Sink/counter.

Day 1 - Embarkation

We had a long day of travel yesterday. Minnesota and Illinois had some weather issues which caused some flight delays. We left home for the airport at 1:30 pm and finally arrived at the hotel in Long Beach at 11 pm (CST). We had a wonderful driver from LAX to Long Beach. It was easy to tell that he talks to people all day as he was an excellent conversationalist. He made the 30 minute ride fly by!

The hotel is lovely - another great Priceline find for Andrew at $65! Even better, it is about 2 blocks from the cruise port. If we didn't have so much $%#$%* luggage, we could walk there!


This morning we were up at 6:30 am (sadly, habits remain even on holidays). I had a good run and then we walked about a 1/2 mile to a grocery store to get some soda and some wine to carry on the ship. As some of you know, there was a shooting in Mazatlan about two weeks ago and a local man was killed. Unfortunately, the scene was witnessed by passengers from a Norwegian Cruise Line ship and it has caused some issues for the cruise industry. Carnival canceled their stops in Mazatlan last week, as did many other cruise lines. We have been waiting to hear if our stop there will also be canceled, and learned this morning that it will. We also found out this morning that, because Mazatlan is canceled, our itinerary has been flip-flopped and we are going to ports in a different order with an additional day in Cabo to make up for Mazatlan. We are disappointed by this, as we really like Mazatlan and were looking forward to that stop. As well Andrew has been emailing the vendors that we have booked tours and excursions through at the other ports to find out if we can still do them, but on different days. We'll keep you posted on that!

So now we're packing up and are planning to head out for the port in about an hour, via cab. Once we get on the ship we'll have lunch and then should be able to get in to our cabin by about 1 pm or so. Luggage usually comes a couple of hours later so we can typically get unpacked before the muster drill. We sail from Long Beach at 4:30 pm (PST).

Here we go again!

We're off again on another cruise! Originally, we had planned to go to Mazatlan for a week but we came across a great deal on this cruise so are doing it instead. In fact, it was such a good deal that we're doing it twice - back to back. Each cruise is 7 days long, stopping in Cabo, Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta. The map of this route on the Carnival website is "currently unavailable", so you'll just need to use your imagination. Or else Google it. :)

We fly out Saturday afternoon and board the ship on Sunday. We'll look forward to having you follow along...