Our Cruise to Catalina and Ensenada!!! Part One!

 

Here I am the night before leaving on my cruise. David and I have never been on a cruise before. We HEARD that there are no fun snacks (like Candy) unless you buy them, and that drinks cost too. So, as you can see, I made sure to have my "stash". This was the first suitcase I packed. David's dad was thinking it was so funny to see a suitcase full of food that he took a picture of it. Now that I look back, I wouldn't take so many snacks, but FOR SURE I'm glad I had my Diet Coke. One of my guilty pleasures......

 

Here we are on our FIRST cruise ship! We are on the Carnival Paradise. We left at 6:00am to be able to board in Long Beach, CA at 1pm. Before getting on the ship, we went to the Queen Mary and got a milkshake! YUMMY! The first thing that happened after we got on our ship was EAT! I was amazed how much food there was and how often we were able to eat! I've heard all about cruises and how much food there is, but mercy, it's truly a crazy thing how often and how much you could eat. We didn't actually leave until 5:30pm. So, we just tried to walk around the ship and get acquainted with where everything was!

 

Tuesday morning, we woke up and were in Catalina Island. David is a kid. He couldn't wait to see it, so while I was getting ready, he ran upstairs on top of the deck to see what it looked like and then came down to get me to go to breakfast. We had a water taxi come to get us at the ship to take us over to the Island. Here we are....The Allens, Us and The Turners. We had SOOOO much fun with them! I love them all! I would HIGHLY recommend going on a cruise with friends. :)

 

We asked a local what was the "must do when you're in Catalina". The answer was to rent a golf cart and drive around the Island. It cost us $60.00 for one hour. That was an easy split of $20 a couple. We thought that was such a deal to be able to see the whole island for $20! The place is gorgeous. The funny thing was that we were given a limit of an hour. If we took more time than that, we were charged more. Well, the cart only went like 5 miles an hour! We were a heavy load! We didn't stop to "smell the roses" too much because we were so worried about getting back in time. The guy punched a time card and everything....so we stayed on task!

 

I will say that I loved the island. It was beautiful! I don't think I could live there though. There are people that actually live here. I would feel island fever quickly. I guess I don't have to worry about that, because I think you need to be wealthy to live there, or inherit a home from someone that is wealthy.....