We had a great 4-night cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Monarch of the Seas with our friends Brad and Debbie Welch. It was the first time we had left Audrey for anything more than a few hours, and although we missed her, it was good to get away for a while. Here’s a day-by-day breakdown of what we did, what we liked, and what bugged us.

Sunday 10/22/2006 – Salt Lake City to Primm, Nevada

We took off from church early to get Audrey to Shefchiks’ house before they had to go to their ward. (We didn’t make it in time, so Bill had to stay home from Sacrament meeting.) The 8-hour car ride to Nevada seemed shortened by the fact that we watched Sneakers on the DVD player in the car. I got to drive between St. George and Primm, where we were bedding down at Whiskey Pete’s, which was hasn’t improved much since I stayed there when I was a kid. (It is one of three hotel-casinos owned by the same group there, and Whiskey Pete’s turned out to be the crappiest one.)

We had typical greasy-spoon fare at the diner in the casino, rode the tram over to the other side of the freeway, where we found the other casinos, then went to our room to watch Nacho Libre on my computer. After the movie (which we all agreed could have been a lot better, but I did like the part where Nacho was singing at the party), we hit the hotel’s hot tub. The jets were the loudest that I had ever heard, and you couldn’t turn them off, which made for limited conversation.

Monday 10/23/2006 – Primm, Nevada to Los Angeles

I got a little car-sick on our four-hour drive watching Catch Me If You Can, but I felt all right by the time we got on the boat. Monarch of the Seas would be our ride for the next four days. We went to our stateroom, deep in the bowels of the second deck, unpacked, and went to look around the boat. We went to dinner in the formal dining room that night (one of only two times that we did so during the cruise). The food there was all right, but we didn’t like having to wait while the food was prepared, and our waiter actually lectured Brad on how to cut his prawns. (Brad said under his breath, “Thanks, Dad.”)

Tuesday 10/24/2006 – San Diego

Our first activity away from the boat was going to the San Diego Zoo. We had cut out a coupon from a Wendy’s cup for $8 off per person on admission, but when we went to head to the zoo, we couldn’t find it. (I suspect it fell out when we were getting our papers out during check-in at the pier in L.A.) Anyway, we were all a little upset that we had to pay full price to get into the zoo, but that passed soon enough. The day was nice — we had great weather all through the cruise — and we had fun seeing a baby giraffe, a sea lion show, and a huge snake that was shedding its skin right in front of us.

The one thing that I had wanted to do that night was to be a contestant on the “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” game show with Edwina, a.k.a. the Bingo Mama. We showed up at the Boleros lounge more than half an hour early to wait, just to make sure that I would get to do it. (Except for Brad and Debbie, who went to their room to rest for a few minutes and ended up sleeping through the entire thing.) The show started and we saw the prizes: crap like key chains, pens, and document holders. Three people went up before the hostess let me go. Their questions weren’t terribly difficult, but there were some that would have tripped me up. Only one person made it all the way to the final round, but he lost his grand prize, which turned out to be some lithographed 8-by-10 painting in an envelope. My questions were pretty easy until she asked me, “Which of these musicals was not written by Andrew Lloyd Webber? A. Cats B. Phantom of the Opera C. Les Miserables D. Jesus Christ Superstar” My answer was “C” and everyone in the audience groaned, including Sarah, because they thought I’d gotten it wrong. I got a little nervous that Sarah thought I was wrong, but when the hostess asked if I was sure I said yes. Of course, it turned out that I was right. My last and supposedly hardest question was the scientific term for a mutually-beneficial relationship, which I could have named without having the multiple choices. So I was the only person who won the entire game, but I sure didn’t feel like a millionaire. My prizes were pretty lame, except for the picture, which supposedly is worth $100. We’ll see if we can get something for it on eBay.

Wednesday 10/25/2006 – Catalina Island

Today was Catalina Island. We got up earlier than I would have liked (especially since we were up late last night watching the Dueling Piano players) and got into our swimming stuff before breakfast. (Mine was still damp from when we were in the hot tub yesterday.) Since the Monarch of the Seas can’t dock there, we got onto a little boat (little being a relative term, since it had two decks and probably held 60 people) and headed for land. We got there about 10:30, and looked at some of the tourist trappy shops along the beach.

Then we headed for a resort down the beach called Descanso, where we ended up renting our kayak and snorkel gear. We started off with a two-person kayak, taking turns going out. Sarah and I took the first ride, while Brad and Debbie waited on the beach. We had a good time paddling around the little bay, and we really liked the noise the waves made as they went out over the rocks. Sarah was better at spotting various fishes in the ocean from the kayak than I was.

After that, we had tentatively planned to get snorkeling stuff and spend some time in the ocean. But the air was a little chilly, and me being the wet blanket that I am, I wasn’t sure I still wanted to do it. Brad kept pushing us, because he had done it in the past and it turned out to be their favorite part of the cruise. Based on that, and a recommendation from Sarah’s brother Byron, we decided to go for it — and we were glad that we did. We had wet suits that protected us from the cold, and we were able to see some cool fish: three different species in blue, orange, and brown.

After we got out and back into dryish clothes, we walked back to the little boat. After several minutes of waiting while other people got on, the boat tried to start its engines — and released a big plume of black smoke and oil instead. We sat and waited for about 20 minutes while they kept letting more people get on the boat and tried to fix whatever problem the boat had. In the end, it was only a minor inconvenience, but it kept us from getting back to the ship until after our regular lunch time had ended. We finally ate a “snack” on the boat at 4:00 p.m.

After a little nap, we got dressed up for dinner and did some romantic dancing. We played the bingo card that I had won during the Millionaire game show (nobody won the bingo grand prize for getting blackout in less than 49 numbers, but I was only a couple of balls away from getting the consolation prize of a couple hundred dollars. Too bad some lady beat me to it.)

Also that night, we watched a magic show with some comedy thrown in. That guy was pretty entertaining. Other highlights of the evening included a cool chocolate bar and more songs from our friends the dueling pianists. (Debbie paid a dollar to hear our request, “Lola” by the Kinks.) In the middle of the night, I woke up sweating, with a jittery stomach. I ended up tossing my cookies into the toilet in our room, drinking some water, and going back to bed. I’ve been fine since then, and I think it was just something weird that I ate in the chocolate bar.

Thursday 10/26/2006 – Ensenada, Mexico

When we got off the boat today to head into Ensenada, we were told there are really only two attractions there that we’d be interested in: A) the “Blowhole” or La Bufadora, where the ocean water surges up when it hits a cliff, and B) the surrounding marketplace, where people will be happy to separate you from your money. Royal Caribbean wanted to charge us $20 per person to take us there and back. The bus line was asking $15, but I found a taxi to do the job for $10. The four of us had a nice little 20-minute drive with a man named Antonio, who appreciated that I spoke Spanish and that he didn’t have to use his limited English.

The blowhole wasn’t as dramatic as I had been lead to believe, but that left us time to pursue the other attraction: shopping. Sarah was interested in finding a toy for Audrey and some jewelry for herself. She kept asking all of the shopkeepers if they had hematite in their silver earrings, since she has a similar necklace that she wanted to match. None of them were able to give her what she wanted. She saw a pair of tear drop-shaped earrings with blue mother-of-pearl-looking blue abalone that she liked, but then she had to have a pendant that matched them, but no one had that either. Finally, one guy went out and made her a pendant that suited her. Then when he told her his price, it was far more than she was expecting to pay. We did end up buying both the earrings and the pendant for $26 US, which was more than I would have liked to pay, but it left us enough cash to get a maraca for Audrey, pay for the taxi back to the ship, and leave a pretty meager tip for our waiters and stateroom attendant.

Friday 10/27/2006 – Los Angeles to St. George

We had to vacate our room by 8:00 a.m., so we had packed up the night before, ate an early breakfast and hauled our own luggage off the boat. (That turned out to be a very good decision, because we would have had to wait a really long time for our turn to get our stuff. We paid the lowest amount of anybody on the cruise, and it showed in almost everything.)

After we got on the road, we took a detour that lasted more than an hour to visit Sarah’s sister Lynn in Victorville, California. We had lunch at Arby’s in Mesquite, Nevada at 3:30 in the afternoon, and when we got to St. George that we could have made it all the way home, but we didn’t really feel like it. So we stayed at my grandpa’s park model trailer in St. George. We visited the Dixie (the first time Brad and Debbie had gone there), picked up a DVD at RedBox (thanks to a free rental code, we found out that The Sentinel wasn’t very good), and went to Cafe Rio for dinner.

Grades for the Royal Caribbean Cruise

Update: All the photos I have uploaded from our trip are available here: http://www.curtisgibby.com/pictures/filter_field=description/filter_value=Cruise.