Sailing away...

April 21, 2009

Sailing aboard on the Zaandam…..

It was an uneventful trip to San Diego (thankfully). Surprising, Bubby broke out the homework before the plane even taxied away from the gate in Anchorage. With my pressure and his determination (I hope) he left AK with straight B’s and lets hope he can stabilize those after missing nearly three weeks of school. 

Despite my encouraging words about Portland (we had a connecting flight there), the kids loved San Diego and are now vocalizing to me their desire to live there rather than Oregon. I just don’t know if I can handle the heat there, as it IS in southern Cali. Oregon was so beautifully green and clean and continues to draw my interest. We had a couple hours to kill in San Diego before boarding the boat, so we walked to downtown San Diego from the port and went shopping at the mall. The diversity of the people we saw were slightly surprising to the kids - great people watching!!! The weather was HOT!!! About 90 degrees. So, needless to say, we just HAD to purchase cooler clothes to wear since our luggage was checked in for the boat and we were wearing rather warm Alaskan attire.  Little Missy says “I am sweating and I haven’t even been running.” - though she is always hot!

Finally boarded the boat about 300pm. I checked with guest services in hopes of getting a room upgrade, but was told that the boat is sailing at full capacity - so no luck. Oh well. Found our inside cabin, which was roomy enough and got settled. Then participated in the mandatory safety drill…

The kids were dying to get in the pool and were quite disappointed to hear that neither of them (two pools on board) would be open until tomorrow. The lack of sleep, coupled with not being able to swim, broke out the whininess of you know who. There was a live band on the back deck that rocked out in the gorgeous and warm sun as we departed San Diego.

We then checked out Club HAL - the kids club. To all of our disappointment, we were told that there were only four 8-12 year olds on this boat (and two of them are mine). I guess this means they get more attention. I must say, there are definitely more geriatric people on this cruise than my last one and haven’t seen any eye candy yet either…

Then to the room to get ready for dinner. There is food everywhere on this boat and the kids weren’t understanding WHY we had to get dressed for dinner and eat in a dining room. I explained to them that I wanted to eat dinner together as a family and this is what we were going to do. We have open dining, which means we can go to the dining room anytime between 5-9pm for seating.  As usual, the girls were ready before Bubby - patiently waiting - snapping a few photos of ourselves…

Dinner was good. I had Red Snapper with an amazing coconut custard for dessert. Bub had Prime Rib (a huge slab of meat!) and baby girl had Pork Chops. The only reason she ordered that was because it came with mashed potatoes and of course, she was disappointed in the portion size (of the potatoes). She didn’t eat the pork chop because she didn’t like the mango sauce it was drizzled with. Both kids had, surprise, Triple Chocolate Ice Cream for dessert. After dinner, I decided we should call it a night and skip the show and nip the sleepless, whininess in the bud….off to zzzzzzz land……