arctickitty

I’d stayed in Long Beach before, so I’d hoped we’d be able to explore San Pedro a bit. We were too tired from having spent the night in the Fairbanks airport, but I did talk Special Someone into joining me for a quick evening walk.

We arrived in San Pedro much later than we’d expected and were tired and hungry enough we decided to eat at the hotel restaurant. We had calamari, garlic fries, and a California bowl that was served on a plate. The avocado was great; everything else was adequate. The garlic was raw and plentiful. Not necessarily the best combo.

Now we have reached the time when I go back through my photos and notes and start telling you more of the story. This is how I kept entertained on the plane.

I wish it was…but it was one of our least favorite meals of the trip. The lamb pops were wonderful. The veggies and apps except for the mashed potatoes and the goat cheese salad weren’t very good; I wound up eating way too many mashed potatoes and paid for it.

Crown Grill

Crown Grill

Before I go back to the beginning of the trip for the full review, I want to rip off the band-aid and deal with the Crown Grill. As we reviewed the MDR menus, it wasn’t a top priority to visit Crown Grill, but when Ensenada canceled and we had a pile of OBC, we booked a table for the last night.

We were out of our cabins. We waited in a public area like the paperwork said. Are you saying people should just magically know to go to their meeting areas several hours before their meeting times?

Final Afternoon Tea. We only made it two times the whole cruise. The bonus of the captain initially cancelling Ensenada was that meal service switched to a sea day schedule and they had MDR lunch and Afternoon Tea (although Afternoon Tea was not advertised in either the Princess Patter or in the Journeyview Timeline—I asked the host at lunch) and it was nice to have a chance to catch one final MDR meal and one more Tea.

The last day we went to the Voice of the Ocean show. Being on a longer itinerary with lots of friendly, outgoing people, we socialized much more than we had on prior cruises. We thus learned about the audition and preparation process for Voice of the Ocean from a fellow passenger and wanted to check it out. It was a really fun show and the passengers all had a lot of guts to get up and do it. It sounded like it was a value-added process for them as well as they got head shots and coaching. Even though we went in rooting for the passenger who had told us about the show, we were won over and blown away by David from Liverpool, whom Josy from India in Adagio had introduced us to the previous night (and of course when we visited Josy later we asked him if he’d seen David from Liverpool lately and since he hadn’t, we let him know “his David” had won. Josy seemed as proud as we were. IMG_1920.MOV

For those of you sailing on the Crown in the future, look for this book I left in the library: Also look for: -Artem (Good Spirits) until July -Velimir (Good Spirits) only for 14 more days! -Josy (Adagio) until August

Our paperwork said our meeting time was 11:30 so we honored that request and didn’t go crowd our assigned meeting lounge early in the morning. Every other port they made a shipwide announcement that we were cleared and the process was beginning so it’s not unreasonable to have expected an arrival announcement. A single clearance announcement would have clued us in that they were running ahead of the published schedule. No matter, we arrived to our departure spot at the correct time!

We still hadn’t heard any announcements by 10am so I got suspicious and wandered the ship (and got what would prove to be our final coffees) and noticed people leaving the ship. We checked our meeting time (11:30) and I had a hunch so we went at 10:45 and we’re about to cross the threshold into Wheelhouse when they called our number so we turned around and went to disembarkation. The process was seamless and walked directly on through. We had an Uber credit to use for this month but the taxis were all lined up in front of us and we don’t have a ton of time to spare now so we hopped in one and are speeding away.

We stopped moving around 8am. Haven’t heard any announcements yet (just after 9:30am).

We are sailing away. The new disembarkation paperwork says disembarkation will be 9:30-11:40am; out of staterooms by 9am. They slightly shifted the breakfast schedule as well. Unfortunately I suspect the bar staff who have been very busy today will also be very busy again tomorrow. We asked a few crew and have been told the shops will not open, the casino tables will not open, but the slot machines may open for a bit. We did learn that the photo gallery was open so we bought souvenirs there that were rung up as “medallion accessories.” Still have some more OBC to go…

The captain announced that “We may leave the harbor before midnight. When we leave we will experience strong seas.” One of the crew had told us a little while ago that because of the storm when we leave is really up to the coast guard and not the captain and (before the announcement) that’s why we didn’t know when we’d leave. Since we’re still docked they haven’t opened the shops or casino back up.

You won’t be done with me for awhile!!! I might not post every day but it will take me a lot of low intensity workouts to get the rest of the pictures and reviews posted. I did hula for the show & had a great time.

Alright you guys, because of this thread, we took the furniture apart and this time we found panty hose. And we also found the as-promised European outlet behind the bed. The two lamps are wired together to plug into it. This is my medical equipment cable hanging down from the TV outlet: My medical machine plugged in behind the TV: How the lamps are wired: Outlet on the desk/exterior wall: Behind the bed:

I will give Good Spirits bar its proper review in due time (it will take a whole series of posts) but I do want to highlight the gift they surprised us with after we finished drinking their whole menu, a pair of Good Spirits whiskey glasses to help us remember this dream of a vacation. Their official “cocktail experience” menu has 19 cocktails and we drank 18 of them. They gave us credit, though, because the missing cocktail contains limoncello and the ship is “out” of limoncello. Well, they at least don’t have any in stock any where. We have heard that Sabatini’s possibly has it but that they will only serve it to you if you are dining in Sabatini’s (yes, we tried going to Adagio to ask for it). But, we drank more than 18 cocktails from Good Spirits as Artem likes to make up his own drinks and we let him do that for us several times. He would have us pick one ingredient and then he would dream up the rest.

Before this cruise we looked at charts of cruise cabin outlets and Crown was listed as having only American style outlets in the cabin. If there is one of a different style, we haven’t found it and we did look quite a bit. We found beer under our bed but no outlets.

We looked for but did not find the fabled outlet under or between the bed(s). Charts we looked at online said the Crown only has American outlets in the cabin and those are what we found. In our cabin the main outlet is on the exterior wall by the desk on the balcony side. It is too long for my regular charging cables to reach to the bedside table from there so we use an extra long cable for one person to charge a phone and then the person on the other side of the bed uses a battery pack. For my medical machine we use the outlet behind the TV. It’s a tight fit to reach to the bed so we unplug it from the machine when it’s not in use so that we don’t trip. I have heard that you can request an extension cord from your steward but we did not ask since we could make it work without. I have also heard that you can bring your own extension cord as long as it doesn’t have a surge protector in it. People have mentioned using magnet hooks to run the cord across the ceiling. I will try to remember to take some pictures after we pack.

No one has said anything other than 0900 arrival into San Pedro but I’ll post if the internet behaves (it’s been spotty today) if there’s any change. I don’t know if they rescheduled any tours. Not many people have been getting off and I haven’t seen the shuttle busses close to us, just at Carnival Radiance. I checked our account and they refunded our “money” for the zip line tour.

Glad your friend made it on board! What is project runway? Carnival Radiance just made a very long announcement but I couldn’t make out the exact words.

The caption just announced that the current forecast is for 45 knot winds and 15 foot wave swells and therefore we need to remain docked in Ensenada today. He is projecting a 9am arrival into San Pedro tomorrow. Passengers and crew are now permitted to go ashore in Ensenada with an all aboard time of 4pm.

Welcome to Ensenada The Carnival Radiance is docked and offloading passengers to their tour busses and winter coats.