Sunday, January 15, 2006

2006-Jan. Cruisin' to Baja California-4 nt Carnival Paradise: Catalina Island, Ensenada

Carnival Paradise 4 night cruise:


After the winter meetings for the company I work for (Prestige Portraits), my sister joined me and we headed off on a 4 night Carnival cruise. She had never cruised before, so we did a short one to see if she could handle life on a boat.

Our journey actually started the day before our cruise. We had to make our way from San Diego to Los Angeles. That didn't turn out to be much of a problem, though. My sister flew into San Diego and I rented a car from the hotel I was staying in in San Diego and we drove on up to Los Angeles the day before our cruise. We tried to pull off at some of the beaches along the way, but were surprised to see most of them charged a day use fee, so we continued on to LA. We did take the slower Hwy 101 instead of Hwy 5 and enjoyed going through the little towns and catching glimpses of the ocean. We ended up actually in Anaheim and spent the night in the Worldmark resort, Dolphins Cove, there. It was a really nice condo---too bad we were just there for 1 night.

The next morning we headed to the car return place in Long Beach, returned the car, and were quickly on our way to the port by taxi. 

1-9-2006-Embarkation day


1-10-2006 - Catalina Island


1-11-2006 - Encinada


1-12-2006 Sea day



Our first sisters' cruise left us wanting to go on more. So we have made it on another one (Holland America 7 night Mexican Riviera in 2008) and plan to do many more.