Victory Cruise

What feels like eight years ago – in April of 2020 – we were to cruise the Pacific for a much-anticipated loungey time with some dear friends. We were heading to Hawaii and had all sorts of excursions booked and aloha wear set aside and books stacked for so many days at sea.

That cruise was our first of so many cancelled plans over the next endless months of No Fun.

With cruise credits to use or lose, Rob and I kept booking cruises to keep our credits and our hopes alive. We didn’t go to Alaska next. About a year later, we didn’t go to Mexico. I fully expected we wouldn’t cruise the California coast either.  So when October 1, 2022 rolled around and I found myself on a massive has-that-new-ship-smell cruise ship in the Port of Los Angeles, I was rather stunned we weren’t not cruising yet again.

Having no idea what cruising might be like in Covid Times, Rob and I decided to sail to familiar places. The cruise itself – and trying to keep aloofly distant from over 3,000 fellow passengers – was going to be enough of an adventure.

Our first night onboard was very hectic.
A "Corporate Event" was being held and
delayed our departure by 6 hours.
Sections of the ship were blocked off
and lots of waitstaff were redirected
to the event instead of the passengers.
Turns out it was the Hollywood Premier of a
really cheesy reality TV show filmed on
a different ship. We found out later that
people like Charo and Peter Brady had been
on the ship with us. DANG IT!

Line to get into the dining room on the
first night. This was for people with
reservations. I had reservations, believe me!
Thankfully there were no long, unmasked
lines like this the rest of the cruise.

Our itinerary was a 7-day California Coastal Cruise. It was round trip out of Los Angeles. We sailed up to San Francisco and then made additional stops in Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Ensenada (Mexico). We booked wine tasting excursions in every port except San Francisco, thus deeming our high seas foray “The Wine Cruise.”

If you are a friend or relative who lives near one of our ports and are miffed this is the first you knew we were in your neighborhood, please don’t take our secrecy personally. We had no idea if we were actually going to take the cruise, not to mention our ability to be sociable while on high alert not to bring home Covid as a souvenir.

Considering the trip much more an exploration and much less a vacation, our expectations were pretty modest. We packed a sense of adventure and wariness – and a big dose of patience, as traveling these days is not nearly as predictable and reliable as the golden olden days of 2019.

Indeed, getting to and from the cruise ship was a bit bumpy. Our good-Lord-it’s-early flight down to LAX was delayed too long to make our connection in San Jose due to there not being a pilot. Agreeing a pilot was a critical feature of our itinerary, we rerouted to an airport just barely close enough to the cruise terminal to be confident we could find a Lyft driver willing to take our fare. However, Lyft inexplicably decided it hated all of my credit cards.  Cursing technology, we eventually bargained with an overpriced taxi driver who hadn’t been to San Pedro in years.  We were delighted to get to the port earlier than originally anticipated, thanks to Juan’s Prius doubling as an asphalt hover craft. LA freeways are not for amateurs.

Our trip home post-cruise was going pretty smoothly, even with the overwhelming cacophony of LAX’s Terminal 6 for 3 hours and its dearth of power outlets. Our flight was ahead of schedule, so the pilot did a full loop around Crater Lake just for fun. That was odd…and photogenic.

Arriving in the Red Lot at the Portland airport, we were proud of ourselves for finding our car despite having parked it at 4 Freaking 30 AM seven days prior. Rob aimed his key fob to unlock the trunk and…silence. A little more investigation revealed our Honda had partied hard while we were gone and had fully depleted its battery.

Pro Tip for Portland area travelers:
PDX offers free jump starts!  Just trot
over to a parking lot shuttle shelter, push the INFO
button, chat with a friendly Airport Services
dispatcher, and you will be recharged and on your way
 in less than 45 minutes. They also will reinflate tires
and help you find your car! For free!  
PDX is seriously the best airport on the planet.

Aside from the travel bumps to and fro, the cruise itself was pretty fun if not a bit weird. Suspicious of virusy microbes, we did not see any shows, we did not dine with other passengers (although the tables for two in the dining room were still a little too close for complete comfort), and we kept our distance in the Take Five Lounge for our nightly dose of a cool international trio of jazz musicians (hailing from Germany, Argentina, and the highly exotic and very cheesy Milwaukee).

I am now sort of stalking James on social media

We staked out deck chairs in places so remote, the ship’s fancy wearable technology tracker could not find us to deliver cold beverages. We only rode the elevator once – when I was getting used to wearing heels on a ship – and instead climbed dozens of empty staircases every day to work off the nightly desserts. We were the lone rangers of mask wearing on the tour buses in port.  We did not meet any new people enough to learn their names. We kept to ourselves and had a lovely time.

Bundled on Deck 18!

Relaxing reading of non-school stuff

This was my first cruise with "Elite"
status. One of the perks was free canapes
on formal nights. We weren't sure what
that meant. Turns out it meant little pieces
of bread with weird creams on them.

We quickly decided we would procure
our own free canapes from the buffet.
Salami, cheese, olives, focaccia are 
much more our speed.

Formal night! And the one night we
took the elevator.

Our first port stop was quite a surprise. Having lived in the San Francisco area for several decades – and being familiar with Napa wine tasting – we decided to forgo any planned excursions and instead wing it for the day. Wary of reports from friends and news media, we were not sure how safe and interested we would feel roaming the streets of San Francisco. What we found was a reignited appreciation for The City.

We walked over 8 miles, had breakfast in the Ferry Terminal, had lunch in Chinatown, took a self-guided walking tour of all the offices I used to work in, reminisced about our first date and wedding lunch in a long-gone restaurant, and thoroughly embraced our tourist status by parking ourselves at the top of a double-decker bus that drove us all over the east portions of San Francisco and culminated in an exhilaratingly breezy drive across the Golden Gate Bridge. I have ridden and driven over that iconic bridge probably 1,000 times…but never in a convertible.  It was a BLAST!

Site of the best job of my career
8th floor of 575 Market Street

Site of the last job of my career
50 Osgood Place
I still occasionally have work
nightmares about that job

Lunch in Chinatown
Yes, just plates of pot stickers.
18 years and we still haven't found
good ones in the Portland metro.

Super windy and super fun!
Being a tourist in SF ROCKS!

Much to our surprise and delight, the San Francisco we found was quiet, clean, a little sleepy, and perfectly safe in the places that were always safe before. We saw some homeless folks but not nearly as many as inhabit Portland these days. And the community we saw near City Hall looked much more organized and intentional than the haphazard tent cities that hopscotch around the Portland metro.

As we walked through Fisherman’s Wharf, gnawed on some sourdough bread, got some Mrs. Field’s cookies at Pier 39, and dodged runners along the Embarcadero, Rob and I both found ourselves cuddling up to San Francisco in a way we haven’t in many years.

Our ship left the Port of San Francisco at about 10:30pm. Rob and I were among the ridiculously few people taking in the twinkly lights of The City from the Sun Deck. As we slowly passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and into a fog bank, the ship erupted in applause and cheers. It was pretty magical.

The remaining port stops were each enjoyable and tasty.  We fell in love with Santa Barbara, having only driven through it on Highway 101 in the past. I loved the beachy, relaxed, communal feel of the town. It sort of reminded me of a confident middle-aged woman happy with who she is and with no need to prove anything to anyone anymore. We had a blast at a boutique winery in Santa Ynez Valley and discussions are underway for a future road trip to discover and stock up on wines from this part of California’s wine county we have never explored. The winery paired – with moderate success – its wines with fancy homemade cupcakes. Quite fun, but not as much fun as the t-shirt I bought in their tasting room.

It was pretty early in the day to be 
eating cupcakes and drinking wine,
but we are dedicated to our craft

Such a beautiful setting!

It has long sleeves so I haven't been able to
wear it yet -- freaky record heat at Woodhaven

In San Diego, we rode a bus about 90 minutes into Temecula Valley and visited two wineries. The first winery was a name familiar to Rob from their olden days selling Christmas Trees near Disneyland. In fact, they bragged a number of times that the family sold land to Walt Disney who very persistently knocked at their front door until they conceded. The fact they still highlight this tidbit nearly 70 years later might tell you something about their wine. The second winery was much more fun and less name-droppy and made me wish we could linger longer.

I very much appreciated that the tour
was outside.

The weather could not have been better
the entire trip.

The two wineries we visited in Ensenada were about as different from each other as they could be. The first was really more of a farm stand party plaza that sold some wine on the side. We were given four plastic cups of wines to sample. When we asked what they were and if anyone was going to talk about them, we were informed that only snobby wineries do that. Newsflash: I am a big fan of snobby wineries.

Line for wine and pizza and jelly. 

The setting was very relaxing. They 
even had some cats wandering around.

The second Mexican winery was owned by an Italian family with lots of money and lots of tanks and lots of information. We got a full tour and all sorts of details about each wine we sampled. They were so snobby! We liked a few of the wines and were stunned to find out not only can we find them at home, we will also pay less than $10 per bottle. Total Wine will be seeing us soon. Ole!

Biggest winery (size and production)
in Mexico. Surprisingly good and 
inexpensive wines!

In our natural habitat, sort of.

We have been home and Covid-symptom-free for a week now. I am therefore officially declaring our cruise a victory!

Although we still took masky and hand-washy precautions, and I had that persistent hyper-awareness of personal space, that’s not really any different than what I define as my normal life at home these days. I had quite a bit of fun and I eventually started to relax by the fourth day. I actually was rather disappointed to have the cruise end so quickly. That was unexpected! I truly thought I was going to feel trapped being in such a big crowd of people for so many days.

No truer sign of our cruise’s success is last night’s activity: we confidently booked a cruise for next May. A cruise that knocks three bucket list items off in one long chug across an ocean. We chose excursions, we found hotels, we booked flights, we made onboard dinner reservations. Seven whole months in advance! It’s like I think we’re actually going!

It has been over two years since I let myself get excited about travel more than a week before we leave. A big part of what I love about travel is the anticipation and day dreaming leading up to it. Today I am excited and optimistic. Today I do not assume the plans I have made will be broken. Today my hope is revived and the world seems bigger and available again. A victory indeed.