San Dee-ah-go (Cruise Part 1)

Although it was over two months ago now, I figured I still better create a post (or two) dedicated to our cruise, so here goes. In mid-October we cruised from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas with our friends Erin and Chad. Although we ended up having a GREAT time, things did start out a little rocky. The first thing that went wrong was that Ben was sick the whole week leading up to our departure, so we were scared to leave him while he was sick. So two days before the cruise we ended up at the walk in clinic having his ears checked. Immediately after setting foot in the waiting room, we reconsidered our decision. The place was like a petri dish for the flu. The room was backed to the brim with people coughing and sneezing. We were sure that if he weren't sick before we got there, he would be after we left. After nearly two hours of chasing him around trying to make sure he didn't touch anything, we ended up learning that he had an ear infection and would likely be okay if we went on our cruise anyway. Crisis #1 averted. Saturday, which is departure day finally rolls around! We are all packed and ready to go, dropping Ben off at my in-laws house and my mom calls and asks if we have noticed that there is a category 5 hurricane headed straight for Cabo. Being the calm and rational person that I am, I immediately thought to myself, we are cancelling this trip! Luckily my husband was able to talk me off the ledge and we decided to fly down to San Diego and see what happens. We did some research online and figured out that they would just reroute our cruise if a monster storm were to hit Cabo. We head to the airport where we met up with Erin and Chad. They were flying United Airlines and we were on Northwest, so we said good bye to them and told them we would meet them in San Diego that night for dinner. Wrong. Crisis #3 reared its ugly head. Our plane had two failed landing attempts in the dense fog of San Diego before our flight was diverted to LAX. I was so nervous to land after the two failed landing attempts that when we finally did land in LA, I immediately ran to a coffee shop, purchased an enormous bear claw and ate the whole thing sitting on the curb waiting for our charter bus. I am sort of an emotional eater. So we finally arrive in San Diego via bus at about 11pm. I was sure at this point that the trip was doomed. Our friends Troy and Kim had driven in from Phoenix to spend a couple days with us in San Diego before we left on the boat. They were still able to pick us up at the airport, so we went out for a drink and some food to try to salvage the evening. (Erin and Chad had arrived hours earlier, and were already enjoying Papa Doug's hospitality at the Manchester Grand Hyatt. More about Papa Doug later.) After a very late dinner with Troy and Kim, we went back to the hotel and crashed. The next day things started to look up. We decided to hit up the famous San Diego zoo to see what all the hype was about. It was just as good as we had hoped it would be. Though we encounted a man who wanted to share way too much information about hippo poop and a woman who was a little too interested in the breastfeeding gorilla, we had a blast. The animals were amazing and the cookies weren't bad either.

So, after a long day walking around the zoo, we headed back to Papa Doug's place also known as our hotel. Okay, so here's the story with Papa Doug. We found our hotel on Priceline.com for REALLY cheap, but we didn't really know anything about it when we booked. The lobby was extremely impressive and overall, we had a great experience there. However, we did have one complaint. The owner of the hotel's name is Doug Manchester and he has pictures of himself ALL OVER the lobby. Literally, you couldn't walk a foot without seeing a photo of him. And they weren't just normal pictures. He had photos of him with Governor Schwarzenegger, Donald Rumsfeld, Mitt Romney, etc. etc. He also had pics of a helicopter crash that he survived among other things. This in and of itself wouldn't have bothered me so much, except that in the caption under each picture, he had them labeled "Papa Doug and the Governor" and "Papa Doug with the Defense Secretary". It was just a little creepy and self absorbed for me. So the rest of the weekend, the Papa Doug jokes were flowing quite freely.

Alright, so back to the actual trip. In addition to the zoo, we also ate some great meals at the San Diego Fish Market and The Broken Yolk. Monday was departure day and we had some time to kill so we decided to tour the USS Midway aircraft carrier. It was pretty cool, but I think Mike was more impressed with it than I was.

So we finished up our tour, spend one final attempt convincing Chad that there were no pirates near Cabo and boarded the ship. That's all I can tell you in one sitting. More to come on the actual cruise portion later.