I love my job! I truly LOVE my job! What other profession can you be in and take 2 cruises in less than 30 days? This is the beauty of being a Travel Advisor.
Don’t get me wrong – I earn my cruise time! I sell lots of cruise vacations to happy clients. I am here to help make lasting vacation memories. Definitely more rewarding than being on a cruise myself. Well, almost….
In October, my husband and I finally took advantage of my top training accomplishment with Princess Cruises. My Commodore Graduation Cruise. Free if you book and interior cabin, but of course we like balconies, so for a small fare, we got a great balcony cabin. I have maintained my Commodore status for 5 years and had never taken the time to enjoy my graduation gift. But we finally scheduled it and took a well deserved cruise vacation.
Roundtrip from San Francisco, we sailed for 10 glorious days on the Grand Princess along the coastline of California to the Mexican Riviera. Our gateway was magnificent, sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge. I have driven over it many time, but never under. So amazing! The beginning of 3 days at sea. I enjoy days at sea almost as much as being in a port city. So relaxing, no schedule and plenty of time to explore our ship!
Our itinerary was almost perfect. 3 days at sea, 4 ports of call, and 2 more days at sea before we returned to San Francisco. Days at sea start with coffee on our balcony while we watch the sunrise and plan our day. Exploring the ship, enjoying the fresh sea air, getting a little Vitamin Sea and making new friends. Visiting ports of call are fun and this time we did 1 shore excursion in each port.
So, how do you spend time vacationing on a 10 day cruise? Let’s check it out!
One of our favorite places on any Princess Cruises ship is The Sanctuary. This is the Adult Only piece of heaven at the front of the ship. Shade sails strategically placed to block the wind, but still allow for a bit of sunshine to sneak in. And a nice area completely in the sun, too. Lots of totally comfortable lounge chairs, tables for light snacks and various flavored waters. Wonderful wait staff that will get you anything your heart desires from their complimentary goodies to drinks and food from around the ship. You can spend a full day or a half day relaxing here. If you are lucky enough to spend the afternoon in The Sanctuary, you get High Tea around 3:00pm. That was wonderful! Needless to say we spent 2 days here. One on the way to Mexico and one on the return to San Francisco. Don’t miss this when you sail with Princess Cruises!
Another favorite place of ours to hangout is the Piazza. This is a 3 deck area connected by spiral staircases and glass elevators. Bars, snacks, shopping and guest services are in close proximity to the Piazza. In the afternoon and evening there is live music, dancing and Cruise Director hosted events, like and egg drop game or the Champagne Waterfall.
We found we enjoyed The Martini Bar the best because we could hear the live band below, and in the seating area off the bar, a guitar musician played every afternoon and evening. He was really good and lots of fun sing along songs. The bartenders were amazing and the bar staff were fun as well. We all had a great time and we met a lot of fun people. It was also the area where the photographers took photos most nights between the elevators, on the spiral staircase and right off The Martini Bar. We had LOTS of photos taken and made some friends with the photographers, too. The loved #Myazz!
So let’s talk about ports of call and our shore excursions.
Our first stop was Puerto Vallarta. Amazing how much it has grown since my first cruise to the Mexican Riviera back in the 80’s. Just WOW! We had booked a Tequila Tasting Tour here, and had to transfer to the Old Town area. Not that far away, but because the Old Town area has super narrow streets and they are one way, the bus had a challenge getting to the Tequila Factory. But we made it and discovered a lot we did NOT know about Tequila. It is so much more than Jose Cuervo!
They did the tasting in a theater much like you would do a wine tasting. Swirl it in your glass, watch the ‘legs’, smell the spices and then taste. Really interesting and nothing like doing shots. It was very interesting and we did learn about what I will call ‘real’ tequila.
Afterwards, we had a taco lunch and did a little sightseeing before they took us back to the ship. Earlier in the day we had discovered we had ‘backed’ into the dock and it you stood on the back deck by the aft end pool, it looked like we had backed into the local Wal-Mart parking lot. It was really a funny sight and was oddly a bit fitting…
On to Manzanillo for port of call number 2.
Manzanillo is in their young stages of hosting tourists. It is a growing port, but it is still somewhat untouched by rich Americans and Canadians. It is a huge shipping port for sure, but still pristine in the terms of having that fishing town charm. We did the most amazing tour here, that was the hit of our trip! A tour out to the Turtle Sanctuary.
At the Turtle Sanctuary, the volunteers work to perpetuate the sea turtle species and help their chances of survival. There are several tanks with all different species, sizes and ages of various sea turtles in them, so they can study their habits and how they differ from male to female turtles. There is also a ‘breeding ground’, if you will, with hundreds of plots with lots of sea turtle eggs the volunteers get from the beach nests. the ones that are ready to hatch have nets over the nests to try to keep the babies from escaping and getting eaten by predators. If they time it just right, the catch and contain the babies in a styrofoam ice chest to show the visitors. I got to hold a one hour old baby, it was so cool, and they are so cute! These volunteers increase the chance of survival from 1% to over 5%. That is pretty good considering these babies crawl to the ocean as soon as they are born and live thereafter in the sea. At such a tiny size with nothing to protect them, it is nothing short of amazing that they survive at all.
Next stop, Mazatlan.
Mazatlan, too, has grown since I visited there in 1993. We opted to do just a day at Stone Island Beach Resort and chillax for the day. There were Palapas and lounge chairs on the beach and a small pool near the food and entertainment building. We ended up by the pool and had a lot of fun with the people we met there. Good snacks and live music, how can you go wrong? We had wanted to do a tour of the Pacifico Brewry, but that required closed toed, steel toed shoes. Who takes those kind of shoes on vacation? Or even has them?
Cabo San Lucas was our last stop before heading back north to San Francisco. Since we were there in 2017 for MTravel Conference and drove up and down the highway to do site inspections at various amazing resorts, we decided to do a catamaran tour of The Arch. Which was pretty cool, and we got a tour from the water of the same area we drove by on the highway. A new perspective of the resorts looking in from the ocean. So many new ones, and you can see several that are built in washes. Next big rain storm, I hope they survive better than most did right before we got there for conference. Lots had major storm damage then and had to close for weeks. Anyway, it was a nice day for a sail along the shore.
We also had to go back to Cabo Wabo. We had a short 15 minute visit when we were there for conference, so this time we wanted to relax and have some lunch. Both times we had hoped for a Sammy Hagar sighting, but neither time that happened. Bummer!! There was another ship in port that day as well that was heading down through the Panama Canal, and consequently into 2 storms heading for Puerto Vallarta. We were glad to be heading in the opposite directly. We had really good weather the whole cruise, so we were glad the storms missed us, for sure!
All in all, we had a great cruise on Grand Princess. Had some great food, met some great people and most of all relaxed. We spent a lot of time up on the Movies Under the Stars deck and saw some fun movies and live concerts, like Rolling Stones. Not a big fan, but it was still fun! The staff onboard was amazing and truly made the experience on Grand Princess a lot of fun. It really is all in the people you interact with that give you the extra good experience. I can truly say that I have had a good experience with Princess Cruises each and every time we have taken a cruise with them.
Part 2 is coming up soon. Symphony of the Seas inaugural season cruise. Stay Tuned!