Last one, I promise

Morning on the beach at Puerto Vallarta

I am anxious to get to home in this review of our trip... I have a dinner tonight where I may have to present some images. Hopefully, Google photos will be useful.

We still had one day left for Mexico and the port of Vallarta (Saturday April 22) was really quite enjoyable, a lovely boardwalk and old city. We did this again on our own bat, taking taxis as required, all quite reasonably priced. We stopped for lunch at a very good spot with personal accompaniment by music-1 across the walkway.

Lunch on the waterfront

And we compromised on Mexican formal clothes and bought a couple of ponchos for the grandchildren as I had previously noted a few weeks ago. The skill of sand sculpting is alive and well as can be seen from the image of the pieta.


The album is here and covers nearly a week. From Mexico it is a two sea-day trip to San Diego (Tuesday, April 22). On the sea days, a volunteer director arranged some duplicate bridge. Cruises of this length normally have a bridge director, but not this time.

It turned out that that Holland America had also contracted with a private conference to take over the card rooms on the last two sea days. This was a disappointment for many players who were relocated to the crows-nest where we had to also listen to or tune out the morning trivia game. (One of the leader's answers was wrong. What is an unreturnable serve called? An unreturnable serve, not an ace. An ace is a serve where the receiver does not make contact with the ball.)

Bridge to Coronado

In San Diego we walked the port area again. There are quite good waterfront walks. We had been there for the SBL Annual meeting in 2008, the only SBL conference in the US I have attended (except a regional one in Moscow, Idaho, last year - but I was a virtual attendee and presented remotely due to Diana's illness, the anniversary of which we marked this month). So the city downtown was familiar to us. We stopped at an award winning muffin shop for WiFi.

Every port we visited except San Diego required next to no fuss about disembarking, boarding and customs. Our government photo ID was never looked at. Only the ship's key card was required. In San Diego, everyone's passport was inspected in the jazz club before the ship was cleared. It was a long process. (I guess they know how slack the other ports are.) There was some delay in Victoria, but not much and not so extensive for passengers just disembarking as tourists.

Sunrise in the Georgia strait

After San Diego it is a two day sea trip to Victoria, arriving on Friday the 28th in the afternoon. It was lovely to arrive home, sailing the known waters of the strait of Juan de Fuca, right into the port of Victoria.

The time of year being what it is, we were awakened by the early morning sun. The 12-hour diurnal tropical cycle is now out of our systems. I miss it.