Puerto Vallarta 12.17.2018

We are cruising again.  This time we are on the Grand Princess.  We will be going to four Mexican ports;  Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Manzinillo and Cabo San Lucas.  Manzanillo is a new port for us and that is always fun, exploring a new place.  We will hunt for a Christmas tree ornament that is from Manzinillo to go with our other travel ornaments.

We have a dinner table with five others.  Two are retired military, dad was a Marine and served in Viet Nam and the son was Army who served in the Middle East.   One woman is a trainer of horses that pull carriages and her husband is in construction.  We also have a woman that just joined us on Saturday.  We don’t know much about her yet, except that she enjoys cruising a lot.  We had another couple the first night of the cruise that are much younger than the rest of us.  The man works for VISA in fraud detection and she is a stay at home wife.  They have left us for anytime dining.

We do our usual trivia, though not well enough to win, but enjoy playing at least twice a day.

We are nearing an area that should have whales and sea lions, so we watch for them

.

It’s Monday and we are in Puerto Vallata.  Then Mazatlan, Manzanillo and finally Cabo San Lucas.

We found that it is sometimes easier to post from our phones than from the laptop.  We have posted a photo or two and a video.  We suspect that the video might be too large to open.  We’ll post long messages from the lap top and photos from the phone.  The photos might be accompanied by some text.

Saturday would have been John’s mom’s 91^st birthday.  It’s is our first one without her so it is  sad.

We have never sailed during the holidays, so this is new to us.  The ship is all decked out, probably 100 Christmas Trees and maybe 1000 poinsettias, and thousands of lights, very festive.  All the recorded music is Christmas music of all genres.

We were invited to the luncheon for the 40 most traveled passengers on Sunday.  This is always very nice and a lot of fun.  We are still pretty close to the bottom of the list, and don’t always make the cut, but it is nice when we do.  The Captain and all the senior officers are also there and they are always very interesting to talk to.  The lunch was delicious, a very tender filet mignon, with a beautiful presentation.  The dessert was the most decadent chocolate we have ever had.

John & Colleen