One of the trade-offs of living out on this beautiful island in the Salish Sea is that special occasions can be fairly mellow unless there is a community-wide celebration planned. And boy, do we have our community celebrations and events here in general! We have myriad memorable festivities for almost everything – 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Solstice, Christmas, even stunning concerts and our own critically-acclaimed film festival. But there aren’t new towns to visit, new activities to try, or even long beaches to walk here. Things like cold, rainy January birthdays can pass with little fanfare unless a mainland trip is planned, and unless you go to a concert at a bar, one occasion that is almost pin-drop quiet here is New Year’s Eve (unless I’ve been missing something all these years).
In the past couple months, my husband has been wanting to get away for an adventure. He would love to go abroad and have vastly different experiences compared to the one-dimensional routine he’s been in since having a bicycle accident last January. He’s had a neurologically and physically difficult year.
Going abroad could be iffy considering that his daily energy levels and executive functions are still on the mend, so we decided on a short cruise instead. I’ve had Catalina Island on my mind a lot after hanging out with my friend Frank Loudin, who lived there a few decades before moving here. In college, I was a camp counselor one summer at Catalina Island Marine Institute, and it’s been calling to me lately with its similarly small and beautiful island life, clear-blue water, and, of course, sunshine. We needed to go to California anyway to wrap up some loose ends from a possible year-long move that we called off, so we booked a 4-night cruise with stops in Catalina and Ensenada. We had never been on a cruise, and it felt like a safe choice – rest, hydration, and medical attention, if needed, are possible everywhere you go.
When I hopped on Expedia to look at flight dates and prices, they were exorbitant from mid- to late-December. Except on Christmas Day. A normally $800 ticket to San Luis Obispo during the rest of December was $217 on Christmas afternoon. Sold!
When I planned this trip, New Year’s Eve was an afterthought. It happened to fall in the middle of the cruise, but I was thinking more about things like swimming in a warm pool on the lido deck, spotting orange garibaldis on Catalina, and eating abundant, tasty meals that I didn’t have to cook.
Gosh, did we learn that a cruise ship is an AWESOME place to be on New Year’s Eve! We also learned that some people go on an annual New Year’s cruise. It’s a massive, continuous party in various parts of the ship that doesn’t end until you decide to go back to your room. How fun to have a New Year’s Eve celebration that no one has to leave in order to go home afterward. It’s the antithesis of Orcas Island on New Year’s Eve, with a population of people similar to our island all together on the top deck during the countdown. Our older son took this video while hanging out with new friends he met on the ship:
Come along on a photo tour of our days and nights, especially if you haven’t yet experienced a cruise:
It was hard to walk off that boat when we pulled into the massive dock the next morning. No more constant entertainment, no more food made for us, no more handmade pizza until 4 AM or bottomless frozen yogurt cones. I will miss sleeping in the pitch-black cabins that rocked us to sleep like a womb every night. I will miss the fabulous Cruise Director Rico and his stunning ability to entertain massive crowds yet make us all feel like a bonded, loving family (I’m telling you, the guy was a phenom). And I will miss awakening each morning to discover a new place. I can’t say enough about this cruise experience. The only oddity – the pools were COLD water. I only changed out of my jeans and windbreaker once to sit in a hot tub for half of a movie. I assumed I’d be in my swimsuit the whole trip, reveling in warm water and sunshine. Not so. They refilled them with seawater and never heated them. Huh!
All in all, I think the price was quite reasonable and if you book a cruise sometime, I recommend doing it directly through Carnival’s site to get the best deals. When I was booking, the price was immediately reduced drastically when I put in the age of our younger son.
I hope you enjoyed the tour, and I hope your year has started off with a bang too. (A good one!)
