Unlike some, we cruise on occasion - but still enjoy other types of vacationing as well. That being said, this was our fifth cruise (and the second on Holland America) over the last ten years. This was also our second trip to the Mexican Riviera as we did a similar itinerary several years ago on NCL. My wife and I are early 60's (she's retired and I continue to work full time). While we've also cruised on NCL and Princess, we think Holland America provides one of the best rides going. Our group arrived on Thanksgiving day and spent two days seeing the San Diego sights prior to boarding. We rented a car and stayed at the Hampton Inn Sea World because of the proximity to Old Town. We also enjoyed Gas Light area restaurants as we stayed over a night upon returning at the Gas Light Marriott. Also, I must add that this particular cruise was a CardPlayers.com poker cruise (with about 500 poker players) and as a result, had a larger cross section of age groups than we saw on our earlier HAL trip. I'm sure this younger than normal crowd also affected late night activities in the Casino and other lounges. Having this group aboard, however, didn't appear to have any adverse affects on anything except for the fact that the Crow's Nest lounge was taken over by this group and not available for any other ship's activities.

Embarkation - We arrived around 11:30....stood in line for 10-15 minutes and were on the Lido deck enjoying a great bloody mary and buffet lunch shortly after noon. State rooms were ready, as advertised, at exactly 1:30pm. For this cruise, we had chosen an aft veranda cabin (5180) which was fantastic. The balconies on the end of the ship are huge - we had two chairs, two chaise lounges and a table and still had tons of room. The king sized bed was very comfortable and we had more than sufficient space for all of our belongings. One note here, "bring half as many clothes and twice as much money as you think you will need" - that's the motto of my niece, a former travel agent, who along with her husband were also with us on this trip. We also opted for the unlimited laundry - at $45 for the week, we think this is one of HAL's better bargains. Don't forget, however, that your cutoff to send laundry in is 48 hours before the ship returns (or 10am on the next to last morning). As we had spent two days in San Diego before boarding, the first thing we did was to fill the laundry bag and call for pickup.

We also met other CCers for the Banner Wave at 3pm and HAL provided us with a nice complimentary "meet and greet" on the first sea day. Read more