From fast to SLO

Sunday was a melange of new experiences for us. We attended a Unitarian service with Tom and Neal - well, mainly with Tom, as Neal was outside helping people dye dozens of Peace T-shirts she'd screen printed. It was midday before we headed for the freeway, northwards from San Diego and past San Bernadino, at the back of Los Angeles. WOW! There were ten lanes of traffic - 5 each way - and sometimes more - all doing 80 miles an hour ... that's 130 kilometres an hour ... and every lane full of traffic all the time ... thousands and thousands of cars and trucks. We were almost glad that we had a largish SUV (4WD) as we drove like bats out of hell for two hours straight before we escaped near the San Gabriel mountains - a ski area just east of Los Angeles. There we stopped at the Mountain View Inn, beside one of the largest sand hills we've ever seen, and shared a plate of ... liver and onions! It seemed so un-American! Heading westwards, we drove beside the Edwards air force base, to Palmdale, where we supermarket shopped and booked in at a local Days Inn, totally wrung-out from our experiences in the fast lane.

Monday was totally different, as we drove along narrow country roads along the edge of the Sierra Madre, heading towards the coast. Our first impression was of the smog that continued to blanket the hills, even 150 kilometres (nearly 100 miles) from central Los Angeles. Our second impression was that we'd seen it all before, even though this was our first visit - we kept seeing scenes from every cowboy movie we ever saw. I'm quite sure I saw Victore Mature peering over a ridge, and Audie Murphy down in a gulch below (don't worry dears, if you're under 100 years old and can't remember these stars of the Wild West!).

It was delightful to arrive in the San Luis Obispo (SLO) area and meet up with our friends Anni and Bill. We'd visited them last year, but one visit is never enough - it's wonderful to feel that you're almost continuing the conversation left off at the end of the last visit. Like Neal and Tom, Bill and Anni are wonderful hosts, though we're all lacking sleep because we talk so far into the night - as well as being keen international tourists, they travelled the US for seven years, visiting every mainland state, including Alaska, and Canada, before settling down at Avila Beach. Yesterday we lunched at inland Templeton, at a wonderful restaurant in an old saloon - again it was just like a movie set - before visiting the SLO botanical garden.

Our bags are packed, we're ready to go ... this showbiz air is having an effect on us ... and today we set off on the first of six train-days. Today we return our SUV and travel by train to Emeryville, just inland from San Francisco, where we'll stay in a hotel overnight. Tomorrow we head for Chicago, via Salt Lake City, Colorado and Nebraska, our 43rd state. We're due to arrive on Saturday afternoon, and will then change trains and travel through Ohio, West Virginia (state #44) and Washington DC to Philadelphia, the next time we'll sleep in a bed, on Sunday night. On Monday we'll catch another train, this time heading west through Pennsylvania, to Johnstown, where Janet and Ken promise to be waiting for us among the autumn (fall!) leaves of the Alleghenny Mountains. Don't expect another blog for a week - but in the meantime, we hope that you're enjoying life as much as we are.

California - here we came

We have our feet on the ground! We're staying with friends Tom and Neal in a real house ... and we feel like real people, not like tourists! We loved being on the ship, and had a superb time, but real life is wonderful too.

Yesterday we sat out under the trees (LOTS of gum trees, some banksias and wattles, and lots of peppercorn trees (if you're a Victorian) or pepperinas (Queensland version) or Californian pepper trees - take your pick - and ate breakfast in the sun, dogs at our feet - life is good. Later Neal took us around a wonderful craft museum where she's a guide (they call it a docent) - Maddy, and Stephanie, would have adored the Zandra Rhodes clothing exhibition - it was brilliant. Lots of Mexican folk sculpture (celebrating Mexico's bi-centennary) and Romanian embroidery, too. We lunched at the wonderful museum complex, watched brides posing around the interesting buildings, all built for a World Expo in the 1930s - just a great day out with friends.

Now we're off to dye Peace T-shirts, and join the Biggart family at the Unitarian church, then wander our way northwards in the SUV we've hired - it was meant to be a compact car, but that's life! Interesting sidelight - collection of the car was held up because no-one could get the electronic locks to work - it turned out that the nuclear US Navy carrier in the port had blocked all electronic signals in that wavelength!

Back to land means back to facebook, too - it;s great to hear everybody's news - Congratulations to Michael and Tammy on their engagement, commiserations to Jess, whose pet Crush is no more, good luck to Bronwyn - and thanks to all the others for snippets of news.

Back to the real world ... almost!

This will be our last blog from the ship, and we're actually writing from within sight of San Diego, although we can't go ashore ... we, and everyone else on the Carnival Spirit, will travel to Mexico overnight, then "debark" (isn't that a ghastly Americanism? We still say "disembark", to ourselves!) in a town called Ensenada. From there all 2200 passengers (no, that must be 2199 - see below) then get onto buses and travel to ... wait for it ... San Diego! You see, we're all bound by a US law called the Jones Act, which says that every Jones, Smith, Brown, Obama ??, and Windolf must visit at least one overseas port on every cruise - and as we've sailed from Hawaii, the 49th state, we have to go to Mexico. The reason that we diverted via San Diego today is because one passenger had a heart attack, so we sailed to San Diego, watched her carted off to hospital, then continued on to Mexico.

We have loved our time on this ship - very different from our cruise on the Carnival Splendor last year, partly because the ship is smaller, but also because the passengers have changed three times. The special thing, for the two of us, is the way that we have been "adopted" by the staff and crew - they count us as part of the team, and we've been constantly bombarded with wine, chocolates, fruit - last night all our favourite dining room staff gave us a beautiful hand made card, full of messages, and a photo frame they had bought for us - please can we take them back to Oz with us?

After we leave the ship tomorrow (we refuse to type THAT word again!) we collect a hire car and drive around Southern California for 5 days, visiting 3 lots of friends, near San Diego and near San Luis Obispo. Then we'll catch a train next Wednesday (Thursday Aussie time) to travel to Pennsylvania, via Chicago.

We'll be in touch after our 'land legs' get back in training.

It's a hard life - or is it?

Here we are, back at sea - having a hard time fitting in all the things we want to do. We start in the early morning, watching the Aussie dollar rise against the US dollar (we LIKE that!), then go down for breakfast - we could go up, to the Lido, but find that it's much more civilised in the dining room, and we eat less than at the buffet - it's much easier to say "No" to a menu! From there we return to our room - cleaned for the first time for the day - it will be totally done again while we're at dinner - then parade around the deck for exercise, stopping to chat as we go. We appear to be two of only four Aussies on this particular cruise - would you believe that the others have a grandaughter/niece who teaches at Coolum High School - it's a small world!

A spell by the pool leads to conversation - and then it's lunch time. Back to the dining room - seafood for Frances, a chinese pepper steak salad for John, and a visit from the captain, wandering around for a chat ... much more welcome than the wandering magician, who's a bit of a dill! An afternoon nap for John, while Frances tries to catch up with some uni work, then it's back to the deck. Today Frances and John (known as Jack) invited us to their suite at the rear of the ship, where we enjoyed their huge private balcony, sheltered from the wind - the side balconies are attractive, but tend to be windy. We followed this with attendance at a Past Guest's party - more food, free cocktails - we try to be very moderate, but it's hard - before changing for dinner. Crab legs and chicken in a truffle sauce for Frances, hazelnut crusted camembert for John, followed by rare roast beef, then a souffle for Frances and fruit & cheese for John ... please note that we only have one starter each - some of the people around us have three starters before their main course!

We're catching up on our emailing now (All our emails have suddenly disappeared!! If you've sent a message in the last few days, please could you resend it?) before we go to a show, equal to anything we'd pay $70 a ticket for at home ... oh, and we forgot to mention the chocolate coated strawberries, each one in a white chocolate 'shirt' and a dark chocolate 'coat' and 'bow tie' that were waiting in our cabin, a gift from the Hotel Manager.

What's hard about this life? Well, we are missing you all - and Theodora the cat - and we've only 2 days before we have to pack - AND we have to make plans about losing weight when we disembark! Sorry if we've made you jealous - we know that life on land is good too!

Aloha also means goodbye - unfortunately!

Well, our two weeks in Hawaii is over - although I've still got flowers in my hair, and John has shells around his neck, ready to say a final "Aloha". We've really enjoyed Hawaii, partly through the tours we've done - yesterday we travelled by bus 10,000 ft up the Haleakala volcano (Mt Kosciusko is only 7,000 ft!) - but also with the things that we've done as individuals. Last week we drove around Maui, and loved it, this week we visited the superb Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and the royal palace (all 6 rooms!) in Kailua, Kona, which displayed absolutely superb furniture and artifacts. Today we went to the Maui County Fair! We enjoyed looking at rabbits, donkeys, cattle, poultry etc, wandering past the food stalls (we DID resist the deep-fried chocolate bars!!), and watching the kids enjoying the huge number of games and rides on the Midway - there were NO sample bags! - but best of all we enjoyed the entertainment of Hawaiian songs and hula, which was superb. Now we have to say "Aloha" to Hawaii, and our thoughts are already extending to the next part of our trip, although we plan to continue enjoying every last minute of our cruise, while we can.

On a sad note, we want to say "Aloha" to Frances' cousin Peter, who died suddenly after Saturday's AFL grand final - our thoughts are with his family.

Maholo (Thank you) Hawaii - you have been so generous to us.

What a celebration!

WOW!
We've just had the most wonderful day of celebration - the most perfect 25th wedding anniversary we could have imagined!

We started the day as we cruised into Nawiliwili on the island of Kauai - breakfasting beside the huge windows at the rear of the ship. Then we travelled up the Wailea river in a large barge-boat, to a 'fern grotto' - we walked through acres of flowering gingers, hibiscus, guava trees etc etc to an area surrounded by high rock walls, draped in vines and ferns, above a mossy grotto dripping moisture - although we had a glorious sunny day, Kauai is officially the wettest place on earth. At the grotto, a Hawaiian group waited, ready to sing the 'Hawaiian Wedding Song' to us, and another couple who were celebrating their 36th anniversary, and a couple who'd been married 2 days before - as well as 100 or so others, who were just there for the enjoyment! The group accompanied us back on the barge, singing and demonstrating the hula - if only we'd had a video camera to film John doing the hula - he was a whizz!!

At dinner time we dressed up, although it wasn't actually an Elegant Night - John in blazer and tie (with long trousers AND shoes!) and I in my wedding dress! We were surrounded by love and good wishes, particularly from Katerina, who was a favourite of ours last year on the Carnival Splendor, and who comes for a hug each evening - she's now our head waiter - and from Karnita, the wonderful Balinese chap who's been our head waiter up until now - and Fernando the maitre d' and his assistant, Natalia, and so many others who've become special to us. They tell us that we are 'the best guests they've ever had' (Oh yeah?), but they were so generous that they ordered a surprise anniversary cake for us, and the Cruise Director sent wine - our room is full of baskets of fruit, chocolate-covered strawberries, more wine etc etc ... we've done a couple of small things around the ship, like reorganising the library (with permission), and we've been paid back ten-thousandfold!!

After dinner (and the obligatory 'Happy Versary to You' song sung for all anniversaries) we proceeded to have our photos taken - twice - by Marco, and by Luz, both of whom we knew last year as well. We haven't seen the results yet, but hope at least one set will come out well.

We finished the day with the show "All that Jazz" - a really splendind all-singing/all-dancing spectacular which we've seen before, and loved - couldn't help but wonder what we'd have been doing if we were home on our own!

Thank you all for your good wishes - it was great to think of home, too. Love to all of you.

At sea again

Well, we've just left Honolulu, after three terrific days, and we're enjoying having the ship moving again, after being vitual landlubbers. Yesterday we went to Waikiki - saw the beaches from the local bus as we travelled, but otherwise we were almost lost in a forest of tall accommodation towers! All anyone seems to do in Waikiki is to shop, so we joined the masses, spending several hours at the International market, and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

Today we were much more serious, and went to the wonderful Bishop Museum. There we were welcomed by Neil, an American botanist who spent some time in Brisbane, and married a Brisbane girl - John knew him through his friend Philip, and they were pleased to see each other again. After a tour of the Herbarium we explored the main museum - the refurbished Hawaii Room is absolutely world class - perhaps even a world leader! - and we enjoyed the Polynesian section, too, with artifacts from across the Pacific. After lunch with Neil we returned for a session on the history of hula and chants - it was so non-touristy, and impressive - a memorable day.

Now we're into the third cruise of our back-t0-back-to-back experience ... and we're being treated like royalty! Our room is full of chocolate covered strawberries, bottles of wine, and a fantastic fruit basket - yesterday we put in an hour or so working on the ship's library, and we've been so royally rewarded! And you should see the faces of our fellow-guests (new to this cruise) as all our favourite staff members race up to hug us! This is really like a family, and we love being a part of it!

We hope that family at home think of us on our 25th wedding anniversary tomorrow - we have a special trip planned - we'll report on it in our next blog. Aloha!