Carnival Paradise Baja Cruise

I use my blog as a journal of the activities and things that we do and print it out and store it in a binder so I may get a little wordy and usually ignore grammar rules.
Me, Tyler, Michael, David, Mutti, Kristina & Scott went on our first cruise May 31-June 4. I had told Tyler a couple of years ago that when he graduated from high school we would go on a cruise. Although not everything turned out how we planned we made the best of things and had a good time.
We chose the Baja cruise that leaves from Long Beach, CA and stops at Catalina and Ensenada, Mexico which was perfect for our first time. We had an 8:30 a.m. flight so left @ 6:00 a.m. My neighbors decided that night to play music all night long with the base up so my bed rattled all night and I didn't get much sleep. We made it to the airport in good time and met up with Kristina and Scott in the parking lot. After checking in we made our usual stop at Burger King for some breakfast. Tyler wandered around the shops and Scott & Kristina recommended the book "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins, which he purchased. I had a chance to read it on our final day during a four hour layover at the airport. It is fantastic. I highly recommend it, even if it is a teen book. There is a second book in the series and when we got back I went to the library to see if they had it. They did but we were 103 in line for the hold so I just went ahead and purchased it at Wal-Mart. I haven't started it yet because I am saving it for next weekend when I go down to St. George with a friend.
We were on a really small plane but luckily it is a short trip to Long Beach. I was kicking myself later for not adding on a weekend at Disneyland. By the time I had thought about it we already had our flights and couldn't change the tickets.We got to Long Beach and found a van willing to take us to the port for only $7/person. We had a couple of hours before we could board the ship so we walked around, looked at the Queen Mary, a submarine, sat by the water, watched a stupid boat with some fishermen come in too close to fish and the police shouting at them to move on. They did, right in front of the cruise ship. Did I mention they were idiots?
At noon they let us start boarding and we went to the Lido deck and had some Mongolian BBQ, which was so yummy because we were starving. We walked around and familiarized ourselves with the ship. After a couple of hours we were able to go to our rooms.
This was the only negative as the rooms were not how they were described to us and it was really tight. Instead of a balcony we had a window. Instead of bunk beds we had a queen bed. At night they brought in a mattress and put it on the floor. Like I said, we made do and now we know. Of course you do not spend a lot of time in your room anyway. They also didn't have hair dryers and Kristina and I assumed that the other would bring one or there would be one on the ship. For Kristina it was fine as her hair will curl and is long. My hair just gets frizzy and I didn't take anything to put it up with.
We loved Catalina. Tyler did a scuba diving class for non certified divers and loved it and wants to get certified. He is so good with new experiences, does almost everything well, and is willing to try anything. We walked around the shops and later met up with Tyler in the afternoon, had some yummy fish & chips,and rented a golf cart to drive around the island. We were going to let Tyler drive but you have to be 25 or older to drive 5 miles per hour. Whatever!
Ensenada was okay. It was amazing the difference in a community only 70 miles across the border. Everything was run down, people were just standing around and of course there appeared to be only shops willing to barter with anyone. We decided to take a bus out to a blow hole. The driver was really nice and spoke really good English. We stopped a couple of times to buy drinks and use the restroom. My tip is to just remember to always carry Kleenex with you when you travel and so glad I did. Drinks were only $1 but at one place they gave me peso's back. Not sure what to do with those. We spent two hours out at the blow hole which was lined with shops. Everybody had a great lunch at one place. Michael & Tyler had taco's for two which was cooked on cactus and had steak, shrimp, and chicken and looked fantastic. I didn't want any of that but bought a large bread from a baker that was sweet and filled with cream cheese. It was so delicious. I could eat that every day. Mutti bought some too and we both brought it back with us and finished it off. Tyler purchased a necklace for Michelle and of course got shot glasses everywhere we went but other than that we didn't make any purchases. We didn't really see anything we wanted. Kristina and I tried to barter for a Gucci bag but they wouldn't go down in price and as we didn't need it that badly we just passed.
The food on the ship was not anything fantastic, in my opinion, just an abundance of it. The formal dinner had lobster tail which was really good and they had some great appetizers and desserts.
We had purchased some wrist bands but didn't really care for them and used Dramamine instead. It really wasn't too bad. Most of the time you couldn't even feel the ship moving. David got sick the first night after the ship started and was not able to eat dinner but then went after taking some medication was fine. He just made sure he took something and was sure to remind everyone hours in advance that he needed it.
We saw two shows. The first was a ventriloquist and a comedian and both were hysterical. The second show was some singers and dancers and was okay. I enjoyed the steam room and sushi. The last day we just lounged in the sun. It was a warm sunny day and the ship was just crawling so we got a nice burn. Tyler and David played miniature golf and Tyler one each time.