1st Port - Puerto Vallarta (Jan. 21, 2009)

Our first port was at Puerto Vallarta. I found this map with all 3 ports on it... Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas.


This is the morning we were coming in. Off in the distance (on the left side of the picture), you can see another ship ...

... Norwegian Star

This is the place we docked at. I think the ship turned around, so our balcony was on the other side of the dock.

Here's a pretty picture of some beach at Puerto Vallarta

This is the only morning we had breakfast brought to our room, since our excursion was at 8:00 a.m. Other mornings, we went to the Mermaid's Grille on the Lido Deck (9th floor) of the ship (like you would care to know that, haha)

Our excursion we decided to do in Puerto Vallarta was called "Whales, Dolphin & Snorkeling". To read more about it, click here. We went on this little boat across the ocean to an island (our ship is in the left in this picture).

Me and Jeff on the boat (with the ship behind us)... Jeff had a little sunscreen he didn't rub in. :-)

Looking out from the back of the boat, with the ship in the background

The island in the distance we were headed to ...

On the way there and back, we did some whale and dolphin watching, which we did see both, but we didn't take very many still shots and the ones we did take weren't really good. We had our video camera, which we used for the first time on the cruise, and got a few shots with that. If I can figure it out, maybe I'll post a couple videos later. We also bought a video they made of the excursion (which we got in the mail today). But here's one still shot of one of the best ones we have (click on the picture to see it bigger) ...

While at the island, we did some snorkeling, kayaking, and some of us rode in a motor boat around the island. We had a water camera for the snorkeling, but the couple pictures of us didn't turn out that great. But here is one of us on a kayak ...

And on the motor boat ...

Here are some pictures of around the island (might have to click on some to make bigger) ...

A bird with long legs

Lots of birds in the air!

And lots of birds on the island!

See the crabs?

Here's our excursion director (with Jeff's sister, Katie)

A Puerto Vallarta sign

Bienvenidos! (if you don't know what that means, see the picture below) ... also, check out the ship in the background!

What??? A Wal-Mart in Mexico??? :-) There was one close by, so we all walked there, so Jeff's mom could get a few things.

Why don't our Wal-Marts here get covered parking???

Siempre ... Always :-)

Wow, that's a lot of money for a box of chocolates!!! Just kidding, it was in pesos and the rate was about 12.7 to 1 U.S. dollar... you do the math (I'm not good at math)

We didn't leave the port till about 10 p.m. I took a picture of Wal-Mart from the ship... can you see it??

Our Room on the Cruise Ship

For this post, I am going to give you an extensive tour of our really nice balcony room on Carnival Pride.

This was up and down the halls of where our room was


Welcome to our room (#6141... since it starts with a 6, we were on the 6th floor)

When you walk in the door to our room, there is the bathroom on the right. Every day when the steward cleaned, we got new towels that were hung up nice and neat... even folded under the toilet paper. :-)


(There was no way to take a picture of the picture below without showing me in the mirror... so I tried to wave, haha)


The next few pictures are of the room itself

(I took this picture below for fun... yes, I was camera crazy/happy at times! You can see these 2 things hanging up in the upper right corner of the picture above)




These are the chairs out on our balcony (couldn't really get a very good picture of our balcony since it wasn't very big)



Each evening when we came back to our room after dinner, our bed was turned down with these little lamps on... like this below. They also put on the bed different information (daily schedules, coupons for the spa or photo shop or gift shop, etc.) and dinner mints. They also make our bed sometime in the morning after we leave our room. They also do some cleaning, too (we even find our clothes that we leave lying on the bed or couch all folded and put on the back of the couch). I felt like a princess on the ship! :-)


Each room also had a little safe to put valuables in (opening and locking it with a credit card or driver's license)

And it even had enough room under the beds to put luggage, so they weren't in the way, which was nice!

And one last picture... this was our first formal evening (Mon., Jan. 19). Jeff's mom took a picture of us out on our balcony before we went to dinner. This is just a little preview of a post I'll do later, where I'll post all of our professional pictures of us that we bought.

Cruise Ship (Carnival Pride)

I have no idea where to begin with all my many pictures, so I'll just post about different subjects... the first being pictures of the ship itself. It was SO big, inside and outside. The thought came to me several times during the cruise how a thing that big could stay afloat on the water, haha. My most often used phrase during the vacation was, "This cannot be a ship!" It just amazed me how many rooms and places inside the ship and how big some of them were. Anyway, here are some of our best pictures of the ship (some of the ones might be a little small, so click on them to enlarge them) ....

The hotel van (from the hotel we stayed at) took us to where we needed to be to get on the ship and this is a picture of the ship from the van... I was SO excited!!!

This is all of us, except Jeff's sister (Katie), who was taking the picture

The tunnel going onto the ship

The back of the ship

The front of the ship

The dome we had to go through to get checked in and all that... and the tunnel we walked along to get on the ship (this picture was taken from our balcony... yes, we had a balcony room)

Leaving the dock (I miss that day... a full week ahead of us full of fun times!)

Docked at Puerto Vallarta

Docked at Mazatlan

At Cabo San Lucas, there was no place for the ship to dock, so it was in the middle of the water and we took smaller boats to the piers. This is the beach Jeff and I went to and the ship in the distance

We were on a boat going back to the ship

The dome, the morning we got back (sad day!)

The tail on top of the ship with lights (it looked cool!)

More of the ship, the morning we got back

Bye bye, Carnival Pride! We will be back sometime (but probably on a different cruise and different ship)!