Today was our first day of exploring the strange foreign land of Mexico. As we didn't dock until 12:30PM, we had the morning to relax on the ship. After getting up, we went straight to another dance class. This one was an introduction to the salsa. It's an awesome latin dance with an extremely simple basic step which lends itself well to lots of hip swaying and fancy improvisation. Afterwards, we had time to grab a small lunch and get changed before heading down to the atrium to meet Jim and Joan to go ashore. We caught a cab at the [View Full Entry]

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After a short breakfast at the buffet upstairs, we went to our second dance class which was the second level Meringue class. We picked up a few new moves to throw into the routine then made our way to the pool to finally sit out and enjoy the sun. We're just getting far enough south that you can enjoy sitting out on the upper decks. We both got a little sun before grabbing lunch at the pizzeria. This was very good, as the food on the ship pretty much always is! The pizzeria is free of charge so all passengers can [View Full Entry]

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Today was quite fun. We're "at sea" today and tomorrow so there are no Mexican adventures to write of yet. We had a continental breakfast delivered to our stateroom at around 9 this morning. If only we could start every day that way... The next step was to take a meringue class in one of the clubs. The turnout was surprisingly large. I'd say there were about 100 people there in all. One of the assistant cruise directors taught the class and covered a basic meringue step with a few simple moves. Tomorrow there will be a continuation covering a few [View Full Entry]

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What an exhausting day! We woke up at the Heritage Marina Hotel and had a quick breakfast then did a load of laundry to make sure we were stocked up on clean clothes for the cruise. Then we hopped in a cab and were on our way to the Port of San Francisco. Traffic near the pier was horrible. Not only were roughly 2000 passengers trying to leave the pier from our boat's previous trip, but there were the 2000 new passengers for this trip, pluuuuus, the Queen Mary II is in port right now and they're loading today to continue [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in San Francisco aprox 4.5hrs late last night. That seems to be par for the course on the longer western routes on Amtrak. After chatting with the conductor for a short while, he wrote out a small note with a transfer ticket which gave us a free bus ride from the train station in Emeryville, CA to the Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. The ride would only have cost us $12 but free sounds even better! Though the trains run late most of the time, Amtrak has a great policy of comping either a hotel room or additional travel [View Full Entry]

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This is a most excellent article Acacia wrote for anyone thinking about/interested in taking a train trip: Factoids About Trains, by the First-Timer, for the First-Timer: by Acacia Uible (ahhhh! I'm Uible, not Hillard now. Freaky!) There's an interesting mix of people who ride the trains. Some use them to commute (outskirts of chicago into town, for instance). These people get an affordable rate, so students and many others stay on for a short time. The people in for the long haul include: people who dislike air travel (out of fear, or for environmental reasons, or religious [View Full Entry]

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After reaching Chicago and sitting in the terminal for about an hour and a half, we were on our way! The Number 5 California Zephyr pulled out promptly at 2:00PM. In the interest of saving a little money, we are staying in a slightly smaller room for the rest of the trip. It's called a roomette and seats two comfortably. There are two reclining chairs facing each other in front of a nice large window. There's a foldout table between them. At night, those two chairs fold down to form a single bed, then another single bed folds down from the [View Full Entry]

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Our trip began, not so promptly, at 2:00AM this morning. The 51 Cardinal was supposed to reach Cincinnati at 1:10 AM but in what I'm told is typical Amtrak fashion, it was running an hour behind. When we finally got on board, our room was surprisingly large. We splurged and reserved the full-blown bedroom for the fist leg of our trip (Cincinnati to Chicago) as we expected to be tired, boarding at 1:10 AM. There's a double-bed down low which folds up into a couch when not in use, an upper single bunk which we use to stow our bags, a [View Full Entry]

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