A Day in the Bay : A Weekend Mexican Cruise

One fateful weekend, 65 of the hottest LDS YSA's descended upon Long Beach, California to embark on a weekend Carnival cruise to Ensenada, Mexico. We spent the afternoon in LA before getting on our ship. And how did we spend our time??

Eating. Of course.

Pizza.

Chased with ice cream from Salt and Straw-which lived up to the hype.

Every flavor was delicious.

Thankfully they let us get four different flavors in our double scoop portion.

Then we rented electric scooters and rode around town and down to Venice Beach.

After we got our fill of scootering, we watched people at the skate park until it was time to go board the "Inspiration". But not before we saw a guy tear his shirt off in the middle of the street and start yelling about who knows what.

We were late, which was actually pretty great because there were no lines, we just walked right on. But not before our first of many photo opportunities.

The boat wasn't really that great or nice, and the food wasn't anything to be excited about (except the burger and burrito bars, and the chocolate lava cakes that we ordered every night for dessert-with two, not one, scoops of ice cream). It was said, "a carnival? That is a good description for this." You could say that the cruise first timers were not that impressed. But that didn't matter to us. We were there for the memories.

After our safety training (which consisted of no training, and just aimlessly standing like sardines on a deck) we went and got the "bon voyage" party started. Little did we know that the songs we were dancing to on that lido deck we would hear about 20 more times in the next two days. Also, for some unknown reason, the Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 and Thing 2 were there.

Later that night we hit up the Karaoke bar, and with our group it pretty much became OUR karaoke bar. We dominated that place every night. Our version of karaoke was more like being at a concert vs. respectfully watching others sing. It was hard to tell if other people loved or hated us. Buuutt they probably really just hated us.

The next day was our full day in Ensenada. It was a rainy day, but we didn't let that ruin our plans.

Parrots greeted us as we exited the boat.

We did some research and went to do the "only thing worth doing in Ensenada" according to at least 8 Yelp reviews.

Las Canadas, Canopy Tour.

We were excited about it.

There were 5 ziplines

and five different types of suspension bridge obstacle things.

Though I mentioned there being 65 people on this cruise, these are the people I spent most of my time with. We pretty much just did our own thing removed from the other 55 people.

Shout out to our guide, Eric for doubling as our personal photographer. He was always making sure we were getting enough pictures.

We then went to a market street to get some tacos for lunch.

As we walked down the street, vendors were passing out samples of virgin pina coladas and churros everywhere. It was awesome.

That night, back on the boat, Tiffany tried her hand at Karaoke and crushed some Celine Deon.

After the karaoke bar closed, we went next door to the club and danced well into the next morning.

The next day we were "at sea". We were graced with some sunshine, so we spent the day lounging on the deck, playing corn hole and ping pong, and eating. After another night of karaoke, we decided to end our time on the cruise by playing a few rounds of Scum.

Before we knew it, it was Monday and time to debark our ship. We were in no rush and took our sweet time eating breakfast. Eventually the employees just starting saying "goodbye!" to us as we were sitting at our tables. Subtle. As we were finally leaving we heard the announcement "would the last 15 passengers PLEASE exit the boat". We cheered.

To kill some time before our flights back home, a group of 5 of us hung out at some random pier until it was time for lunch. Turns out, piers aren't that fun when it isn't warm outside and most everything is closed because it is a random Monday morning in March.