Cruise number three for the year is complete. There’s so much I want to say about the trip, and I don’t know where to start, so this will be somewhat of a jumbled mess of a post.

I flew to Phoenix to start the trip to fly to the starting port of San Diego with my mom (and it was closer to San Diego anyway), and had some plane shenanigans in the air. The (direct flight) plane diverted to Denver and we had to switch airplanes before finishing the trip, getting me in a couple hours late. Not a huge deal, but it’s the first diversion I’ve had in my life. (Equally noteworthy is the San Francisco to home flight that hit a flock of birds on ascent and had to return to SFO, where I had to wait until the next day to fly out again. This wasn’t nearly as bad as that.)

We also had a day in San Diego before boarding the ship, and we managed to hang out with Alex, who took us to lunch at a New Zealand restaurant and then the gorgeous Balboa Park (and also picked us up from the airport and dropped us off at our hotel, which was greatly appreciated).

We also met up with Ryan for dinner at a great vegetarian Thai restaurant.

The hotel we stayed in was full of great staff, but the building itself was pretty run down, with decorative parts of the elevators missing, random pipes and cables in the hallways where ice machines used to be, a sliding bathroom door that didn’t really slide anymore, and a shower that looked fairly gross. But it was located right across the street from the port, making embarkation the following morning a breeze, so… it was sufficient for our single night.

So… the cruise itself. It was amazing. I didn’t want it to end. I’ve really, really enjoyed the past few weeks, beyond just the usual “it’s nice to be on a hotel on wheels and not have to think about food or activities” vibe.

I’ve been describing this as a once-in-a-lifetime trip, but maybe not for the usual reasons. Neither the Panama Canal nor the countries we stopped in (Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Columbia, and HAL’s private island in the Bahamas) have never been on a “bucket list” of travel for me, and I’ve never really had any particular urge to visit these places. My only previous trip to anywhere in central or southern America was Costa Rica, for a wedding.

We picked the itinerary based primarily on the length (we wanted a ~2 week cruise), the dates (we were wanting a trip later in the year), and the distribution of sea days (we’d looked a a Hawaii cruise, which has 5 sea days in a row, making this trip’s multiple 2 consecutive sea day periods tame by comparison).

And now, having done the trip, I can say I don’t have any particular desire to go to any of these places again. They’re gorgeous, but they’re not cities (or countries) that I’d want to go explore on my own (with the exception of the private island, which is not for me because I don’t really like beaches)… they’re very much destinations where you want to take shore excursions with a guide, and that gets expensive.

Also, the 16 day cruise was the longest I’ve taken yet (beating out Australia and New Zealand’s 14 days), but the 8 sea days (in one and two day chunks) were too many sea days… but also not for the usual reasons. Sea days ended up being less relaxing for me than port days, because the ship schedule had so much that we wanted to do, and we were booked every hour basically from waking up at 7 AM until 3 PM before we could relax. In contrast, port days gave us much more flexibility in the schedule (around our excursions), and let us sleep in later. I want more port days just so I feel less obligated to do things (like watercoloring, attending lectures, and going to interview talks with the crew).

I also really liked the “guests vs officers” events, like cornhole and paper airplane building. (Pickleball amusingly was cancelled twice: once due to high winds and the second due to our only real rain day, during a sea day.)

(Oh yeah. We also built a ship with some friends we made onboard.)

The weather surprisingly cooperated with us. We missed a hurricane hitting Mexico by a few days (Puerto Vallarta had just finished cleaning up the damage in its historic area a couple days before our visit), we missed the Panama earthquake by a couple days, and the forecast called for rain almost all of our port days but we got basically zero rain in any of the ports (and the canal), including the disembarkation day in Fort Lauderdale.

The crew though… this was the most fantastic crew I’ve had on any ship ever (although this was only my fifth cruise, so “ever” is maybe a relative thing). The cruise director was the most engaged one we’ve ever had. The captain made multiple appearances throughout the voyage and seemed much more accessible than any other captain we’ve had. Even the hotel general manager seemed to always be around every event (big or small) or just checking up on the lido and restaurants, in contrast to other ships where we basically never saw the manager. All of the servers and waiters were exceedingly friendly, and we had fantastic waiters at our (fixed dining) dinner table, and very proactive room stewards. 11/10 crew.

Anyway… the ports! Let’s talk about (some of) the ports!

The highlight of the trip for me was (appropriately) the Panama Canal itself. We passed through three sets of locks (each having two or three locks each) providing ample time and opportunity to run around the ship for photos and video, ranging from the 5th to 7th floor bow (as we entered a lock), the 9th and 10th floor stern (as we exited a lock), the 3rd floor promenade deck (for a lower view of the proceedings), and our 1st floor stateroom (where we got an interesting experience through our window as the locks filled up and the ship rose up). I’ve never been through a lock before, and passing through this one in particular (which is so *tight* for ships, with ~2 feet of clearance on each side) was an amazing experience. (Also apparently it cost the ship $440,000 for the transit, so it was also certainly the most expensive “port” for the ship on the trip.)

From a port standpoint, Cartagena in Colombia was probably the highlight. Our excursion took us to a drum school in La Boquilla as well as the old walled city, giving us a pretty good mix of both the super touristy and less-well-beaten paths.

But the port itself was the best port, because it was basically an aviary full of flamingos and parrots and tons of other birds around the usual shops and restaurants. (As opposed to the other ports, which were mostly just huge indoor shopping malls.)

It also gave us the prettiest sunset of the trip.

I also liked Puerto Vallarta. Apparently the water is usually pretty calm there, but with our post-hurricane timing, the town had closed off the beaches, and a lot of the waterfront was cordoned off.

We also had a nice excursion in Puerto Chiapas which gave us a Tapachula tour and then took us to some ruins.

I was also impressed by Half Moon Cay. This was my first visit to any private island, and apparently it’s a super award winning one… and it shows. I’m very much not a beach person, but this beach was utterly gorgeous. The food was delicious, and in general everything was very clean and walkable and pleasant. (I guess this is unsurprising given how clean the ship itself is, so the line’s maintenance standards probably carry to their island as well.)

(We were apparently the first Holland America ship of the season in both Half Moon Cay and Fort Lauderdale, which was a fun tidbit I learned from those two ports. I guess the Caribbean gets much busier later in the year.)

The other ports were all fine. Nothing else was particularly memorable (although we did not pay for an excursion to go to Antigua from our Puerto Quetzal port in Guatemala, and I hear that city is pretty), maybe because many of the ports were really about the beaches, and I’m not a beach person. But the trip for me was much more about the experience (and the ship, and spending time with my mom, and seeing this new part of the world) than specific ports.

Of course we came back with chocolate and coffee and tequila (and tons of great memories).

Overall, it was a fantastic experience. I really recommend everyone sails on Holland America.

I haven’t finished going through the 15,000+ (!!) raw photos from the trip, but they may show up on my photos site at some point. Or maybe not, since I’m neglecting that website.

Anyway. Life is amazing.

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Two years ago, we took a cross-country Amtrak from Seattle home to Pittsburgh.

We haven’t taken the Amtrak since then, so a couple months ago, Amtrak started emailing us telling us that our points were going to expire soon, so we figured we needed to take an Amtrak trip to keep the accounts active.

We floated a few ideas for what to do, but ended up deciding on a day trip to Greensburg. The Pennsylvanian was reasonably timed, getting us there around 8 AM and leaving from there at 7:01 PM, getting us home by 8 PM. We decided on yesterday as the day for the trip, based on working around other commitments.

The train out was fine, until the train was literally pulling into the Greensburg station. Then came the first thunderstorm. We waited it out in the station before stopping for breakfast at a cafe right by the station (Steep Mountain Tea Company, which is a really nice place, and which has a fantastic name) and then set forth on our first plan: walking to the Meadowlark Nature and Art Park through Seton Hill University’s campus.

Of course, we were halfway through the campus when another thunderstorm struck, thoroughly soaking my (not waterproof) shoes and leaving me with wet socks for most the rest of the day. Given the storm projections, we switched plans and headed to the Westmoreland Museum of American Art instead.
(Highly, highly recommend the museum. It’s not too big, but it has great exhibits and super friendly staff.)

We left the museum to clear skies and to find lunch, and then started for the park again, but by this time, the temperature had hit its muggy horrible high of over 87F, and the walk ended up being on roads with no sidewalks or shoulders (and quite a bit of traffic) so we abandoned that idea about halfway through the walk. Ended up at the library instead (gorgeous building) until it was time to grab some quick dinner and then head back to the train station for our 7:01 train departure.

About 30 minutes before our train was supposed to arrive (slightly delayed, due at 7:15), torrential rain and 80 MPH winds hit the region. Our phones were constantly giving emergency alerts with flash flood and tornado warnings, and the station temporarily lost power twice. (Apparently a tornado touched down in Latrobe? That’s only 10 miles or so from where we were.)

We were super glad to be in the station (instead of out in the weather), but the winds stopped the train for almost an hour. And by the time it was ready to go again, there were trees and other debris over the track. The train was over 2 hours late getting into Latrobe (the stop before Greensburg), but little did we know what was coming…

According to some people who came to pick up passengers at Greensburg (and who were texting those passengers on the train), the train had to stop 7 times in the 10 mile stretch between Latrobe and Greensburg so the conductors could move trees off the tracks. A little before 11 PM, we could see the lights of the train from the station platform (like a quarter of a mile away)… and the train was then faced with a tree hanging over the tracks that the conductors couldn’t handle themselves, so they had to call in a team from Latrobe to clear the impediment.
(Literally, we were looking at this sight for an hour:)

The train finally pulled into Greensburg a bit after midnight (5 hours late, taking 3 hours to go 10 miles), and sat at the station for another half hour as it waited for the track between Greensburg and Pittsburgh to be cleared. We finally arrived into Pittsburgh at 1:25 AM, and ran to catch the last bus out of downtown at 1:40. (Not the best bus for us, since it’d involve a non-trivial walk at the end, but it was literally the last bus until after 4 AM, so we couldn’t be choosy.)

Of course, most of the way through the bus ride, it starts raining, so we had to finish our day with a nice half hour walking in the rain. (And I finished the day how it started: with thoroughly wet socks.) It feels like a very fitting end to the trip, somehow.

On the plus side: Free Amtrak snacks, and the crew was *so so so* nice, and kept apologizing profusely for the delay, which absolutely was not their fault. One of the conductors was only on his second week on the job, so he’s really getting in a trial by fire. We also met some really neat people as we waited on the platform with them for 5 hours, including the Greensburg stationmaster, who was great.

So it was… a trip. I think we have very much learned not to take Amtrak when storms are forecasted. It’s not the worst trip I’ve had (that would probably be the ski trip from hell where the rental car tire first leaked air and then popped completely, due largely to my mental state and work stress around that trip, which I had already not wanted to go on even before it started), but I definitely wouldn’t call it a good trip.

But at least we got a story to tell out of it?

(I guess evidence for the fact that I’m mentally in a better place now is that this trip didn’t stress me out as much as it just got me frustrated with my own decisions around the trip. I didn’t bring a spare pair of socks because I figured my shoes would be soaked anyway if it got to that point, and I figured the thunderstorms would be brief and not a problem since we could schedule our day around them.)

Also, again, huge kudos to Amtrak staff. They had one heck of a night, and did the best they could, and managed to get us home that (more or less) night, so I’ll count that a win given the circumstances.

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First off, life’s photo journal and stats have both been updated. Yay stats.

So… like 75% of the souvenirs we brought back from the UK was tea biscuits (and like 20% was tea). I actually failed at acquiring any single biscuit (or decaf tea bags) from the four big grocery chains, but I had at least one thing from each store, and four things (custard creams, bourbon creams, shortbreads, and decaf tea) each from exactly three stores.

So this past weekend, we had a big taste-off of custard creams, bourbon creams, and decaf tea from Waitrose, Sainsbury, Tesco, and Marks & Spencer. Plus a last-minute addition of malted milk biscuits from Tesco and Marks & Spencer (which I had only acquired from two stores). (Also? One tube of biscuits holds fewer biscuits than you might expect, and I had to cut them in half to ensure enough for everyone. I guess I should’ve brought back doubles of everything.)

The results were interesting because, other than the poor Waitrose custard creams, every other biscuit and tea had at least one person who preferred it.

I’m also kind of amazed how much variation there is between stores on both the biscuits and tea. Most people had a clear favorite for both the bourbons and tea.

The designs are also interesting, because the patterns and fonts for both the custard creams and bourbons seem to be standardized (and maybe the malted milk biscuits, but I didn’t have others to check against)… except for Marks & Spencer, who insists on self-branding everything instead, but in a way that pays homage to the originals.

Lea linked these two articles about biscuit patterns and fonts, which are an interesting read, and also makes me think I should’ve sought out Yorkshire Tea Biscuits to bring some back, because their shape is hilarious.

Also, I still have a package of tea biscuits from Australia… I wonder if I should try and put together a UK vs Australia tasting, now.

(My TCG website has also been getting lots of updates, so if that interests you at all, check it out! I’ve probably covered about half my collection at this point.)

Edit: Stats and comments are here.

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