Day 9 – Manzanillo

Today was our final port of call in Manzanillo, Mexico.  The ship docks in a large industrial shipping port and getting off the ship can be a pain in the butt.  You get off and get on a bus that transports you to the center of town where you can get on a taxi or bus to where you want to go.

The main thing to do in Manzanillo is to go to a resort hotel and spend the day on the beach/ocean.  The kids said they were beached out and would rather spend the day on the ship.  Since Suzanne and I have seen Manzanillo before, we readily agreed to a day on the ship.

We participated in some trivia games and the kids spent a lot of time in the Kids Club.  Suzanne and I spent a couple of hours researching our next cruise after the upcoming June cruise on the same Celebrity Mercury to Alaska.  We have gotten so used to cruising on Thanksgiving that we almost expect it now.  So, we began looking at some options.  The leading candidates at this time are a return to Hawaii like we did last Thanksgiving with a 14 night out of San Diego, a 10 night Caribbean cruise out of Tampa that would allow us to visit with Grammy also, and repeating this same Mexico cruise.

We really like days at sea and fewer ports, so the Mexico cruise would be a possibility since we wouldn’t feel the need to see the ports.  We loved Hawaii and get 9 days at sea with that one.  In addition, they have changed the itinerary a bit since last year and now include an overnight stay in Lahaina that would allow us to go to a Hawaiian Luau on shore.  The Caribbean cruise is attractive because of the visiting we could do with Grammy, plus it has a fair number of sea days and we haven’t yet cruised the Caribbean.  In addition, its easily the cheapest of the cruises.   We will look at them some more during our next two days at sea and I wouldn’t be surprised if we booked one during this cruise.

We enjoyed yet another fine dinner last night and attended the comedian show in the theater.  The comedian did the somewhat familiar routine of cruise ship life.  I smiled most of the time, but didn’t have any outbursts.  Suzanne had a few, but the majority of the crowd was in full laughter most of the time.  I don’t know if being somewhat frequent cruisers and having heard most of the cruise jokes before had us not in full laughter, but the show was still enjoyable.  Sean liked the show, but Savannah had decided to go to the Kids Club instead.

After the show, the girls turned in and the boy went up on deck for the Party Gras celebration.  We enjoyed some good time together and Sean did some dancing.  It was fun and we finally turned in about midnight.

Tomorrow, we will enjoy the first of two sea days on our return to San Diego.