7 day California Coastal, Round trip Los Angeles. April, 2017 on Ruby Princess. What? Only 7 days? It’s OK. We’re doing two cruises this year. Actually, three. We are doing our first Back To Back, or B2B, cruise in late October.

Time for another Bon Voyage Experience. This time, we invited Suzi’s California brother, wife and two sons.

Our beloved Stateroom, Lido 214, was already booked, so I went with an Aft Balcony, Baja 752. As the six of us walked down the hall, we noticed our youngest nephew, who is very inquisitive and scientific by nature and probably knows more about electronics than most adults, was waving his hand horizontally under every light above every stateroom door. He stopped and one door and had us look. When he waved his hand, it looked like he was waving in slow motion. He told us that the light must be pulsating. To prove his hypothesis, he asked his dad to video the light in slow motion. He did and yes… the slow motion playback showed that, indeed, it was flashing like a strobe light. Amazing!

So we made our way aft to our stateroom. Our older nephew immediately began searching for a place to stowaway. This cabin did have a somewhat obstructed view but was the only aft balcony available when I booked.

We all made our way up to Horizon Court, then gave our family a tour of the ship until it was time for them to disembark.

Suzi likes to attend sail away parties, where I like to be on the veranda. Until now, we have always booked on the Port side of every ship, so it was a bit different being at the stern of the ship with a 180 degree view of both sides.

After a sea day, San Francisco. Cousin Jerry lived in the Bay Area, so we visited San Francisco regularly. One of the places neither of us had never been was Alcatraz. Thanks to our Shareholders Benefit and Princess Visa cruise points, we booked a tour of Alcatraz and Sausalito, a beautiful little town on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

It was a spectacular day. Temp in the mid 70’s and sunny. Our tour guide walked us to the Alcatraz landing and got our tickets. After boarding, we noticed the guide sitting by herself, so we invited her to sit with us. Always good to be friendly with the tour staff.

Alcatraz is amazing with so many photo ops.

And the view of the city from our balcony.

After a sea day, we tendered off of Santa Barbara. I’ve driven through Santa Barbara many times but only stopped once on business. Suzi has been there a few times but has been awhile. We booked the Santa Barbara Trolley Tour excursion.

The next port was San Diego. This is another city Suzi and I had been to many times but it just seems so much better when you pull in on a cruise ship instead of fighting traffic on the freeway. The last time we cruised here, it was 105 degrees. This was a much more comfortable mid 70’s. We took a walk towards Seaport Village then onto the Gaslamp District. Here is a shot of downtown from our balcony as we set sail.

Thanks to The Jones Act, Ensenada. Suzi loves to chew gum and is always looking for new flavors of sugarless gum. She found one in Ensenada, so she bought a few packs only to find out it’s not available in the States. Our new mission when visiting Mexico? Gum.

Here is a panorama of Ensenada from our favorite sitting area on Ruby

And, we’re back home.