500 Saturdays: Nomad Diary

Saturday Activities: A Sea Day onboard Caribbean Princess ship traveling from Costa Rica to Panama City.  A picture of the ocean. This Sea day was filled with exercise,  always taking the stairs,  friends at trivia games, delicious meals, tea time and get together with my new friend Trisha from Australia,  dinner with Ralph and Rosa from San Francisco, and David and Marilyn from Idaho Falls, then a live comedy show before bedtime. Sleeping on the ship is amazing,  great bed, quiet on this calm sea night. Week's Highlights:  Sunday: Port 7am-4pm. Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Ship time has moved forward 2 hours since leaving San Francisco. We slept until about 6:30am awakened by the ship parking in the dark. Port in the dark from our balcony.  Rode a city bus to and from old Town using pesos. Met up with our foodie tour. Ate lots of local tacos. Bought 3 items at Walmart across from our ship. Monday: Sea Day. M...

Saturday Activities: Sea Day, Cabo San Lucas to Puerto Vallarta,  Mexico. What do I do on a sea day? Sleep until I wake up. Darrell and I get up together and exercise in our room since it is large enough to accommodate our activity. Darrell enjoys stepping out onto the balcony to have limitless headroom and stretch his arms fully. Then we went to the buffet around 7am with a few other early risers. This ship has about 50% passenger load. 1700 passengers, not the 3000 that could be onboard. It makes for short lines, wide empty spaces, and really great service! We satisfy our hunger with eggs, pastry, and fresh fruit,  and hot tea as we have grown to dislike the coffee onboard.  I am looking for a single serve coffee that I like and can have here with me. The instant Mexican coffee I bought in Cabo is just ok. On to my next try!  Sunset on Saturday from our ship balcony.  I took a picture of the swirling clouds nearing sunset. My only picture of the da...

Saturday Activities: Flight from Portland, Oregon to San Francisco, California. For breakfast we walked from our hotel to another about half a mile in clear 50 degree weather. At 9am, the shuttle bus took us to the airport. Our check-in is under 30 minutes all the way through security.   I bought a pesto chicken sandwich at an airport coffeehouse to eat on our 90 minute flight. We also have a small avocado, a few blackberries and hazelnuts and a half of a pear. We ate all of our food on the flight as well as the little bags of pretzels served.  We arrived at our boutique hotel near the pier by 3pm, and I'm hungry and a bit tired.  On the train from SFO to downtown. I struggled a few extra minutes to get my electronic ticket, and we made it to this train just as it was closing the doors. Darrell navigating us to our hotel. About a 4 block walk in beautiful weather.  Our sweet little room in San Francisco until check out on Tues...

Saturday Activities Three generations walk. Quinn is setting the pace, and walking longer distances of up to .8 miles this week!  Gluten free Pancakes and bacon breakfast at Jeremy and Andrea's place. Darrell redeemed his pancake making from last week's flop. Today these were delicious! He used Bob's Red Mill gluten free pancake mix.  Jeremy and Quinn on our walk. Jeremy is tall! 6'6-7"! Quinn (19 months old) looks like his Dad looked.  Week's Highlights Andrea and Jeremy have become amazing cooks through their 11 years of marriage.  Jeremy makes amazing sourdough breads.  Andrea spent considerable time cooking delicious dinners from scratch.  After a few days, she let me plan and prepare some meals.   Sunday:  Worship together at Tualatin, Oregon as we reconnected with familiar faces and get to know them a little more. Lunch with Shelly and Mark, Jim and Jennifer at Oswego Grill. Lunch with chu...