Mother's Lost Weekend Pt. II -- Ensenada

NOTE: I'll get the pictures up tonight, honest.

Day Two – Ensenada. Despite every effort to sleep-in Saturday morning, my eyes opened at 6 a.m. and refused to close again. This was not supposed to happen! I was supposed to be lazy and not open my eyes before 11! Bertie Wooster would not approve of this behavior. The tea wasn’t even scheduled to arrive until 7! But this did mean that I got to watch from my stateroom window as we pulled into Ensenada. The first thing I immediately noticed was the lack of sun in Sunny Mexico. June Gloom does not respect international borders and pesters Baja California as much as Alta California. Baja California, for anyone who might be geographically challenged, is a long (like 1,000 miles long) strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez, perfect conditions for the same shore-hugging clouds that visit us in the north each June. A huge Mexican flag flying in port told us we were a foreign country, otherwise the coast could have been San Diego or Santa Barbara. After tea and toast and watching sea lions frolick in the harbor for a while, the child and I dressed and when in search of...I kid you not, gentle readers...breakfast!

For breakfast, we visited one of the formal dining rooms, having opted for the casual dining room for dinner the previous evening. The difficult thing to get used on a cruise is the wealth of choices. Meals are included in your ticket, and the staff is prepared to bring whatever you want and as much as want. Smoked salmon! Eggs Benedict! Omelettes! Pastries! The head spins at the array of foods. No wonder I forego breakfast at home! I don’t keep smoked salmon in stock and I lack the time for Eggs Benedict. This has shown me the error of my ways. Breakfast isn’t inherently evil, it has been warped and twisted by our wage-slave society from its natural place as a regular meal into this abbreviated, rushed, often over-processed, pseudo-meal; a meal with an asterisk next to its name. I resolve to work on reforming my relationship with breakfast, but that’s another blog for another day.

Our shore excursion, based on my assumption about sleeping in, wasn’t scheduled until the afternoon. This gave us time for a nicely leisurely game of mini-golf up at the very top of the ship. Again, travel proved enlightening because the ship had absolutely no problem with the notion of mixing mini-golf with a Bloody Mary. In fact, the bartenders seemed to encourage it. Nothing improves the game of golf like a Bloody Mary, and I was sure Bertie Wooster would approve. I was sure Jeeves himself would approve. We were making progress after the rocky start. Perhaps I couldn’t sleep-in until noon anymore, but I can certainly amble around a pretend golf course with a drink in my hand!

Ensenada is just 76 miles from the US border. It is a port city that caters to tourists, probably best known for two things, both bars – Papas & Beer and Hussong’s. However, Baja is also known for its big annual off-road race and is becoming better known for it’s branch of Fox Studios – which was one of the first things we noticed as we surveyed Mexico from Lido Deck earlier that morning, a strangely familiar, somewhat piratical sailing vessel docked very nearby. Later that afternoon our guide was able to confirm for us that it was none other than Capt. Jack Sparrow’s Black Pearl, and had been used for filming of “Pirates of the Carribean III.” But Ensenada had a little more history than that, as our charming and fast-speaking tour guide Belen shared with us.

Ensenada was a quiet little village until an American named Jack Dempsey, very famous pugilist, opened a casino there, the Riviera Pacifico Casino and Hotel (there are rumors it was truly owned by Al Capone, but we were told Dempsey). What remains of the building is wonderful. One can imagine Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo seated at a ringside table beneath the brightly painted ceiling and stunning chandlers. Of course, gambling is no longer legal in Ensensada (I’m sure the cruise ships don’t want the competition). The building is now a cultural center where the locals have their weddings and Quinceañeras (one of which was being prepped for during our visit). Outside of the cultural center was a select assortment of vendors specializing in traditional Mexican arts and crafts, leather work, silver, ironwood, beadwork and so forth. Long story short: child saw opal pendant, vendor saw me coming, I never spent $80 so fast. Our next stop was the Santo Tomas winery, where they had displays of old-fashioned wine-making accoutrements, and explained their wine-making and bottling processes. Apparently, Mexican wines have a good reputation outside of the United States, where the Napa Valley vintners aren’t going to let wines come in from across the border. All of this was proof that there is more to Baja than Tijuana, two large bars and an off-road race. Well, sort of.

Our last stop was along the major shopping district, very near those two large bars. Here, the lovely picture our tour guide painted for us of an Ensenada that wasn’t Tijuana didn’t quite ring true. The street beggars, the children rushing up with trinkets and hands out, are an all too familiar sight to anyone who’s visited TJ. But at least, to Belen’s credit, it’s not nearly as bad in Ensenada and there are signs for a middle class and economic progress if you look for them. But on to happier thoughts than the poverty that makes so many risk crossing the border without documentation…

Here in Southern California, where Mexican and American culture has been so blended, diluted, and then reconfigured, there is, I think, a general impression that Mexican culture begins and ends with things as mariachi, folklorico, and margaritas, but of course that isn’t true, and the first shop we visited proved that quickly. The child was immediately intrigued by the alebrijes, fanciful creatures, part real and part myth, carved from wood and hand-painted in delicate patterns with bright colors. She also liked the somewhat scary, but often humorous skeleton creations for Dia De Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead celebration. In the end, for her they were just a touch too scary, and so she opted for the alebrijes. And I was so absorbed in the painted ceramics that, in the end, I couldn’t decide which to purchase and left empty-handed! The ceramic plates were nothing less than amazing. The majolicas with the intricate talavera designs, story plates, vibrant flower and animal patterns…again, too many choices! I came home confident that technology would save me, but alas! Bazar Casa Ramirez has no website. After the quality and craftsmanship on display at Bazar Casa Ramirez nothing else measured up, so we had ice cream, rested our feet and boarded the bus back to the ship.

After a nap, we changed for dinner, foregoing the “formal” night in our assigned dining room, we opted, again, for the casual atmosphere of the buffet, world of overwhelming choice and every bit as good as what was being served downstairs. One of my best memories of the cruise is seeing my picky, finicky child eat and eat and eat! She stuck to her usual routine of eating about five times a day, but small meals rather than three large meals; a bit of ice cream, some strawberries, a spoonful of melon betwixt and between breakfast, lunch, and dinner give her a steady supply of energy for walking, sight-seeing and talking, talking, talking! But this night it didn’t give her quite enough energy. The plan had been for her to attend the kids’ slumber-party to give mom a chance to drop $20 on slot machines, but about 20 minutes before the 10 p.m. start time, she confessed her immediate need for sleep. The last two days had finally taken their toll, but the best was yet to come, and those slot machines didn’t really need my $20

A little Fairy(Ell) reminded me...

That I wanted to talk about Jay Rosen's piece at HuffPo, but it was just a busy week, I wasn't able to get to it. Also, I left Pt. II of the Cruise Blog at the office on Friday, so this will keep you all entertained over the weekend -- and thinking, I hope.

Many thanks to Time Goes By for being more astute and on their toes this week than Mother was.

Mother's Lost Weekend -- Pt. I

Day One – There had been a plan. It was a good plan. The child would go to school until about noon, then I would pick her up and we’d be off. That would give me time to pack, take care of the cat, and lock everything up, and keep her occupied in the morning, since the ship wasn’t scheduled to sail until 5:30 in the evening. However, the child begged and pleaded, so I relented and let her stay home from school. This meant every 15, then 10, then 5 minutes there would be a request to leave for the port. It’s the at-home version of “Are we there yet?” Still, we were both excited and who could blame us? Our first cruise! So, at noon we left for lunch and the drive down to Long Beach.

Now Long Beach sets your cruise expectations very high, for sitting in the Port of Long Beach is the grand dowager of cruise ships: The Queen Mary, in all her Art Deco splendor. Just looking at the QM reminds me of when travel wasn’t about getting from Point A to Point B for the least money in the quickest time. There was a time when travel was exciting, glamorous, and the journey as meaningful as the destination. The QM, long-past her time of being seaworthy is a hotel now, but you can visit her and see pictures of movie stars, millionaires, and Winston Churchill aboard back in her glory days, and dream about what it must have been like. Would our ship, Paradise, possibly live up to such expectations? Or would it be the Southwest Airlines version of a cruise, a floating cattle car with all the personality of a Motel 6?

Before we’d find out the answer we had to get on board, in the usual post-9/11 fashion…long lines and a security guard ransacking your luggage to make sure the two bottles of water you had packed for your day wandering through Ensenada, were really just water bottles contain just water. The good news was we got to keep our shoes on. But after security, a quick check of our American citizenship, and arrangements for our Sail-And-Sign Card (a combination boarding pass & credit card) we were a quick escalator ride from the gangway, crossing the pier our gleaming white floating hotel and home for the next few days.

Dear Readers, Paradise delivered from her first moments. Boarding, we found ourselves in the central atrium – apparently Deco splendor is the optimal cruise ship décor, and the designers and builders of Paradise, built in 1998, understood this and saw no reason to depart from proven success. A bar surrounds a platform topped by a white grand piano offering classical music while people sorted out which direction to their stateroom. And, if I might take a little credit it here, as well as thank those who had offered their suggestions and recommendations, Mother picked out an ideal stateroom, ocean view, toward the back but still very much midship, and not far from this atrium. The child was immediately pleased. And so, very soon, we were unpacked and situated in our stateroom, and ready to have an explore of the place. We wandered up and Aft first arriving quickly at the pool on Lido Deck, which almost immediately gained the nickname “The Drunk Tank,” because of the large number of happily inebriated people who seemed to live there. Here, I was able to acquaint myself with “The Fun Ship Special” the bon voyage drink of the day – rum, vodka, apricot brandy, and just enough fruit punch to make it all go down smoothly, served in a tall, curvaceous glass with a spear of tropical fruit and a little paper umbrella. After a stroll around Lido Deck, we dropped down one to Promenade Deck, with an assortment of casinos, bars, lounges, and Café Ile de France, the ship’s version of Starbucks. This place became part of the daily routine for us, usually for an after-dinner mocha and some chocolate-covered strawberries or a slice of cake. Wandering the Promenade Deck was one of the child’s favorite activities, not because she’s partial to gambling, and not only for the confections, but because here was people-watching central in luxurious surroundings with an ocean view. Speaking of which, it was soon time to cast off.

Now, this is the post-9-11 world, so all those romantic images of people tossing confetti and serpentines off the side of the ship showering it down on throngs of well-wishers waving from the pier – forget all that. Doesn’t happen. Well-wishers have to be left behind before you enter security and get nowhere near the ship. Such are the sacrifices we make to create the illusion that we are safe. However, from our vantage point back on Lido Deck Aft, we could see the churning water indicating the ships engines were engaged, watch as we slowly moved away from the pier and, like that breathless moment on an airplane (the one the airlines have not yet found a way to charge you for or deprive you of) when the engines whine, gravity pushes you back in your seat, you hold you breath and wait for that moment when the wheels of the landing gear break free of terra firma and you realize your flying, here is the moment when you have broken your bond to dry land and are floating off into the vastness of the Pacific. It’s a brief moment, but there’s a freedom to it that always gives me a thrill that I am happy to now be sharing with my daughter. Travel isn’t about Point A to Point B; it’s about breaking free and creating your own journey. So Long Beach receded into the distance and anything became possible.