October 5 - Santa Catalina Island, Avalon, CA

glass bottom

good morning Catalina!

Weather – no more soupy good morning,
it was
clear and glorious as we sailed into Catalina’s Bay – Avalon Bay, the town is Avalon, on the island of Catalina. It was perfect for balcony blogging (despite hearing the ENTIRETY of the neighbor’s Facetime call and the horrific wifi – wifi has been good pretty much, but this morning was BAD) before we headed in. All day it is sunny and war, even hot…31º. Today was a hot one, so our main activity was hunting shade.

Catalina casino...a theatre not a casino

Steps – 10,462

Today was another tender port, but this time it was easy-peasy. In addition to the ship’s tenders, we were also using bigger, local tenders. This made getting people on and off a breeze…or as much of a breeze as tendering can be.

cool, but NOT what we were on

Instead of breakfast this morning, we hit the bustling metropolis of Avalon around 10:30, walked around a bit, grabbed an early lunch and were at the meeting place for our glass bottom boat tour at 1:00.

cormorants

Celebrity cruise fares don’t include excursions, but the cabin we choose has a fair amount of on-board credit. We have used some of it for 2 excursions – today is the first. There have been excursions offered in all the ports, but many were full by the time we booked. No big deal. We aren’t on this cruise for the ports necessarily and being that they are US ports as easy for us to do on our own.

Chris, a palm, and the boat

Our 45-minute glass bottom boat cruise was good, not great…but good. I had hoped for more varied marine life…we saw tons of fish, huge kelp, and cormorants. It was fun for about 45 min, but that was plenty.

Avalon is a quaint, very touristy town where most people get around by golf cart. We didn’t rent one, but walked as we usually do. After our glass bottom cruise, we went back to a brew pub we saw earlier for a flight of their beer. We chatted

beer flight

with Rich, the cruise director last night who told us he was recently in Avalon for a couple of days with his family and that was a day too long…I can see that.

One last ice cream had to be had, before heading back for some late afternoon down time and to spiff up for a cocktail party with some of the ship’s staff.

Dinner was at the ship’s Japanese restaurant. Sushi on 5, is the ship’s one ala carte restaurant. The other ‘specialty’ dining venues charge a cover charge, and you order anything on the menu, here they charge by the item. We still have a bunch of onboard credit to use, so we burned a bit here.