We arrived at Avalon, Catalina early in the morning. Catalina is such a beautiful island with a cute little shopping area, wonderful restaurants and interesting architecture such as the Casino. The Casino in Avalon isn’t a casino as we have come to known them now but rather reverts back to the old meaning of Casino which is a “gathering place”. It’s a place to have concerts, meetings, shows, etc. John Tesh used to have piano concerts there.
It was a beautiful California morning so my new roomy, Gail and I had breakfast on our verandah relaxing and basking in the sunshine. Being in a Superior Verandah room meant we could order breakfast in the morning rather than put a card out the night before. Just something a little different.
We took a tender over to the island and proceeded to do some shopping. We found that the further you get from the pier the better the deals got. If you are planning on visiting the island, making sure to take plenty of cash or traveler’s cheques as a lot of the bike, golf cart, scooter rental places do not take credit cards. Several people from the ship did the golf cart route as you can see a lot more of the island than if you are just walking.
We met up with most of our cruise friends on the island all pretty much doing the same as us – shopping. Count Kody, Ann, Diane Fast, the Piano Bar entertainer and myself met for lunch at this great restaurant that Kody goes to every year but we can’t remember the name of and had 1 litre lagers and calamari steak. It was amazing. It appeared to be a very popular place as a lot of the ship’s entertainment staff were lunching there as well.
We all managed to make it back on board in time for sail away and enjoyed the music of Charlie and the HAL Cats on the Lido Aft Deck. It was the eighteenth beautiful day of our cruise. I can’t believe what great weather we have had on this trip.
There was a whole new bunch in the Piano Bar tonight as we had taken on hundreds of new people in San Diego. There were 3 couples from Calgary, Alberta, Canada that are even more wild than us. I don’t think we can keep up to them especially since we have had 2 prior weeks of fun and frivolity.
