Flashback
Business Trip to Minneapolis

I had flown from London for a meeting in Minnesota. Arriving early evening, I checked directly into the hotel and decided to order from the room service menu: a personal pizza and a coke. A short time later, a forklift delivered my “16” Deep Dish Pizza. (It was Sicilian-sytle and the same size as Sicily.) It came with a 2 liter bottle of coca cola with enough ice to replenish the Eiger glacier. After our time in Europe, I notice the very large portion sizes in the USA.

End Flashback

So, if you conformed to reasonable portion sizes, you didn’t overeat. Moreover, the ship had ample opportunity for exercise — including exercise machines and lots of steps. There was also a wide variety of things to do on-board including daily shows and talks. We saw magic, song, dance, comedy, ventriloquism, epicurean discourse… the opportunity to see and do things was enormous.

One of the first things we noticed was the very international nature of the crew. More than 1200 people were employed on the ship and, we were told, these people represented 72 different nationalities. Interestingly, the ship’s employees have, for the most part, short term contracts (6-8 months) and, because of visa restrictions, are unable to visit the USA while in port.

During the cruise, we visited three ports in Mexico: Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán and Cabo.

Our tour was supposed to begin with a walk along the famous Malecon Boardwalk. Instead, Jose took us to the Opal Store on the Boardwalk explaining that:

“Mexico is the only place you can get Opals and Puerto Vallarta is the home of Mexican Opal-dom.”

“Opal-dom?” I thought. “The only dumb thing I see around here is you,”

“I didn’t know that Mexico was the only place you can get opals,” Nazy said.

“It’s not.You can find them in Australia too.” I replied.

We could see, from afar, a few of the famous statues on the Boardwalk as Jose walked us 30 meters to Church of our Lady of Guadalupe. The church was beautiful, but after living in Europe, we’ve seen a lot of beautiful churches. Jose was supposed to take us from there on a short walk to see Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor’s house but when Nazy asked him about that he feigned ignorance.

Veracity update: i think the word ‘exuded’ would be better than the word ‘feigned’ the previous sentence.

After this, he put us all on the bus for a 45 minute drive to see, from afar, the location where “Night of the Iguana” was filmed. There we had the opportunity to have our photo taken with a real iguana.

Then we went back to the ship. As we made our way to our stateroom, I noticed that Nazy was on a first name basis with almost everyone in the crew.

We were better prepared for the next stop: Mazatlán. We chose the “Hop-on/Hop-off” tour that allowed us to decide how long we wanted to spend at each stop. It is centrally mandated that every Mexican city have a town square with a Catholic church. Mazatlán was no exception. Thus, our first stop was the Plaza Revolución featuring the Cathedral Basilica. The Plaza was pretty and the church was also very nice. But, in general, there wasn’t much there there.

The next stop was in the Golden Zone — a mix of shops and restaurants where we spent a lot of time. Nazy, recalling a previous visit to Tijuana, wanted to buy..

For last week's letter click here

Some photos from that part of the trip.