The Monarch of the Seas is a Royal Caribbean Lines cruise ship. It services their 4-night Baja California cruise that kicks off from the Port of Los Angeles to San Diego, to Catalina Island, to Ensenada in Mexico, and then back. Recently refurbished, the accommodations weren’t bad. Eleven floors, room for 2,500 passengers, 800+ crew members, it’s a small floating town right there. There are excellent stateroom photos of the boat on their website so I won’t bother to post any here.

What do you do on a cruise? You mean aside from the sight-seeing at every port we stop?

Here’s our daily routine: wake-up and then EAT breakfast, disembark and then walk around town for four hours, come back and then EAT lunch, rest or sleep, wake-up, EAT dinner, then go back to sleep. If you can’t sleep, you can EAT some more. The restaurants are always open. Then the next day we repeat the whole routine, and then again...! On a cruise, the food can truly be endless, all you want all day. No wonder we all gained weight!