Catalina Island.

This picturesque island lies some 35 Km off the coast of Los Angeles and is part of the Californian Channel Islands. The only major town on the island is Avalon which has a small harbour not large enough to accomodate a cruise ship, therefore to get ashore today a tender was necessary.
Victoria, Oliver, Poppy, Joseph , Helena and Diarra had booked a kayaking excursion which meant leaving the ship at 08.00am and Granny and Grancher looking after the two youngsters. Luckily for us it was a glorious day and after breakfast we took the children to the small splash pool.

With many of the passengers already ashore the ship was comparitively quiet which meant the children could splash and play around to their heart’s content. In the distance we could see their Mum & Dad, Aunt & Uncle and Cousins paddling away on their trip.

After playing in the pool for about an hour Aaron and Nahla decided that the next game should be shuffleboard. Generally pushing the pucks around seemed the order of the day although in this photograph it looks as if they are playing properly.

Next we moved onto the grass court area where Aaron invented his own version of croquet by lining up a series of hoops and attempting to get the ball through all of them. His use of the mallet like a golf club was equally unorthodox.

After a break for cookies and milk we returned to our cabin awaiting the return of their parents upon which we readied ourselves for the tender to the shore.
There were no queues for the tender and as we joined another couple for the journey presumed it wouldn’t take very long. Apparently there were many people already ashore and the lines to rejoin the ship were very long and therefore each tender that returned was full to the brim. For some reason they kept sending the tenders back empty while we waited, in an ever growing queue, for our opportunity to visit Avalon. Generally I am a very patient man but as we had now waited over 30 minutes I had to speak out, politely asking the officer in charge what was going on. He apologised mumbled something about refuelling but when I pointed out to him that several tenders had returned to shore empty, he apologised again. We were ashore a few minutes later!

Avalon is a small but pretty town and on this bright and sunny Saturday was full of visitors from both the ship and from LA. A walk along the marina wall gave plenty of photo opportunities.

A beautiful port of call on a beautiful day.