Melsea's 1st Half World Cruise, Arcadia 2016 Part 9

[melsea]

Day 31. San Francisco 2nd Day 11.30pm back on board.
12th April 2016.

Bill stayed on board.
I took the same street car as yesterday the F-Martket to Market street near to Union Square. Close by is the Apple store where I did some updates. I also wanted to buy a keyboard to go with my Mini iPad of which they did not have one but suggested to go to a shop on Mart street called Radio Shack, unfortunately they have one and didn't know where I would get one, Never mind I will wait until I get home. Before shopping nearby I went down towards Market Street and visited the Westfield San Francisco Centre, it's a large shopping centre that has a cinema complex at the back, we saw a film there on a previous visit. The centre itself has lots of stores of which some are favourites of mine, Banana Republic being one of them. There is another mall that links to this one and it has escalators that are curved, quite a sight. Bought a couple of things then I went back up to Union Square where I went to Macy's. Bought a few sale items. One of the things I wanted to do was to take the cable car from Union Square to the top road that goes along the top of Lombard Street, this is the Crooked street. One any other day this would be easy but having got on the cable car and then had to get off half way to my destination and quite a distance to it. We found it that they had a couple of cable cars out of action. So there I was with two other women passengers who also found themselves stuck. It was beginning to get quite cold too. After we realised that the only way to get there was by taxi. We ended up sharing a taxi, they had decided to go back to the ship and they kindly dropped me off at the Crooked Street, I gave them some money to cover my cost. So from here I walked down the street taking photos. It's best to go to the bottom of it and take photos looking up, even better if you wait for cars to down which shows the bends in the street far better. Having stayed a while I decided to walk back up and catch the car down towards Fishermans Wharf. Well that was the plane but they seem to be only going one way and it wasn't the way I was wanting to go. So of I stated my walk down towards Fishersmans Wharf. As you know San Fran is not exactly the best place to be walking but at least it was down and not up. Along the way I saw the most spectacular sunset in the direction of the Golden Gate Bridge, it begged to be photographed. Also I passed an art shop which looked like it was closed but it was in fact open. Some nice pieces, I bought a couple of postcards. By the time I got to the bottom it was really dark. I managed to find the beginning of the line of the tram. Fortunately for me the be back board was not until 11.30pm. I texted Bill to say I was on my way back. It was after 7pm when I got back. Needless to say we didn't go down to dinner. We went to the buffet.
With everyone back on board at 11.30 we were soon on our way. Donning our fleeces we saw us going under the bridge just after midnight.
As always we enjoyed our stay in San Francisco.


Day 32. At Sea.

13th April 2016

Bill went to his Christian Fellowship group.
At 11.15 I went to the Audience with John Lyons talking to Jon Bartrum. This finished at just after midday. I went back to cabin intending to go out again but ended up falling asleep until 2pm. I guess I needed that snooze.

Evening entertainment in the Palladium was Jacinta Whyte. Irish West End leading lady. A pleasant lady but would go and see her again.

Day 33. San Diego, California. 9am - 4.30pm
14th April 2016.

Took the shuttle bus to Horton Shopping Mall, use the Internet. I then wanted to find tram or bus to take me to the big park they have there. But it turns out the information we were given meant that although the bus/tram would take us near there it was quite a way to walk to get to it, So gave up on that and went back to where I cam from. I walked the shopping mall to the other end and found that this is where the Trolley hop on hop off was. So I purchased a ticket but still had to wait a while for it to come round again. Once on I knew after a short while on it I was not going to have the time to get off. The places it took you were really lovely and it would have been nice to have been here for so much longer than we had. One of the places was the 'resort' island of Coronado. It's definitely the wealthiest place around there and has a wonderful beach. I learnt something from the driver who was the guide for this ride. He said the Hotel Del Coronado was famous, it was where they filmed the scenes from that ultra famous movie 'Some like it Hot', even though in the movie they were suppose to be in Florida. I thought the building looked familiar but I would not have remembered it though being from that film. Having been on the trolley bus for a while we came to the Old Town San Diego State Historic Park where we had to alight and wait for the next one to come by. Many of us were perplexed by this as the map didn't show this as being where we would get off. What was more there was a huge queue and it was 2.20 in the afternoon and we had to be back on board at 4.30. We looked at the numbers of us and thought will we get back in time as it was a good 20 to 30 minutes away still and I was nearing the end of the queue. We did get the trolley bus and I got back at 3.30. Sitting next to me and infront of me on the bus were the young ladies from the Headliners. When we got to a stop they were interested in they were pondering on whether to get off as they to be back on board at 3.45, a couple of them risked and got off by the others stay on the bus to get back to the ship in time. I didn't immediately get back on the ship but went and walked along the water front where there was a aircraft carrier docked next to us and was now a museum. Further on there are park areas, places to eat and drink. There was also a musician a larger than life African American Saxophonist who was brilliant. I stood and listen to he for a while. I got back on board at 4.20pm Rather late for me but there were still plenty of passengers still milling around. We sailed off in bright sunshine and the sail out goes past the Naval Air Station North Island, this is the same island that I went to on the bus, Coronado. One end is the military base and the other end a holiday resort. The base is huge and one of the biggest is the US. Clearly protector the shores that are very close to Mexico. It was a beautiful sail away. One of the few sailaways we have had on this cruise as many of the departure times have been late in the evening. I never been on a cruise with so few sailaways.

Evening Entertain was Stephan Garcia Magic comedy mix, yet again hilarious even I have seen this act before I was still laughing a lot.

Day 34. At Sea, towards Mexico

15th April 2016. Clocks went forward, Mazatlán, Mexico time zone.

Excellent show in the evening by the Headliners, Blame it on the Boogie. At last they have now got the new format with the singers dancing as well. One of them is very good.
Guest speaker today was Nigel Marven.

Day 35. At Sea heading towards Mexico our 5th country on this sailing.

16th April 2016

We woke up only to find that after 45 minutes of being awake that it was an hour later, this was because this time I had not forwarded the time on my iPod, I did do everything else though.
Muster drill at 10am for all passengers except for those who joined in San Francisco.
We went to breakfast along with everyone else and the buffet was heaving.
Read my book on my kindle in the Crows Nest where the sun was shining through making it nice and warm instead of freezing to death from the air conditioning.