May 11, 2016

May 11  Leaving San Diego

   

    After breakfast we checked out of the hotel, stored our luggage in the hotel’s luggage storage room and arranged for the hotel’s shuttle to take us to the pier this afternoon.

    The Jackeronda trees are still displaying their purple flowers although the petals are starting to litter the ground.

    We caught the #28 bus to go out to the Cabrillo Monument State Park at Point Loma.  We changed buses at Shelter Island to a smaller #84 bus.  As we waited, we saw that a small church, St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church, decorated with colourful triangle flags.  It was on the corner of Portugal Avenue and Evergreen Street.  Portugal Avenue runs north to south and when looking south at several intersections there were more coloured triangle flags strung across them. Walking for 20 minutes and taking the two buses took a little over 50 minutes on overcast San Diego typical May morning, there was a light wind and the temperature was about 17 C.  

    We were dropped off at the path to the information center and were told that there was no admission fee.  We walked around to the view point for a look at the views of San Diego and the North Island Naval Air Station, where the helicopters and fighter jets are stationed, at the north end of Coronado. We could barely distinguish the Mexican mountains which were hazy.  The highest peak is Cuyamaca Mountain at 1,980 meters.  We watched as a United States Navy Fleet Oiler ship passed Ballast Point on its way out to sea.  About an hour later the US Navy hospital ship headed out to sea past Ballast Point.  We started to explore the museum, but interrupted it to return to the Information Center to view a movie explaining the life of Juan Rodrigez Cabrillo, who, with his crew, were the first Europeans to find San Diego Bay in 1542.  He recorded his find and mapped the area.  Other famous Spanish explorers of his time were Cortez who conquered Mexico, Pizarro, who explored south to Peru and De Soto who explored from Florida to today’s American southwest.  After the movie we returned to the museum and finished looking at the exhibits.  There were three school buses full of Grade 5 or 6 students also on the site today. We walked over to the old Point Loma Lighthouse which was built in 1854.  The site was also where the Cabrillo Monument State Park was originally created in 1933.  This year is the 100th anniversary of the United States Park Service.  After touring an exhibit of lighthouses, we went next door to the house/lighthouse combination that was the first of eight lighthouses erected in the 1850s.  It has been restored with furnishings from the 1870s.  The first floor had a parlour and large kitchen with a big pantry while there were three good sized bedrooms upstairs. One of the lighthouse keepers and his wife had 11 children living with them in the house.  The front yard about twenty meters by twenty meters was constructed to funnel rainwater into an underground cistern to store the water.

   Next we wandered over to another viewpoint where you could view the western side of Coronado and by using the telephoto lens of the camera we could just find the Hotel del Coronado that we visited yesterday.  We could also spot our ship in the harbour near the Midway Museum and the Maritime Museum.  After two hours at Cabrillo Monument State Park, we caught the buses and went all the way to Old Town Transit Station. We had logged about 5 km.

    We strolled from the transit hub over the road to the Old Town State Park to have lunch at the Cosmopolitan Hotel courtyard. The clouds were breaking up, the wind was moderate with the temperate about 18. We chose fried battered calamari in Kung Pao sauce and Fish Tacos with jicama slaw, Spanish rice and refried beans.

After lunch we wandered down the street to the Seely Stables where there is an exhibit of stagecoaches, wagons and saddles that were used for the freight service which used teams of Oxen or mules to pull up to four carts, the mail service and the passenger service used in the 19th century and learned about life in the San Diego area 140 years ago when Old Town was quite small.  Then it was time for the 15 minute walk back to the hotel to get the shuttle that was taking us to the passenger ship terminal.

  At the terminal, a porter took our bags to the luggage bay to be transported to the ship and we got in a short line for American Customs, then through a security check to the registration desk.  Next was having your photo taken for the Seapass card, your key card and purchasing card while on the cruise and the devise to use leaving and returning to the ship.  We proceeded through the building, with a stop at the ship’s photographers’ Stations to have your Welcome aboard pictures taken, to the corridor leading to the stairs to enter the gangway to the ship, and as we entered the third deck waiters were offering fluted glasses of Champagne or Mamosas.  Our stateroom was on Deck 3, so we had only a short walk to it.  Lying on the bed were our tickets for two excursions that we had reserved online, the list of today’s ship board activities and invitations to two Captain’s Club functions.  Less than 30 minutes had passed from leaving the shuttle to entering our stateroom, which was the fastest time for any ocean cruise registration!

    We sought out the ice cream station on Deck 10 for a small bowl of ice cream.  There was a mandatory fire drill held at 4:15 taking about 10 minutes from the siren sounding to everyone arriving at the muster station for the drill; followed by about five minutes of instruction before the passengers were dismissed.  We window shopped on the boutique section on Deck 5 since the shops are not allowed to be open while the ship is in port and climbed the stairs to Deck 10 and 11 to walk around the two pool areas and walking track.  Dinner was at 6 and a little chaotic on the first night as people found their assigned tables.  We joined Hillary and Richard from Florida and Shirley and her sister, Mildred, from San Diego.  We had a talkative bunch for dinner.  Our waiter is Sergio from Honduras assisted by Gede from Indonesia .We ordered Roasted Red beets with goat cheese as appetizers, Wild Mushroom Soup, entrées of Prime Roast Beef with mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables or Jerk Chicken with black beans in rice and steamed vegetables.  For dessert we ordered Dulce de Luche Crème Brulée.

    After dinner we returned to the stateroom to see if our luggage had arrived.  They had so we unpacked for the first time in five days. Once organized we went to the Rendez-vous Lounge to dance to the band, but there was no band playing.  Karaoke Night was scheduled ten minutes after the Song and Dance show ended in the Celebrity Theatre on Deck 4.  Then we went for coffee to Deck 10 before turning in for the night.   

    Total distance walked 11.1 km.