San Francisco – Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Today’s port stop was San Francisco. The ship was scheduled to arrive at the pier by 8:00 AM, so we got up early so that we could be out on deck when we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge as we headed into San Francisco Bay.

The weather this morning was sunny, but cool, around 52 degrees. We bundled up and headed out to find a good area of the ship for viewing our arrival. We initially were on the upper decks, but could not find an area that had clear views of the bridge as we approached.

Everywhere we went, some part of the ship was obstructing our view. We did get to see a small whale swimming ahead of the ship as we approached the Golden Gate Bridge, but could not get into position for a photo. Eventually, we headed to Deck 7 so we could go to the Promenade that circled around the bow of the ship.

We got some good photos as we approached the bridge, but the rising sun was directly behind the bridge. As we passed underneath, the bridge, we started to walk to the stern of the ship to get some photos of the bridge with the sun to our back.

The ship proceeded to Pier 25 and tied up as we went inside to eat breakfast at the buffet. There was some difficulty in getting a large gangway attached to the ship and this caused everyone’s disembarkation to be delayed about an hour. Luckily, we are scheduled to be in port until 8:00 PM tonight.

After getting all of our gear packed into our backpacks, we headed to wait in the long line that was forming as a result of the gangway delay. Everyone was ready to go ashore. Finally, at about 9:30 AM, we were walking off of the ship and heading into San Francisco.

Our plan for the day was to visit a few of the major sights, and to take an excursion boat ride out around Alcatraz, and over to the Golden Gate Bridge, then over to the Oakland Bay Bridge and back to the dock. We headed up to Pier 39, a major shopping and restaurant area on the waterfront. It was about half way between where the ship was berthed and Fisherman’s Wharf.

Our excursion boat part of the Blue and Gold Fleet Boat fleet was right near Pier 39. We went ahead and purchased our tickets for the only morning time for the particular excursion we wanted to take, a 90 minute tour names “Escape to the Rock”.

We opted for this boat tour instead of actually heading over to Alcatraz itself. We had about an hour to kill before the tour departed, so we walked up to the Fisherman’s Wharf area, and then over to the Hyde Street cable car departure point near the waterfront. We did not have enough time to ride the cable car before we left on the boat tour, but we intended to return afterward and ride the cable car.

It was getting close to the time to meet for our boat tour so we headed back to Pier 39 and got into the line to board our boat. There were only about 30 people in the tour, so the boat was not going to anywhere near full capacity. We headed up to the uppermost deck on the boat so we could get seats with good views for photography.

The boat ride was nice, but a little cold and windy as we headed out to the Golden Gate Bridge. The sun was almost directly overhead, so picture taking was much better than it had been earlier in the morning when our ship had passed underneath. There was an audio tour playing during the boat ride giving information on the sights we passed heading out to the bridge, some history of the Bay area, then and some history of the construction of the bridge played as we arrived at the bridge.

We then headed back toward Alcatraz, and made two circles around the island while additional audio history was explaining all about the history of “The Rock”. We could see all of the people on the island that were taking the tour of Alcatraz, and we could see it was really crowded.

Next we headed over to the Oakland Bay Bridge and then it was time to head back to the dock. One of the more interesting things to see at Pier 39 is the area that has been made for all of the sea lions to lay on large wooden floating platforms. There were a lot of sea lions laying in the sun. They were fun to watch sleeping, jumping on and off of the platforms, and barking. There were all sizes, from small juveniles, to very large adults.

After the boat tour was completed, we headed over to Boudin Bread company location near Fisherman’s wharf to have a sourdough bread “bowl” filled with clam chowder for our lunch. It was quite tasty. Next, it was time to head over and wait in line for our cable car ride. We waited in line about 40 minutes before we boarded our car, paid the $6.00 per person fare, and headed out of the station. Each car holds about 30 people, and the cars seemed to be on a schedule of about 15 minutes between departures.

Our plan was to just do a short ride up the hill, and then get off and walk over to Lombard Street, which is “the crookedest street in the world” We actually rode the cable car past the Lombard Street stop, and continued uphill, before then starting to go downhill. We had to make a sudden stop because one of the passengers was not staying away from the area where the cable car operator we standing.

The operator was not happy with the passenger, he was just listening to his instructions. We thought that he might not really understand English. We were stopped for a few minutes, so we just opted to get off here, and head back to Lombard Street before we went anymore downhill, making the walk back to Lombard even more uphill than it already was. It was a very short ride experience, but enough to get the feel for riding the cable car.

We walked the couple of blocks back to Lombard Street, and walked downhill to the bottom. Of course, there were a lot of other tourists there, both walking down the steps on either side of the street, and also driving down the street. It is only about one block long.

Once at the bottom, we headed off toward the cable car museum, of course, uphill. We don’t think we took the best route there. It was not that we walked farther than we needed to, we just do not think we took the “flattest” route, and might have walked up a few very hilly blocks that we did not need to.

We were using a phone app from Trip Adviser specifically made for sightseeing in San Francisco, and it did a good job of locating various sights. However, it lacked detailed map instructions, so we had to do a little of the navigating ourselves. It did have a “point me there” feature, and would show an arrow pointing in the direction needed to reach the destination, but it was not specific enough.

After climbing some very steep blocks, so steep they had steps instead of flat sidewalks, we did make it to the Cable Car Museum. It was very interesting to see the large motors driving large wheels that moved the cables for all of the cable car routes. There were displays on how the cable cars operated, and on the history of the system.

Our next destination was Chinatown, which was only a few blocks from the Cable Car Museum, so it was not difficult to navigate there, and a lot less hilly. We walked down the main street in Chinatown where a lot of shops and restaurants were located. Of course, we had to stop in a few to look around.

We were starting to feel the effects of all the walking and hill climbing we had done so far today, so we opted to head back to the Pier 39 waterfront area to visit a few of the shops there. It was close to 5:00 PM, and it was starting to get cooler outside, and the wind near the waterfront had picked up.  We looked in several stores, and then we started our walk back to the ship. We still had several blocks more to walk from Pier 39 to the ship, and we were glad when we reached the port terminal, went through security, and boarded the Golden Princess. We went to our favorite bar, The Calypso Bar, to get some water and to have one adult beverage, well maybe two, before heading to the spa area for a soak in the Spa Area hot tubs to relieve some of the muscle aches in our legs.

We met some folks from Calgary, Canada in the hot tubs, there were on the cruise with several other family members, part of the 15 total brothers and sisters (and spouses) from one family.

After a nice relaxing soak, we headed back to the room for showers before heading to watch the ship’s departure at 8:00 PM and then to the buffet for dinner. We had known we would be too tired to go to dinner in the dining room tonight. The ship was about 30 minutes late leaving, so we missed the sail away at sunset, the sunset being at about 8:00 PM.

It was still nice to see San Francisco lit up at night as we headed back under the Golden Gate Bridge and out to sea. We were so glad that it had been a sunny day from sunrise, all the way until sunset. Even though it was cool in the breeze at times, it was probably about as good of a weather day for this time of year as could be expected for San Francisco.

Our dinner in the buffet was nice, there were a lot of other passengers there enjoying the relaxing casual dining experience. After dinner, we had a nightcap, and then turned in at about 10:30 PM. It had been a long and tiring day.