Sea days and San Francisco

The Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is mind-bogglingly huge.  From New Zealand it rolls on and on and doesn’t stop until the west coast of America … ish 😊 

In comparison to the size of the ocean, there are a couple of small islands dotted here and there … Fiji is two days from New Zealand, Hawaii is six days from Fiji, and San Francisco is four days from Hawaii.  In trying to get New Zealand and the USA in the same screen shot you have to zoom out so far that the Hawaiian chain of islands, which are pretty much halfway between the two, disappear completely, and they’re not that small!!

Upon arrival in San Francisco we will have covered over 23,000 miles so far.

Life on board becomes rhythmical on those sea days and I’ve been surprised that they’ve not dragged.   I’ve been listening to plenty of audio books and podcasts whilst sewing my second blouse.   I didn’t have enough of the colourful material that I’d picked up in Australia so had to ‘re-purpose’ a vest top I’d brought with me.

Chris ran the gauntlet of the laundry room on Thursday night and happened to slip in and out almost unseen.  One chap did find it necessary to tie up a washer and dryer by doing three items of clothing.  The tension in there is extraordinary, it’s like the starting grid of the London marathon, everyone jostling for position and making sure their elbows are in front.

People-watching was amusing at first but the amount of people who don’t understand that disease can be spread by coughing is astounding; why would be plonk yourself in the middle of a public area and cough your guts up?  And the moaning, oh my God the moaning.   In the time it took to eat a slice of toast in the buffet this morning, we listened to one man:

• Complain that the spoons and cups were in different places
• Complain that because the spoon wasn’t where he would have put it, he couldn’t fish his tea bag out of his mug … it’s on a bloody string!!
• Why was the butter hard?  Err, maybe because they’re keeping it fresh in the fridge?
• Tell his wife that the ship was full of old people.  He needed to look in the mirror.
• Also tell his wife that he hated eating in “the piggery.”  So why was he?

Bombs are being dropped on people all over the world … have a little perspective, sir!

There are guest speakers on board all the time; some of them interesting to us, some less so.  We’ve been to listen to a chap who was in the NZ version of the CIA/MI5/6 who was telling some allowed stories which I loved, and we also have Nick Hewer on board … the chap from The Apprentice.

His first talk was about a charity drive he did from the UK to Mongolia, there were some good stories and pictures and he was quite amusing.  His second talk was how he started working for Alan Sugar (he had his own PR firm and was recruited into Amstrad from there).  He told us some of the stunning deals that Lord Sugar made … he foresaw the microchip shortage so bought the company that made them so they would only supply them to Amstrad for £6m and sold it some years later for something like £76m!  He’s doing a Q&A later today but there is a talk on art heists this afternoon.

San Francisco

Friday

We got up early today to see the sail in because you come right under the Golden Gate Bridge and sail within touching distance of Alcatraz Island; I don’t think it’s supposed to look this appealing!

There are some lovely people about.  A chap on deck this morning saw us trying to take a selfie … something that we howl about because we’re so bad at it; I keep telling Chris to hold the camera high but point it down (gets rid of chins) but because I’m so short, I’m rarely fully in shot!  Anyway, this chap asked us if we’d like him to take a photo so we grabbed the chance.

We’ve been to San Francisco before and have done quite a lot of it so we decided to do an open top bus tour … on the day in MARCH that smashed all records for being 31 degrees!  Somehow, we still managed to walk over 4 miles; that was probably searching for the lobster roll that I was still on the hunt for.  We managed to find one at Cousin’s Maine Lobster.  Oh man, it was delicious, we just needed to satisfy our clam chowder addiction now 😊

The American’s are not shy of telling you their political leanings.

Saturday

We walked along the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building today which we’d researched held a farmer’s market on a Saturday … there must have been 100 stalls; we love a good market.

We then found a Safeway to do some dull shopping, new shampoo, another chap stick, some nasty American cheese to make Queso with when we get home, it bears such little resemblance to proper cheese that the UK won’t allow it on our supermarket shelves but it makes the best Queso … oh yeah, and some beer for our cabin fridge 😊

We snuck a ride into town on the Hop on Hop off bus; our ticket had expired officially but nobody was checking anything and the amount we’d paid for them, we felt almost justified!  We got off at Union Square … bad idea … there was a tulip festival, and it was rammed so we walked on a bit and got the cable car back to Fisherman’s Wharf.  By the time we’d done some t-shirt shopping it was teatime and clam chowder at Boudin’s Bakery was calling.

We walk back to the ship but carried on 100 yards to a bar where the Margaritas were delish!  We didn’t have to be back on board until 11:30pm but after another 5 miles walking we were pooped and back on board by 8.30pm … needless to say we didn’t attend the sail away at midnight!

This is the Bay Bridge as opposed to the Golden Gate Bridge but not a bad view from our bed 😊  Apparently, it was lit up for the first time in three years on Friday night and displays dancing lights all night, it’s beautiful.