San Diego

We were scheduled to take the harbor tour. Truthfully, I was much more interested in calling home, getting emails and shopping for supplies! This was Jim’s first time in San Diego however, so I thought a little sightseeing was in order - fair is fair.  Well, there was some miscommunication and the harbor boat left without any of the Pacific Princess passengers.  I point out that the entire group was left, so you don’t think I just drug my feet and we were the only ones who - missed the boat.  We were supposed to see everything from Old Point Loma Lighthouse to the Cabrillo National Monument.  We did see the two mile long Coronado Bridge and the Light House from our ship. We then moved on to plan two and got our shopping done and talked to the grandkids.  Our next project was wine. We managed to get two more cases of wine aboard. I just took one of our bags, with the Princess Luggage tag, and changed the boarding date. We filled it with wine and then checked it with the incoming passengers. We were told (by the cruise veterans) incoming bags are checked by homeland security for bombs, guns, etc. they don’t care about wine. If you hand carry it aboard, it goes through ship’s security and then they can pull the “a bottle a person” rule on you. I guess they knew what they were talking about as the wine was waiting in our stateroom when we came back on board.  That should cover the balcony “happy hours” until Australia. We took a “pedicab” to do our shopping which was kind of fun. I thought I was going to have to get out and push going up one hill with the first guy.  I almost felt like I should apologize for the extra poundage we probably have incurred the last couple of weeks. Once we checked our bag and hit the internet café, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking the harbor and having a drink in an open air café. It was a crystalline day –about 75 degrees, crisp blue skies and sunny. San Diego is noted for great weather but I was here one time when, whatever their equivalent to a “Texas blue norther” is, had blown in. Today’s weather more than made up for it.  We are back on ship and are continuing our whale watching duty. We have yet to spot a whale. Apparently, yesterday there were three basking on our side of the ship. I guess we were reading or working crossword puzzles when we should have been observing. We are hopeful of seeing some as this is “whale season”. Between San Diego and Hawaii is supposed to be fantastic whale watching. I will let you know.  We have our 3 longest stretches of sea days almost in a row. It was about 2000 miles from San Juan del Sur to San Diego, then 2000 to the Hawaiian Islands, then another 2000 miles to Dravuni Island (in the island group with Fiji). I am not sure what there is to see there, but after 5 days at sea I am sure we will get off and see it!  I think for the rest of the cruise, there is just a day or two between most ports. So you may have to survive more days of drivel at sea before we get back to the travelogue.  Being a novice blogger I am trying to decide if you should fill those days with tales of daily life aboard ship etc. or just wait for the next port. They say to be a good blog one should post daily or will people lose interest – that of course, is assuming they found it interesting in the first place. One might suggest that you write when you have something of interest to say, but of course I have already ruined philosophy.  I guess we will just see how it goes.