I wish I could say we slept well and made up for the lost sleep of the past several days, but we were awakened at 3am (is that the time the bars close?) by incessant tapping and then knocking and then pounding on the door across the hall. Seriously. At 3am? Who does that? If I had been dressed more appropriately (or even simply dressed, but perhaps that’s TMI), I would have opened the door and commented but I kept believing it was going to soon stop. It did stop, but only after quite a while. There was no falling back asleep after that, and then before 6 am there was a light tapping on that same door. My Apple Watch sleep score (which I have since turned off) was Very Low.
I asked cabin steward Robert (who confirmed that they were a family group traveling together) to mention to them that they could get their medallions programmed to open each other's doors without the need to wake the dead. Maybe that will solve this issue.
So, having been up for hours, we were at Sabatini’s for breakfast (you might know why 😉) when it opened at 7am. It opens at 7am on port days, 7:30am on sea days. Days like this, with a noon arrival, are hard to call. We went by the Botticelli Dining Room schedule. It opened at 7am. Bad call…Sabatini’s opened at 7:30am. So we walked around a little, seeing parts of the ship we had missed yesterday. When we returned, it was open.
More sighs of contentment. They sure know how to spoil us in there. I ordered my standard Greek yogurt, orange segments and mixed berries, and a decaf shot milk cappuccino (included but not a personal necessity I’d pay extra for) and we enjoyed the scenery as we cruised the final miles to the port of San Diego.
Now, I was a bit surprised that we weren’t arriving in San Diego until noon today. I would have guessed (not having frequented this area in the past) that we could have arrived in San Diego a few hours after leaving Los Angeles. Certainly the Grand Princess seemed to sail very slowly all night. But perhaps there wasn’t a berth available until noon today on such short notice after the new itinerary was decided 24 hours before the start of our cruise. Whatever…arrival time was noon, and I was all in favor of that after our meager night’s sleep. It was nice to not feel compelled to venture off the ship for a few more hours.
After breakfast I donned my water workout clothes (they‘re really not a swimsuit, because I would freeze wearing just that), grabbed the accessories I had packed (webbed neoprene gloves and inflatable water buoys) and tried the Terrace Pool first. The water was quite comfortable. Score!! I did a 60-minute water workout; even in warmer water (I’ve learned), my core temp drops too low to tolerate any longer than that. Security walked by and questioned me about my shoes (Ryki aqua shoes), saying they were a public health issue. When I pointed out my nearby slides and said I wore those to the pool, and didn’t wear the shoes until I got into the pool, they were fine with that. But, really…at home we have 25 people in every class wearing those same shoes from their cars in a parking lot and into the pool, only giving them a water rinse first. But when in Rome… I’m glad I brought the slides.
I then went up to one of the two hot tubs on Deck 16 aft to warm up before returning to the cabin to get cleaned up for the day. I took advantage of the little time that was left before lunch to do some more organizing in the cabin and find the things I knew I’d packed but couldn’t say with certainty where they had ended up. We had kind of counted on the originally planned 1 1/2 sea days to Cabo to do that (and sleep. We had definitely planned to sleep).
At 11:30am the Botticelli Dining Room opened for lunch. We’ve already fallen in love with Thai waiter Yoman and his partner Peter from the Philippines who were towers of strength and patience at embarkation day lunch when I was trying to drag a roll aboard over the the dining room carpet. Actually, it’s more complicated than that. G (you may recall his condition at that time) asked a stranger to keep an eye on one suitcase while he used the bathroom, which is up a deck on the Grand. I didn’t know this. I also didn’t realize he was pulling my suitcase, not his, at the time. Then G totally forgot about the roll aboard -MY roll aboard- and came to the lunch table empty handed. Oy vey. We were hot messes. Yoman ran out to the lobby looking for a green roll aboard with yellow and black caution tape and came back with it. My hero!
Just another non-eventful embarkation. One would think we’d never done this before. Anyway, I was pleased and proud to present ourselves to Yoman’s table much more put together today.
The ship arrived a little early in San Diego but it took a while to get cleared. At noon the gangways were open. We ate quickly and left the ship about 12:30pm, walking down the boardwalk to the Coronado ferry. It leaves every hour on the hour that time of day and it’s a 15 ride to the Coronado ferry dock. It was a sunny day, and hot, so I was glad I had applied lots of sunscreen and worn my Tilley hat.
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| Coronado is very close to the cruise ship pier across the harbor |
I had never been to Coronado Island but G had when he was in the military (actually, he landed in a military plane at North Island Naval Air Station), so I didn’t know exactly what to expect but knew I wanted to see a bit of the island. We rented a two person…I’m not sure what to call it but I’m damn sure it was not electric. We had to pedal it. We took off to the north and pedaled for 90 minutes. 90 minutes! And there was no slacking allowed. It took both of us to make this thing go.
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| Hot, sunny and a bit muggy. A beautiful day. |
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| The Midway and the Grand Princess |
Our plan was to get back to the ferry dock area in enough time to turn in our “bike” and catch the 3:30pm (every hour on the half hour) ferry back to the Broadway pier. Sitting in the hot sun on the top level of the ferry, we started to re-think our 6pm anniversary dinner reservation at the Brigantine Seafood Restaurant on the waterfront just beyond the cruise ship. It had sounded so perfect when we made the reservation less than 24 hours earlier, but not so good then. We decided instead to walk directly down there, cancel the reservation and just have drinks on the deck over the water instead. By the time we had walked down there, even that sounded too taxing. We canceled the reservation and walked back to the ship. It was already apparent there wasn’t going to be much of a sunset anyway. The clouds were building.
We took quick showers intending to just have dinner on the Terrace Deck, but at the last minute went to the Michelangelo Dining Room instead for a one-course meal. THEN we went to the Terrace Deck to watch the very poor sunset (really, the clouds obscured it) and were back in the cabin two minutes later. No entertainment; we were going to take advantage of a stable ship to get some rest.
No dinner menu scans…I was so tired I forgot to take them.
