October 6 - San Francisco

Rice a Roni a San Francisco Treat - I am laughing because we had been to San Francisco twice already this year and I said to Bernie "I Love San Francisco but would like to go somewhere else for our next holiday" guess where we are today. Yup San Francisco! But I am glad, it is a beautiful city and we have made arrangements to meet up with our friends Jerry and Rose, along with Angelique and Simon.

I should say that our Captain on board this voyage is Nicolo Bommarco from Italy.

We aren't scheduled to arrive in port until 10 am but when we get up around 7 am we can see that we are going to be late. Fog is heavy as we eat our breakfast on our balcony and can see San Francisco bay in the distance.

I headed to the "secret spot" which really isn't that much of a secret anymore. If you head all the way forward on Caribe or Baja deck there is a door that looks like you should be allowed to go thru but you can, then there is a second door and that leads you a narrow passenger deck just below the bridge. Very popular while going thru the canal, but today it is very quiet. There is about five of us and the ship's videographer. This is where I took these shots.

It is now 10:30 and there are a lot of people mulling around with their bags waiting to get off. But we are fortunate enough to be staying on! We head back to the cabin and watch as we pull into the pier by backing in and then going horizontally right next to the pier.

Today is the day! The Island Princess is the first ship to be hooking up to power on shore in San Francisco's Pier 27. Media has formed on the pier and we can see the big plugs. We keep joking -- will we short circuit the entire system and black out San Francisco -- nope everything went fine.

As we are waiting to get clearance to go ashore we can see Jerry and Rose off in the distance waving. We're coming!

We are off around 11 am and meet up with Jerry and Rose, tell us you are boarding and coming with us... not this time. We head off to the Safeway to pick up more wine, then Starbucks to get a mug for Bernie. Then we arranged to hook up with Angelique and Simon for lunch at the Fog City Diner.

Jerry and Rose, who we will be sailing with again in January in the Caribbean.

Angelique and I

Angelique, Bernie and Simon, wish we could sail again with them.

We had a great lunch and great time seeing our friends. We hope to see them all soon and love keeping in touch with them on Facebook, but nothing beats seeing them face to face. It was nice of them to travel from Sonoma for Jerry and Rose and Sacramento for Angelique and Simon.

We had to be back on board at 3:30 for sailaway at 4:00. We are on around 3:00 pm and head back to the cabin and have a nap only to be woken up by the muster drill. Thankfully we don't have to attend because of the back to back. Note: they did scan our cruise cards at the Muster Drill so they know who attended and who didn't.

We were lazy tonight didn't really feel like dressing for the dining room so we just headed up to the Horizon Court and grabbed a bite to eat and we were in the cabin early and had an early night. We now have two days at sea.