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Friday 19th August
Weather: Foggy morning, but lifting in the afternoon
Sea Conditions: pretty flat
Another early-ish start but we were all excited! Up and out before 8.15am this morning and the decision was to go back to Wipeout Bar for breakfast. Alas, it was closed when we arrived and didn’t open until 9am. Nothing for it but to walk down to Pier 27 …. just to make sure that the ship was in!! It had arrived and passengers were starting to disembark and the crew busy taking on supplies for our cruise. Loads of pallets stacked up on the quayside.
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We headed back to Wipeout and Callum went for the Californian Breakfast with sausage this morning (although he wasn’t keen on the US style sausage – must admit it didn’t look terribly appetising as it was all shriveled up!). Jon tried their version of the breakfast Burrito and I had another omelette. All pretty good and another thumbs up from Callum for the Chocolate Milkshake.
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Back to the hotel to throw the last couple of things into the suitcase and make the most of the last little bit of Free Wifi! TV in the hotel was rubbish. We had 72 channels … every time you flicked through, you got ads on each channel. Coverage of the Olympics was pants – even though the USA was doing really well (and whenever they did show the medal table, they kept showing China ahead of the UK by virtue of total medals won!). We had to rely on the BBC website to see how Team GB were doing – and by all accounts, they were doing amazingly well. Really missing the BBC Olympics coverage!!
Time to check out of our hotel and grab a taxi. The lady on the desk was lovely. Rather than call a taxi (as they would ignore her and send a small cab), she went out the front of a hotel and flagged a suitable one down for us!! A 10 minute taxi ride down Embarcadero and we were being dropped off at the Cruise Terminal. We arrived at midday. People on the door checked passports and boarding cards and we went upstairs into the main check-in area. Thanks to our previous P&O Cruises, we jumped in at Platinum level on the Princess loyalty scheme so were fast-tracked through check-in. Cruise cards handed over and a Muster Station wristband issued to Callum and the next thing we knew we were being directed straight onto the ship. At 12.15 we were on board and heading to our cabin, D225 to drop our luggage off. Carry on luggage left in cabin and en route to lunch we stopped at Passenger Services to sign Jon up for the Ulimate Ships Tour – a behind the scenes tour of the ship. Birthday treat for Jon! Shame I couldn’t join Jon but Kids Club didn’t open until 9am and the tour started at 8.30am!
We had lunch in the Main Dining Room. Shrimp and Avocado for starters (only small!) and then I had salmon for mains whilst Jon and Callum went for the cheeseburger.
After lunch we made our way to Deck 15 to register Callum for Shockwaves, the kids club for the 8-12 year olds. Rooms were a lot smaller than he was used to on P&O and not as bright and cheery. There were only 25 children signed up in his age group as the US Schools were starting back mid-August.
Back to the cabin and all our luggage had arrived so I unpacked all the cases whilst Jon went and grabbed a couple of glasses of Prosecco to start our holiday off. Callum got a Sprite. Meanwhile, our cabin steward (Abraham) popped his head around the door with two complimentary glasses of Champagne!! All unpacked by 3pm, ready for Muster Drill at 3.30. Our Muster Station was in the theatre. We arrived and were sat in the second row. The Cruise Director, Dan, was in charge of this muster station. He was English – from Bournemouth … not sure what it is with Americans, but all of them thought he was Australian (when we’ve been talking to them, they’ve thought we were Australian too).
Muster Drill complete, life jackets put back into the cabin and we headed to the mid-ship Lido deck ready for Sailaway. We haven’t mentioned the Golden Gate Bridge yet … as we hadn’t really seen it so far! The SF Fog was lying across the Bay and you could just about see the legs and the road bit. However, when we went up on deck and you could see the whole bridge! A little hazy, but you could see it. Things were looking up for sailaway. It was rather blustery but no sooner than we arrived on deck, the ships horn sounded and we pushed away from San Francisco and headed towards Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and the open seas. The wind was really picking up and as soon as we passed under the bridge a lot of people heading inside. We braved it a little longer before heading back to the cabin to get ready for dinner.
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Quick look out from our balcony and there were a couple of whales just off the ship – not sure what type but not Orcas or big enough to be Humpback Whales. We passed some buoys marking the shipping channel and there were sea lions lying on the bases. We also passed a sunfish (or that’s what a fellow passenger said it was).
We were on Anytime Dining and could use the Michaelangelo dining room from 5.30pm. Our dining schedule would be dictated by Callum’s schedule in Kids Club. We’d brought along a highlighter pen so Callum could mark off what he wanted to do. EVERYTHING was marked off!! If anyone wanted to, you could leave the kids on board whilst you explored ashore. Not comfortable with that – what if we missed the ship home!!
We headed down to dinner about 6.30pm. Callum ordered the Prawn cocktail for starters whilst Jon and I both went for the salmon. For mains, Jon had the Craw-fish, Callum the Roasted Pork Belly and I had the Beef. It as hard work cutting through the Pork Belly but the crackling was yummy.
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No time for pudding this evening as kids clubs called. After dropping Callum off, we headed to Explorers for the Trivia Quiz. Just Jon and I and we got 17/20 which wasn’t too bad considering. If we had Callum with us, we would have tied in joint place as he knew the two answers we got wrong (and Jon was pretty close for the tie-breaker question).
We then paid a visit to Vines (the Wine Bar). We weren’t sure if it was open as it was pretty dark and no one sat at the tables. It was! Kids Clubs finishes at 10pm (have to pay for babysitting thereafter!) so we collected Callum and headed back to the cabin. Hopefully a lie-in in the morning as we’ve two sea days ahead of us.
