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Monday 29th August
Weather: Gorgeous morning – bright and sunny (no fog or low lying cloud in sight)
Sea Conditions: Flat
We needed to be out of our cabin by 8am this morning so Abraham could turn our cabin (and 20 others!) around in time for the new passengers arriving on ship. Disembarkation was very well organised and ran ahead of schedule. We had received colour coding tags earlier in this week. Not sure why Callum had been given a different set of colours (and time slot) to us … as we had four tags, it didn’t matter so much. The Da Vinci dining room was open for all Platinium, Elite and Suite passengers to assemble from 7.30am. We headed there and easily found an empty table – and waited.
Instead of all the luggage in the arrivals hall being organised by deck (the way P&O do it), this was broken down into much smaller groups, depending on what time you needed – or wanted – to be off the ship. Obviously, anyone with flights to catch close to lunchtime were given an earlier time slot. We opted for a middle disembarkation time between 9.00 and 9.30am. It was just a case of waiting for your time slot to be called. We were Red 1 (you knew the order as it was sent with the tags). For once, having a non-US passport worked in our favour. Long lines here as most passengers were from the US; no-one else in the non-US passenger Immigration line. It was a doddle finding the cases in the baggage hall as there were only two short rows of cases to search.
Through customs and we joined the short queue for taxis by 9.15am. It was a 10 minute ride to our hotel for our last nights stay – The Argonaut. Right next to the Powell – Mason Cable Car Turntable at Beach. It’s a very quirky hotel – all nautically themed. We checked in, and expected our bags to be held whilst we did a little more exploring, but were pleasantly pleased to find out our room was ready.
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It was then a case of deciding what to do next. Muir Woods, walk the bridge or something different. Callum made his case for riding the cable cars again … so in the end decided to catch one down to Market Street, walk down Market Street to the Ferry Buildings and head over the bay to Sausilito for lunch.
Only a short queue for the cable cars so we joined it and were on the next cable car out. Standing room only so nothing else for it but to ride the plate (or whatever they call it!) on the outside – a case of holding on tight! The flat and uphill wasn’t a problem … downhill was a little hairy, especially when the gripman yells to his colleague that they’ve put too much grease on the cables!! We made it to Market Street safely, but it’s not the most comfortable of ways to ride as both Jon and I had a dead leg by the time we’d finished but good fun.
The walk down Market Street was uneventful and we arrived at the Ferry Building in time to catch the ferry over to Sausilito.
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It was pretty quiet heading over and we were able to go to the back for the sail away from San Francisco and move to the front as we neared Sausilito. It took about 30 minutes to cross the bay to Sausilito. It’s a very pretty place Sausilito with houses built up the side of the hill – very expensive houses as prime commuter-belt for San Francisco.
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We wandered down the street to find a cafe/restaurant serving lunch overlooking the bay. We skipped Scomas (as we were eating in the sister restaurant later) and went to The Trident next door. We were given a table on the deck with a great view over Angel Island, San Francisco and the Bay.
Callum was disappointed that we weren’t having starters – we all opted for burgers. Jon and Callum had the beef burger with fries and I had a chicken burger with salad (rather a pile of lettuce!). Mango lemonade for Callum and a beer for Jon and I. Halfway through our meal we noticed a sailboat heading for us across the bay. We then realised, there was a small jetty on the bay side of the restaurant just over the wall – very cool way to arrive for lunch! A sea lion was also bobbing about in the harbour.
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After lunch, we walked a little further around the bay. On the way back, Callum noticed something moving on the rocks – there were hundreds of crabs feeding on the algae on the rocks. They must have seen us coming as they scuttled off really quickly as we approached them. We thought this is want the two guys sat on the rocks with a long pole were trying to catch … until one of them pulled up a foot long eel ashore and wrestled it into his cool box!
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Time to head back to catch the boat back to Pier 37. If everything ran to schedule, we would just make it back in time to watch Grand Princess set sail for it’s next Alaska voyage. There was already a considerable queue when we got to the jetty – mainly people with bikes. They had cycled around the Bay, over the Golden Gate Bridge and were catching the ferry back to San Francisco.
Foot passengers were allowed to board first and we had no problem find seats up top. The sail back had some great views of the city, the Golden Gate Bridge and also of Alcatraz. There were also some cargo ships coming in – we passed right by one and it was huge!
Disembarking was more challenging – foot passengers were asked to disembark first. On the bottom deck, there were two rows of bikes all piled on top of each other, so they could only be retrieved one from each row at a time. All the cyclists were keen to try and pull their bikes out and the foot passengers had to weave their way through the cyclists … and they weren’t moving out the way!
We arrived back in San Francisco at 4.15pm – Grand should be sailing about now. We hot-footed it around to Pier 39 and she started moving once we’d claimed our spot. Such a fantastic afternoon to sail out of San Francisco. Sailaway up on Deck 15 looked well attended and you could hear the Macarena being played as she sailed past!
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We watched until Grand Princess leaded under the Bridge which by now was getting very hazy. Hope everyone on board has an amazing time. We stopped back at Wipeout Bar for a drink before heading back to the hotel to sort ourselves out for dinner.
We arrived at Scoma’s a little early but our table was ready and waiting for us. A view over the little marina by the restaurant and onto the hills of San Francisco. We had the same waiter (and more or less the same booth) as our last visit. Jon and I had a glass of Prosecco to start with whilst Callum had some homemade lemonade.
Jon and I shared a mixed starter of Crab cakes, scallops and calamari and Callum ordered some calamari. Hindsight and we should have just ordered the mixed starter between us. Loads of food – too much to eat. For mains, Jon revisited the Mixed Grilled Fish, I had the Cioppino (an Italian Seafood Stew – a dish San Francisco is famous for) and Callum had the shrimp and fries off the kids menu. Again, we couldn’t finish everything and absolutely no room for pudding.
We could tell there was a good sunset as the San Francisco skyline as all the buildings had taken on a wonderful pinky glow. As we left, we looked over the bridge and the marina to see the remains of a deep red and purple sunset. Wonderful.
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Callum was tired, so Jon grabbed a bottle of wine and we headed back to the hotel room.
