January 25, 2016 – San Francisco

We’re on board the Crystal Serenity, and a lot has happened since we left Florida three days ago.

The flights from Fort Myers to San Francisco were uneventful and worked out very well. We were worried about snowstorm Jonas which was threatening the east coast of the U.S. At one point, it looked like the storm might hit Atlanta before moving up the coast. But the weather forecast changed to rain, and that’s exactly what we had in Atlanta. It was quite bumpy on the flight, but we landed in Atlanta on time. Of course, we were very happy we didn't make our connections through New York or Washington, DC, as they were both clobbered with about two feet of snow. The flight to San Francisco was two hours late taking off from Atlanta; but it was smooth travel across the country, and the cloud cover dissipated long enough for us to have a good view of the Rocky Mountains as we cruised over Colorado. 

After landing, we caught a taxi to our hotel, the Marriott Hotel at Fisherman's Wharf. The first night in San Francisco we were fairly tired, so we made a beeline to the In-N-Out Burger location about three blocks from our hotel. We'd heard a lot about this West Coast chain, so we wanted to try it out. Maybe it was the 3-hour time zone change and we were too tired to appreciate it, but In-N-Out didn't seem like anything special to us. The burgers were okay, but that's about all. On the other hand, the prices were reasonable and the place was packed with customers. They must be doing something right.

After a good night's sleep, Jim took a short one hour walk around Fisherman's Wharf early in the morning (around 7:00 am), including Pier 39 to see the ever-present, noisy sea lions.

Then, at about 9:00, we headed out on a 2 1/2 hour Big Bus tour to see many of the San Francisco attractions. The buses come by every 20 minutes, and customers can hop-on and hop-off at any one of 20 locations. These are the standard double-deck, open-top buses that we've seen at many major cities around the world. We always enjoy doing these tours, because it's an inexpensive way to see the sights and then get off the bus if we want to explore someplace in particular. We sat downstairs (inside), because there was a misty light rain outdoors. It was a very good tour that we can recommend to you, and we got off the bus at Chinatown to walk around there for a while. We had planned to stop for lunch in Chinatown but didn't see anything that appealed to us on the main streets. We then decided to walk back to the hotel but gave up after about a mile when some heavier rain showers started. Ginny was tired of walking anyway, so we caught a taxi back.

After the rain stopped and the sun came out, Jim ventured out and walked some more around the city (about 3 miles) and enjoyed it immensely, while Ginny stayed in the room to read – she finished her first book of the hundreds she downloaded onto her Kindle. Of course, being Saturday, Jim encountered throngs of other people out walking. Workers were busy assembling NFL Experience venues for Super Bowl 50, which will be held in the Bay Area on Feb 7th. The NFL Experience will be open for all the tourists and football enthusiasts expected in town from Saturday, January 30 through Sunday, February 7, the day of the game itself.

For dinner Saturday night we walked a few blocks to Cioppinos, a fairly large restaurant on the waterfront. It was a simple meal - -a cup of chowder and small pizza for Jim and "Chowder in a Bread Bowl" for Ginny, with sodas for each of us. Even though the food was very good and the wait staff were helpful, it was a lot pricier than the previous night -- $50 at Cioppinos vs. $10 at In-N-Out Burgers. Now we know why In-N-Out was so crowded.

We enjoyed our 2-night stay in San Francisco, but it was time to start our 102-day world cruise. Crystal sent a car to pick us up at the hotel on Sunday at 12:45 and delivered us right to the ship. A well-dressed gentleman greeted us and personally escorted us along a red carpet into the terminal building. After passing through security, we were greeted again, and this person escorted us to the counter to register onto the ship (collect passports, take a picture, etc.). Amazingly, we were the only passengers there, with at least 15 people staffing additional computer terminals to handle the (non-existent) crowd. It couldn’t have been easier or faster for us. Total time from getting out of the car and stepping onto the ship took maybe 10 minutes. We think there wasn’t a big crowd of passengers because everything was handled so efficiently that there was never a backup. On some cruises we’ve been on, it has taken us an hour or more to do what we did here in 10 minutes. Once on board the ship, a crew member grabbed our hand-carried luggage (roll-ons) and escorted us directly to our stateroom. Crystal really does this process extremely well making us feel very special -- VIP treatment at its best.

When we reached our stateroom, we could barely step in and move around, as the space was already full with the four large suitcases we had shipped from home via Luggage Concierge two weeks ago, plus the smaller suitcase a crew member removed from the car when we arrived at the ship (somehow it miraculously made it to our room about the same time we did). Needless to say,we spent most of the afternoon starting to work on the suitcases. We definitely didn't finish unpacking, but we did enough to clear space on the bed for us to sleep that night and get dressed to attend the gala World Cruise Welcome Celebration that began at 5:00 pm and lasted until 1:00 am. We made it until 11:00 pm, which was mighty late for us!

We'll wait for tomorrow's blog to describe everything that happened at the gala celebration. To say the least, it was extraordinary and spectacular. Bottom -- we had a memorable day.

Jim and Ginny