Port 04 San Diego, California

We cruised the eastern Pacific Ocean for eight days before arriving in San Diego. We had four ports of call cancelled between the Panama Canal and San Diego. These were San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua, Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala, Acapulco, Mexico, and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Nicaragua and Acapulco were cancelled before we started the cruise, and Guatemala and Cabo San Lucas were cancelled while we were cruising. This resulted in the extended days at sea that rivals a trans-Atlantic cruise consecutive sea day duration!

During the sea days we finally began to feel some roll in the ocean. We had pretty flat water for the first two weeks of this sailing. As we approached California the seas had 1 to 2 meter waves that were nothing to a cruise ship, but the seas also had a longer slow rolling wave that would soflty rock the ship. Now this feels like a cruise!

We celebrated the New Year quietly. There was a “gathering” on the pool deck, but we avoided that, and toasted in 2022 in our stateroom!

We arrived in San Diego in the early morning on Jan 4th, 2022, and we were greeted with a pretty sunrise.

Shortly after, we passed this lovely lighthouse, the New Point Loma Lighthouse.  Thanks to Mary Applegate for confirming this!

As we passed Coronado’s North Island I recalled a trip here in 1980 while in college at the University of Southern California. Matt Bille and I brought Liz Knemeyer (now Ruth) to deploy for her “summer vacation” at Ft Benning’s Airborne jump school training. Ah, memories!

We did not plan any excursions in San Diego. Our focus was getting to the San Diego Passport Center to submit an expedited application for a secondary passport. This can be valuable in the event something goes awry when the ship sends our passports to China, India, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Mozambique, or Tanzania for the visas required to visit these locations.

We were able to get an 8:30 AM appointment at the Passport Center with the assistance of our wonderful friend, Patty Pittarelli.  Our challenge was getting there on time. Since this was our first US port since stopping in Colombia and Costa Rica we had to have US Immigration come on board and perform a 1-on-1 exam of us and our passports. This check was planned to start at 8:00 AM and those disembarking to leave the ship were the only people allowed to go through at the start. But our executive concierge, Julio, was able to get us at the head of the line.  A quick Lyft ride, and we arrived just a few minutes late.  Our applications were accepted and we were instructed to come back at 3PM to pick up the passports!

To kill time we did a little shopping and  began to walk around San Diego’s Gaslamp district. We love the juxtaposition of the old architecture against the new! Here’s the Santa Fe Amtrak Depot with its lovely Spanish architecture and the Pacific Gate residential tower as its backdrop:

While trekking through the Gaslamp district we stumbled across the House of Blues, and the Kurt Cobain quote caught our eye. Amen.

We stopped for lunch at Serrano’s Street Tacos & Bar, and had the place to ourselves for quite a while. It was “Taco Tuesday”, so we enjoyed several tacos – asada, carnitas, al pastor, and fish, with fabulous guacamole and chips with 4 types of salsa. But the most memorable part of the meal was the toasted coconut margarita! Yummy!  Once we were done it was time to pick up our passports.

On day 2 in San Diego we took a walk to Seaport Village in search of hat keepers aka “rat tails”  and a new hat for Joy.  There was much to be seen along the way!  Artist Jaume Plensa’s “Pacific Soul” sculture represents diversity inspired by the ocean and constructed using letters from eight alphabets.

The view down Broadway intrigued Ed. It was a beautiful day!

And Broadway Pier had a special welcome for Joy!

And the “snowflakes” on the ground held special joy for Joy!

Seaport Village has a beautiful carousel with exquisitely carved horses!

Seaport Village also has a bunch of ducks roaming the grounds. Mallards are my favorites!

The Maritime Museum is just north of the cruise terminal. We didn’t go through the museum, but Star of India is readily visible along North Harbor Drive – beautiful!

To the south side of the cruise terminal is the USS Midway, at one time the largest Naval vessel on the ocean!

And the Midway lights up patriotically at night, sporting red, white, and blue lighting!

There is an Aircraft Carrier Memorial to all of the flat top ships. I was surprised how many carriers our Navy has had in service since World War II.  Three sides of the obelisk are covered with all of the ship names. The two statues represent the many crewmen who headed from this point to their tours of duty on the carriers.

As we depart San Diego the waterfront is beautifully lit, with the bridge to Coronado Island stretching to the right behind the Midway! You can see the water churning from the propellers beneath our fantail cabin veranda.

We have day of sailing to our next port of call, Los Angeles!