San Diego, CA – Day 17

For some reason, I really like San Diego. I'm sure it’s because of the consistent weather. San Diego was kind of a screwed up port-of-call for us on this trip. We were told that because we travel as Canadians we had to wait until the ship cleared everyone before we could get off the boat. As an American, we were told that Jean needed to get off the boat about 9:00 a.m. but for what reason we’re really not sure as nothing happened – not one question asked. Because they started by floor, we weren’t called until 10:00ish because our cabin was on the 8th floor. With a 3:30 p.m. departure time from San Diego, it really didn’t leave all that much time to explore a cool city. Why they set the early departure from SD is beyond me, we won’t be leaving Victoria until 12:30 p.m. on Thursday so why the rush. There’s more to do in San Diego than Victoria. Anyway, that’s not my decision.

The first thing we did was plant ourselves in the lobby of the Wyndham Hotel and used their free wi-fi. When I went to reception to get the password the day manager asked me "what’s your room number". I said, “Raymond, I’ve just been on a cruise ship for 16 days with nothing but ****** wi-fi, can you cut me a break?” He smiled, and gave me the password, no further questions were asked. After we got all caught up on phone calls, webmail, and a quick financial review of our accounts, we walked over to Little Italy, purchased a day pass complete with plastic card for $7US each and headed to El Cajon on the MTS Orange Line Trolley. After about a ½ hour of travel north through some of the different little areas of SD, we crossed the tracks over to the Green Line and headed back south again from La Mesa down through Fashion Valley and back to the stop at Sante Fe so that we could get back on the ship for lunch.

San Diego was a start and end for some people on this cruise. So roughly 800 people were getting off and 800 people were starting their cruise, so there will be some new faces on board, and just maybe a few new poker players for the final five days of our cruise back to Vancouver.