Thursday 30th March

Sailed into San Diego & were off the ship at about 8.00am. The water front is very modern & the day was quite warm so we set off to see about a Hop on Hop Off bus. Nothing was open so we found a cafe across from the waterfront & worked on the wi-fi for about an hour waiting for things to happen. In that hour a mist rolled in & the temperature dropped several degrees, so we were glad we had some warm clothing

We took the first 'Trolley' we could & went on a tour of the place. San Diego is the 2nd largest city in California which surprised us but like Las Vegas, it is mosty totally artificial in that the new buildings are all on spoil dredged in the 1930s from the harbour to allow the US Navy to bring in their giant aircraft carriers. Across the bay from where we were berthed is the civilian airport & very busy it is, with 10 planes in a queue to take off at one stage whilst 2 landed. The bus took us through the down town area across a long high bridge to Coronado an upmarket suburb on a peninsula & we walk around the Hotel du Coronado a 1920s structure apparently the largest of its type in the world famous for being used in 'Some Like t Hot'.

From there we continued on the trolley, back across the bridge through the gigantic Balboa Park, the Italian quarter & Bankers Hill to the Old Town settled by the Spaniards.

This looks very Mexican although most of the buildings are replicas, so it has the feel of an old western. After a quick lunch we returned on the trolley past the Marine Recruiting Depot complex & the airport to our starting place on the waterfront.

We walked along the front to the next wharf which is a Maritime Museum with quite a range of vessels including the Star of India, a large clipper, a Russian submarine & the ship which was used for the film ‘Master & Commander’. At yet another wharf along the front is the USS Midway, a carrier which used to come to Fremantle in the 80s. This is also a maritime museum with many planes on its decks. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to explore either of them as we had to get back to the ship by 4.30.

Aurora was due to sail at 5pm but was delayed as 2 passengers didn’t get back for more than an hour. As we left we were shadowed by 2 large Coastguard Ribs, each with a mounted weapon on their bows. We assume that this was because San Diego is such an important Navy base.