Too short a visit to the nice city of San Diego

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Geo: 32.7157, -117.162

A brief word about the ship which left Los Angeles at 6pm and arrived in San Diego the following morning having sailed very slowly. (It is only a 3 hour drive!) The Seven Seas Explorer is a new ship which has been dubbed by the company, Regent, as the most luxurious cruise ship ever built. It is very well appointed with lots of marble and rather dark furnishings- too dark for my taste. The art works are also not what I would have purchased but art is a personal thing. The cabin is very nicely designed with a huge balcony. Only hope there will be enough sun to enable me to sit on it! We soon settled into our usual routine which is mainly based around food and drink! Champagne on the balcony to celebrate the beginning of the voyage, followed by more in the 2 bars before dinner, where we met fellow travellers with whom we got on. The clientele are on the whole older than us but there are a few younger people. Walking sticks abound - at least we shall be the first to the life boats in an emergency!Our first tour was a coach ride around San Diego to see the main sights. It is clearly a lovely city and I would like to return and take the hop on and hop off trolley bus, which would be the best way to see the city. As it was, the coach charged around the city and we had 2 minutes to get off and take a photo of some of the sights, far too rushed. There is a bronze statue of Bob Hope, who is forever an American favourite. There is also a huge statue entitled The Kiss which is taken from the famous photo of the sailor kissing the nurse who he didn't know but it was VJ day after the 2nd world war. As our commentator said "nowadays it would be a law suit!". Incidentally there are 5000 lawyers in San Diego! There are lots of interesting looking museums housed in the lovely tree filled Balboa Park . The streets are lined with Jacaranda trees which must look lovely when in bloom. We drove (rapidly) along 5th Avenue which contains many of the original buildings with dates on them. Must say it is difficult to get excited about a building sporting a date of 1919 when we live in a house built in 1876! However there must be plenty of Americans who have not been to Europe and who would be impressed. We did have a 20 minute stop in the cute Old Town which has lots of original Mexican type buildings and is very nicely kept and would be a place I would come back to and explore at leisure. After this rapid tour we boarded a small ship for a harbour cruise. Disappointingly this was not for any wild life but was a trip around the harbour to see all the war ships! I did not know that San Diego is one of the largest naval bases in the USA. If you are interested in military stuff it would be fine but to me they were lots of grey ships with guns. The Midway aircraft liner is moored here and is now a huge museum. We passed under the huge Blue Bridge. When it was built the authorities said that the city would only get help with funding if the bridge was 2 miles long, knowing full well that the distance between the city and adjacent island was less than two miles. Cleverly they got around that by building a curved bridge 2.1 miles long. Our small ship moored back at the harbour and it was a short walk back to our ship of 750 passengers so not too big. We went down to the dining room to find it was closed and never open for lunch. However the speciality restaurant Prime 7 was open for a lovely a la carte lunch. We do not like buffet lunches- why help yourself when there are waiters!? We are already meeting lots of people and trying to remember names. Later in the afternoon was the first of our Team Trivia which is the only one of the many activities we tend to participate in. We would have come second but one of our members persuaded a change of an answer which I knew was wrong but one has to be diplomatic. At 6pm we took part in the Block party where you take your glass into the corridor and a steward fills it up and you get to meet the fellow guests along the corridor- a fun way to meet people. The evening show after dinner was a lounge singer. Stefan enjoyed the show but I wasn't impressed. We even went to the bar after and did Name That Tune- a game we are hopeless at but Stefan did not do too badly. The clocks go forward an hour but we still went to bed late as it is a sea day tomorrow so should be relaxing!

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Comments

[hari]

I think it's the first city that you been to that we also have .I love San Diego and think I could live there Glad you enjoyed your time w sandy and Allie in LA LA LAND love hari Xxxxx

[steve cole]

Have a great time. I see that you are going south so you should be a bit warmer than here.

[steve cole]

Enjoy yourselves. Hope you get some sun.