Alaska & the Rockies
San Fransisco
We arrived in San Francisco fairly early for a days sightseeing and an overnight stay prior to boarding our cruise ship, the Diamond Princess. We stayed at a boutique hotel called the King George located just a few steps from Union Square which was ideally located as it is close to Chinatown and the Powell Street cable car provides convenient transport to Fisherman's Wharf. We had the rest of the day to have a look around before leaving the next day for the Embarcadero to board our ship for the cruise to Alaska.
We've always found the Big Red bus an excellent way of seeing the sights, especially if you have limited time and long distances to cover, so this is what we did and the bus took us through some very interesting parts of San Francisco,starting in Union Square and including the "Painted Ladies" near Alamo Square (colourful houses), the Presidio (ex military base), Golden Gate Park and the Golden Gate Bridge and ending at Fishermans Wharf. We saw the heart statues in Union Square which were started as a fundraiser in 2004 and are placed at each of the four corners of the square; the inspiration for these statues was the famous song by Tony Bennett "I left my heart in San Francisco" and they have now become a permanent tourist attraction which are changed frequently to maintain interest. Union Square is a popular place for local bay artists to display their paintings. Jane got a good deal on a new lens for her camera in a shop in Chinatown which we have visited whenever we've been in San Francisco.
After a good american style breakfast the next day we were keen to get to the cruise ship which we'd seen moored up the previous day but much to our surprise when we arrived there, the ship had been quarantined by the US Department of Health for a thorough decontamination. They had had norovirus on board during the previous cruise and thousands of crew and guests had been affected; this is every cruise ships nightmare but fortunately, other than the boarding delay, our cruise was unaffected; we were not allowed to serve ourselves and were constantly disinfecting our hands but otherwise no problems. The delay meant we had to wait a further 4 hours to get on board but we put this to good use by hiring bikes and cycling along to the Golden Gate Bridge at which point we crossed over to Sausalito on the other side and came back on the ferry.
We boarded late in the afternoon and by the time we set sail it was getting dark and it was a fantastic sight going under the bridge in the half light as the sun set, by which time we had already had our first bacardi and coke and were in just the right frame of mind to really enjoy the journey out into the Pacific.
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