July 12, 2023

We. had a day at sea yesterday between Astoria Oregon, and San Francisco.

We has a nice lunch with Erin, Mui and Ray. It is so hard to believe that we will be home in just 2 days after this amazing journey.

All of the usual sea day activities were held, but the highlight was the final Sing Out Loud concert. Our friend Charlie and of course, Norm, are part of this group and the concert was just wonderful. The group has had practice sessions and they truly appreciate the time and insight they got from Paul and Carolyn.

We had our last dinner in Toscana and there was a birthday celebration for Dottie and a farewell to the cast in Horizons at night.

Today we had our final day in port in San Francisco. Many of the passengers were on deck for the sail in under the Golden Gate Bridge. It was misty as is typical of San Francisco mornings.

My pelican friends greeted us and this tugboat welcomed us with my name!

Some of the ATW guests are going home today but most of us will leave tomorrow. About 56 of the 380 ATW guests are staying on for more days, either to Miami, Port Canaveral or to New York.

We decided to go out and explore in San Francisco. Although we have been here many times, we always enjoy it and when we were here to start the voyage in January it was a very stormy and rainy day and we only got out of the hotel for lunch before boarding the ship.

San Francisco is the second most densely populated large US City and fifth most densely populated US county, behind only four of the five NY boroughs. Three quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire and it was quickly rebuilt and hosted the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. It became the birthplace of the United Nations in 1945. The city is a center of liberal activism in the US. It is known for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman’s Wharf and its Chinatown district. Many colleges and universities as well as cultural institutions are located here.

We walked to the Salesforce Park, which our son Adam had told us about. It is a really beautiful place with many varieties of plants and lots of activities taking place here. It is three stories above the street. Here are some of the sights in the park.

When we saw this CVS vending machine in the Salesforce complex, we were reminded of Japan! I have never seen one of these from CVS before but I guess Salesforce thinks of everything.

After spending over an hour walking around the whole park, we went to the Tadich Grill for lunch. And what a lunch it waas! This restaurant was recommended by a friend. It has been in business since 1849 – now in their 174th year. The inside has the original bar and light fixtures and the waiters wear a sort of formal white jacket. Our food was wonderful but we had no idea the portions would be so large. We sat at the bar and the place was completely full most of the time we were there. There were two types of chowder on the menu, Boston and Coney Island. I took that to mean New England and Manhattan and I ordered the Coney Island. When it came, it looked like New England, but I thought maybe Coney Island was also a creamy chowder. We got two spoons and really enjoyed it. If I had known how large the avocado and dungeness crab salad was, I would have skipped the soup or ordered something smaller! It was delicious but enough for three lunches. Norm had the swordfish oscar (with crab and asparagus) on risotto and said it was just delicious too. The sourdough bread was amazing.

They gave me a container to take the rest of the salad with me and I then asked about the chowder. It turns out, they made a mistake and did give me the Boston chowder, so the waiter gave me a container of the Coney Island one to go! Will have our own dinner on the ship tonight.

After lunch, we wanted to walk off the food, so we walked the embarcadero up to and around Fisherman’s Wharf.

We went back to the ship to finish our packing. We have a 6 AM flight tomorrow (we didn’t plan on that – the airline changed our flight time), so we are leaving the ship at 3 AM in the transport they are providing for us. I think I will take an early nap then stay up until we get dressed to leave. it’s been an amazing journey filled with wonderful experiences, new and familiar friends and crew and as always, we are so grateful for the opportunity to travel and learn. It is always hard to leave the “family” we have spent the last 6 months with but we have made lasting friendships and know we will meet many of them again.