San Diego and San Francisco

 

Sandra, Scott, Heather, Brian, Pat and David

Our Uber driver dropped off at the wrong end of
the park so we walked the length of it to meet 
Pat and Brian. 

There are 16 museums in the Park which is on
1,200 acres.

We were excited to see our old friends in San Diego and it was all too short a visit. But we really had a chance to catch up on our lives and reminisce about our history together. Sandra Francour and I met in  the Philippines while we served in the Peace Corps. We were stationed not far apart from 1966 - 67 and have remained good friends since. David Wood and Brian & Pat Armstrong are all friends from 1969 onwards and were part of the infamous "ski group".  We've been out to San Diego several times to visit them and get to see David more often at his second home in Kingston, MA. 

We met at this fountain in front of the San Diego Museum of
Art.

The Botanical Building was recently
renovated.

The entrance to the Prado

We took an Uber up to Balboa Park to meet Pat and Brian and toured the Botanical Garden and San Diego Museum of Art together. We met the others for dinner at the elegant Prado Restaurant. But the fun was being with them and it was hard to say good-bye after only a few hours. 

We had spots on the top of the bus - lovely in the
city but freezing over the Golden Gate Bridge!!!

Union Park had a fun festival going on but we had
not time to get off and enjoy it. 

It was a short cruise from there to San Francisco and we woke the next morning tied to the dock. Our daughter Zoë and son-in-law George planned to meet us for lunch at 1:30 PM after their morning run. They meet every Saturday morning with a running group - both are long distance runners. So we took a Hop On Hop Off bus that was supposed to be 2.5 hours and we started at 11 AM. The bus broke down and we had to wait for a substitute and it ended up 3.5 hours long - very late for our lunch!

Haight Ashbury is another area we'd love to
explore. 

A damsel in distress?

But it was fun seeing them and we enjoyed a meal overlooking the bay. The time went by so quickly and suddenly it was 4 PM. And the all aboard time was 4:30!!! As always with Murphy's law one problem after another resulted in our running for the gangway and arriving just at 4:30 - pretty scared. It turns out they don't cut off entry right away and we watched at least 20 people board after us. But we'll never cut it that close again! And in the rush to make it to the boat - we forgot to get a picture of them!!!

Our bus crossed the Golden Gate bridge and 
here's a shot just before we got on to return.

A view of the city as our ship departed.

Our trip was coming to a close. We had one sea day left before our arrival in Victoria and the next day was our departure in Vancouver. More on that in my next post.

Crossing under the bridge - it looks like a close
call!

And farewell San Francisco!