Sea Day #8

Wednesday – May 2

We never knew when we set sail from San Diego. I’m assuming it was as scheduled at 11:00 pm. We watched the end of a DVD movie in our cabin and had lights out by 9:30. Sometime during the night however the waves got a little bigger…enough that our thumping started again. Not enough that we felt compelled to have someone come check on the problem, but enough that I was aware of it and not sleeping soundly.

Bob decided to start the day walking and since there wasn’t anything I wanted to do until 10 am, I chose to join him. We both set one foot out on the promenade deck and immediately turned around and went back to the cabin to get jackets! I didn’t walk long before I felt the coffee calling me from the Lido.

This door in the bow was opened as we walked by... 

...and we couldn't help but notice the huge chain.
It may be hard to judge the size from this photo, but the links were MASSIVE!

I had just sat down in the buffet when Stan showed up. We were still sitting there chatting quite some time later when Bob came to breakfast.

At 10:00 I went to the theater for a talk on what to do in San Francisco. Bob had made arrangements to play pickleball, but the wind kept them from playing <again!>. The two of us met up again in the Wajang Theater for the morning session of America’s Test Kitchen. The show was Southern Snacks and featured biscuits with pimento cheese and fried pickles with ranch dip. The host had just come onboard yesterday in San Diego. A second host was brand new and on her first cruise. I gathered that she was there in a learning capacity.

I didn’t realize she was new and asked her if there was any sort of door that could be banging in their kitchen since it was directly above our cabin (trying to investigate the cause of our mysterious bumping noise!) She seemed surprised by my question but assured me that all of their cupboards were locked but she did ask for my cabin number.

Bob, Stan and Danny always go to the Asian station at the buffet for lunch so we know to look for each other in that general area. I found the soup which was bacon cabbage…and so good! When the captain gave his noon report from the bridge he said he had just turned the ship to the port side to avoid hitting some whales! About that time we looked out the window and saw multiple whale spouts and could make out some tails as they dove.

By the time we finished lunch we went straight to the Crow’s Nest for trivia. The regulars that we usually play with were ALL there, making our group too large (only 6 are allowed per team) so we divided up into two teams. I was of no help (as usual) and even the good players struggled on some of the questions so we didn’t do too well.

Right in the middle of the game, Taylor (the cruise director) saw a big school (pod?) of some type of fish right in front of the ship. From our perspective so high up, it appeared that the ship ran right over them. Quite a few whales were spotted as well.

There wasn’t anything else on the schedule of interest to me for the afternoon so I grabbed my camera and a blanket and sat on one of the lounges on the promenade deck. Of course sitting there hoping to photograph a whale meant there were none to be seen! One of our Australian friends walked by and stopped to visit about things to see in San Francisco.

Sitting outside had gotten me chilled so I ran up to the coffee bar and ordered a large mocha latte to warm up. I sipped it while I worked on downloading photos from the last couple of days. Bob came back shortly after…he had gone to the BBC Earth movie.

Our routine was to check the dinner menu on the Navigator app each day and decide what we wanted to order ahead of time. Here are the menus from the app:

MAINS

The menu that we saw online had quite a few repeat dishes, but when Yezzir handed us the menus at the table, it was completely different. The choices on the actual men were all new choices I believe. I ordered a salad, French onion soup and rainbow trout. Bob got the salad, pea soup with leeks and fennel, and breaded shrimp. Here is the actual menu we ordered from:

Even if our dinner choices weren’t repeats, the production show (Variations) in the main theater was. And once again the show was performed with only one male dancer. Danny had talked to the dancer (Jason) who said a replacement dancer had come aboard in San Diego but had not had time to rehearse the show yet.

Before returning to our cabin, I stopped at the kiosk and printed out our account statement. I was more than surprised to see that I had a $99 charge from the spa…especially since I have not even been IN the spa! Guest services got things straightened out which put us back to having $90 left of our onboard credit.

As the captain predicted, the swells were getting large. The rattle/bumping noise was going strong in the cabin and Bob decided it was one of the emergency sprinkler heads. He reported it to guest services and a gal came to our cabin to check on the situation. Since it was so late, we agreed to wait and have someone check on it the next day. Unfortunately, with the ship docked there will be no noise so not sure if they will be able to figure out the problem. We shall see.

Tomorrow will be another long day in port in San Francisco. The Zaandam is scheduled to sail under the Golden Gate Bridge pretty early in the morning and be docked by 8:00 am. The ship won’t sail until 11 pm so that gives us lots of time to explore.