February 13: A Day In San Diego

 

Star of India

Today began with a quick wake-up when our house sitter called to say our alarm system had gone haywire, preventing her from leaving the house without summoning the police. Fortunately, there's an app for that, which enabled me to disarm the system. After a few phone calls, a plan to correct the problem was implemented. 

After a nice, substantial brunch at the hotel, Pam & I set out for the Maritime Museum of San Diego. It was a 2+ mile walk; the first half was unattractive, but the second half was more interesting. 

We first visited the Star of India, touted by the museum as the world's oldest active sailing ship. Among other things, during her career, she made 21 voyages from England to Australia, carrying as many as 400 immigrants. The transit took 100-134 days. 

  

The museum has a replica of HMS Surprise. For Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World movie buffs, this is the ship onboard which the movie was filmed.

We enjoyed visiting other ships and viewing the museum's displays. 

Eventually, we decided to head to a pharmacy to pick up a few supplies for our cruise that would have taken up too much space in our carry-ons or weren't TSA-approved. Again, using sneaker power, we followed the little blue breadcrumbs on Google Maps to a CVS.

Acknowledging that it was not in the finest part of town, if you are ever in San Diego looking for a sketchy drugstore, the CVS we went to should be at the top of your list. For openers, they had no baskets to hold the things customers were buying. It was not that the baskets were in use; there were none. Next, half the merchandise was in locked glass-door cabinets. If you needed an employee to open a cabinet, good luck. 

While we were standing in line to check out, the man ahead of us had one of his earbuds fall to the floor. His arms were so full of items that he could not pick it up. (Pam managed to grab it for him without losing her armload of items.) 

She seemed to be channeling Mother Theresa when the woman at the checkout put our purchases in a paper bag. This uplifting moment was tempered by the security guard at the door, who just scowled at me when I wished him a nice day. 

Yes, sir, we can't wait to shop there again.

Escaping the store, we decided we'd walked enough, so with a few taps on my phone, an Uber arrived to whisk us back to the hotel. 

After a couple of hours, it was time to start walking to our dinner reservation. Thankfully, after all the walking we had already done today, it was only about three-quarters of a mile. Even then, I will admit that, as we went along, a variation of "For every step into the woods..." went through my head. 

We had a nice dinner at Prime. It had a better atmosphere and a higher price point than last night's restaurant. If you eat there, try for a window table.

We walked back to the hotel, checked in with the Holland-America representative, and got granola and yogurt parfaits for breakfast in our room, then headed there. Our strategy was to start the day relaxed and eat less breakfast than we did today. Of course, a prerequisite to this strategy was confirming this morning that the coffeemaker in the room did not produce swill.