Category Archives: Personal Rambling

Leaving SF was the first time our mighty ship has had the assistance of a tug this entire voyage. I assume due to some Californian nanny-state law about how they’ll do it FOR you thankyouverymuch… Alcatraz… Glad we escaped you. An imposing island to be sure. Here comes the bridge! Photo dump of us passing under the bridge: Right about here the fog horn blew until the bridge of the ship had passed under the bridge. That was fun! I swear it looked like we had maybe 20 to 40 feet of clearance. The best shot back at the city I could get with the horde of people on deck: Rare shot of us! Very windy at this point. Basically the minute you pass under the bridge you’re no longer sheltered. In fact we could see the weather out ahead. It suddenly got rather choppy. The actual shore of California. Nice location for a VA hospital. Looking back to the south of the entrance to the bay. That’s a lot of houses. We did an S-turn to create a leeward side of the ship so one seriously brave dude could leap across the open ocean into his tiny boat. Amazing bunch these pilots. The sharp turn back to the north had us listing quite hard. It’s hard to see here, but it was impressive. And then our pilot just waited out there for the next boat and the next pilot. Sixth and lastly, my most terrible attempt at soft-serve yet.

I had to go see the new Apple Store which my old boss Consuela now runs. Didn’t get a chance to say hi to her, but what an amazing store!

They have a garden.

And the garden extends indoors.

I think you’d need sunglasses to work on the sales floor here. Quite amazing. The upstairs area has quite a view:

And the downstairs has quite the door…

Other pilgrimages were also made. I maintain my disdain for 19th century American cathedrals, but eh, they tried.

If I remember correctly this is the St. Francis of Assisi church.

I could not for the life of me figure out what biblical story was happening here…

Went into three different cathedrals in total. None terribly impressive. Didn’t even take pictures in the first. This one was the Peter and Paul church, which was actually very nice and ALMOST European, but could still have had a more impressive organ.

There’s something about cathedrals here that I never realized until I went to Vienna. They’re soft. The glass work is too detailed, the stories in the panes are about love and mercy rather than the Gothic old-testament fear-inspiring morality tales, the lack of grotesques and stone animal carvings is notable.

Unlike Jesuitenkirche, you do NOT walk into an American cathedral (on the pacific cast anyway) and think “these people have the correct god”. The jesuits did it right.

Obligatory sea lions in San Fran. We went to Bubba Gump for dinner. Or, as I call it “the Red Robin of the sea”. After that we walked way down to Ghirardelli Square and get some ice cream. Dangerous dairy experiences. Walking back to the ship was quite pretty: The mighty Explorer of the Seas! Although apparently not that mighty to Julian and Brian after being on it’s larger sister ship. Back on the ship and lounging around after all the walking we did! Something like 7 miles today?

We seem to have been caught for… Something? We’re being shipped to alcatraz.

It looms ever closer. Dang windy out here.

I didn’t actually take too many pictures while we were there. We were busy doing the tour and wandering about. It was really pretty interesting.

For some reason I really enjoyed how rusted out the metal in this building was, yet in these lighting ballasts the ceramic/plastic where the bulb snaps in is perfect. It made it feel decidedly un-real.

The view from the top was pretty nice. There’s our ship! (we’re on the port side, so you can’t see our “house”)

Another look from the top.

I thought the power systems on the ship for our return trip were interesting!

A little bit of nerdiness about the power systems:

Alcatraz was neat. Highly recommended.

Mostly just for me to remember later, I want to look a couple of these up.

Especially this one.

“does not sound like music” makes me hope there’s a good audio recording somewhere on the internet. At a museum type thing at fisherman’s warf.

But they couldn’t help themselves.

Disappointed that our view is as always the Starboard side. Fortunately Brian and Julian’s view from across the hall feels a bit more like being on a ship.

Walking around the ship while somewhere of the coast of California.

Still images just aren’t doing it justice. The slowly moving fog was a really fun sensation. Swirling Mist wrapping around the stanchions and railings was actually somewhat mesmerizing.

Of course, if you’re not prepared, the fog horn going off every couple of minutes will really surprise you! (I actually feel sorry for people with cabins on the upper decks in the bow, that’s gotta be a bit annoying, thing in LOUD)

Down on deck 4 with this view, and seeing the waves over the rail, was where bev’s declared “NOW it feels like being on a proper ship”

I’ve heard of rats on a ship, but a bunny seemed out of place.

We’ve seen a number of ships go by today. Quite a busy highway, this great Columbia River of ours. You can see them in the distance out beyond the bridge, parked, I assume, waiting for their turn or their Pilot.

At a certain point today they all went from facing down-stream to facing up-stream. Were were in an antique shop at the time, and so I don’t know if they were powered into a new position, or are simply acting as weather-vanes for the current. Something to investigate.

As an aside, the Astoria post office doesn’t have an automatic terminal, and so there appears to be nowhere in town to buy a stamp on a weekend. Ah, that authentic small-town feel.