Day 16 - San Diego: Get Off The Boat!

Yesterday we were back on the US mainland, visiting San Diego. We were told earlier in the week that *everyone* would have to get off the boat for a face-to-face inspection by the US Customs & Border Patrol. No big deal for us, and it turned out to be a 20-second meeting. However, it was incredibly difficult for a few of the mobility-restricted guests, as there were two steep ramps to traverse and apparently no wheelchairs. Not a great way to treat your citizens.

We had an atypical San Diego day - with the weather being in the mid-50s and rainy/windy. I feel all that talk about the great climate of SD, and how it's always sunny is total BS. Maybe I'm a Rain God, but 90% of the times I've visited San Diego, it's rained. Hard.

Before leaving the boat, we decided to download some Netflix and Prime movies and shows over cellular. You can't do that on the boat as the WiFi is really slow, and they firewall out streaming streaming services. It was a lesson in the power of new technology. Allison's new 5 G-enabled iPad grabbed a 90-minute episode in less than 20 minutes. My older iPad took 2.5 hours for a 45-minute episode.

The weather made us change our plans, so we canceled a tour of the Safari Park, suspecting we'd get better options later in the tour anyway, and decided to explore downtown in the Gaslamp District. It's the "historic" part of the city, dating all the way back (English sarcasm here) to 1850. That meant we needed to organize a brunch, as goodness knows, there wasn't enough food on the boat. We ended up at a fantastic place called The Provisional Kitchen, attached to the Pendry Hotel. Really great food and service (thanks, Sergio), and we'd both recommend it. I ordered a spicy Mexican dish, and Allison had Steak Frites. The steak was world-class and better than most filets you get in top-tier restaurants.

When we left the Provisional, it was, of course, raining hard, so we ran across the road to CVS, picking up supplies we had forgotten or discovered that we needed. Seriously - as in, who goes on a 132-day trip and forgets toothpaste? Allison then Uber-ed back to the boat, and I decided to brave the elements and walk back. That allowed me to go past the USS Midway museum. I read some of the plaques and discovered that the Midway (named after the 1942 battle) never saw action in WW2 as it was commissioned a week after the war ended. Also, in trivia, it had a capacity of 120 planes and launched the first ship-to-ship missile. It finally saw action in North Vietnam some 20 years later.

Next up, we have Santa Barbara and then an overnight in San Francisco. The weather on the West Coast has been horrible, and the forecast for at least the next two days is distinctly dodgy. I've long suspected that our coldest port of call on the entire trip will be San Francisco, so we'll see if I'm right.