We awoke to find ROTTERDAM already berthed.
We had a leisurely breakfast in our stateroom while (with some apprehension) awaiting the announcement that passengers could begin disembarkation. Apprehension built as the clock went well past the initial disembarkation time with no announcement of any kind. It subsided a bit when the PA system began announcing the names of several non-USA citizens who had not yet reported to ICE for passport inspection. Ten minutes later most of the names were paged a second time.
The clock continued to advance with no further announcements, causing apprehension to uptick again. At 0845, I went out on our verandah to look at the gangway and was relieved to see passengers disembarking.
The first official announcement that passengers could go ashore came at 0900. This was 90 minutes after disembarkation was supposed to begin. Since Pam & I were staying in San Diego for a couple of days and had not fixed commitment until this evening, we were content that the process was officially underway.
They called our disembarkation group number only about 30 minutes after its scheduled time with that unexpectedly early announcement everything else accelerated. We left the ship, got a porter, found our baggage, cleared Customs, caught a cab, got to the hotel, checked in and, our room being ready, were in it in the span of a half-hour.
By 1100, what had started as a cool, overcast morning had evolved into blue sky, sun and a temperature in the mid-60's. It was a good day for a trip to Mission Beach and soon Uber was making that happen.
We asked to be dropped off at Belmont Park and got onto the boardwalk. We walked north on it for a while, then returned to our starting point. We had a nice lunch at Draft seated at a table right next to the boardwalk, walked south on it for a while, returned again to our starting point, and finally walked north a little under two miles before deciding it was time for Uber to take us back to our hotel.
Throughout our time on the boardwalk, the people-watching on it and the adjacent beach was excellent. It was a stereotypical southern California beach crowd augmented by spring-break college student transients. The only thing off was that the lifeguards looked more like professionals than Baywatch stars.
We looked forward to dinner. Coincidentally, our grandson Ian was visiting San Diego. (Yes, he was on spring break from college. Yes, he and some buddies had rented a place at Mission Beach. Yes, they were sunburned because unlike southern California beach regulars, they did not make the application of suntan lotion a spiritual calling.) We took Ian, Zane and Jared to Osetra for dinner, a restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter that was within easy walking distance from our hotel. The food was nothing special, however, the boys left nothing on their plates.
After saying good-bye to the boys, Pam and I walked back to the hotel taking a different route through the Gaslamp Quarter.
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