Sunday, March 28, 2010 - Disembarkation, San Diego, CA
I woke twice overnight and took the opportunity to stick my head out the balcony doors to see where we were. The first time, around 2 am, I could see the bright lights of San Diego in front of us. The second time, around 5 am, we were just entering into the ship channel for San Diego Bay and I could see the runway lights on Coronado off our starboard bow.
We rose up around 7:30 am and took our time in the room knowing that we were going to be last off the ship. We headed up to Seaside Café around 8:30 am and fortuitously ran into Keith and Doreen. We snagged a table together – quite a feat in a VERY busy area since it seemed that everyone on board was up there getting their last meal and killing time before disembarkation. After eating, Mike and I went down to our stateroom for the last time and gathered up our hand-carried items and returned to the Seaside Café to sit with Keith and Doreen until our disembarkation time drew near.
At 9:45 we decided it was close enough to our time – 10:10 am – that the four of us gathered up all of our belongings and headed down to the Celebrity Theater where we’d be able to hear the disembarkation calls. Turns out they were running ahead of schedule and our time/color group had already been called so we could proceed right to the gangway and depart the ship one final time.
We gave Keith and Doreen and hug and a heartfelt goodbye once we reached the terminal warehouse where we’d each have to hunt for our luggage. We found our three pieces quite easily, and headed out the door. Customs and Immigrations was less than a formality – a port agent (Not a Customs or Immigration agent) collected our customs forms, no one even looked at our passports, and then we were out of the secured area. We had a two minute walk down the street to the Holiday Inn San Diego on the Bay – passing right under the Constellation’s bow as we walked:
At the Holiday Inn we found that we were much too early to check in (it was 10:15 am and check-in is 3 pm, we had hoped but didn’t count on it), so put all our luggage into secured storage with the concierge and headed back out to the Embarcadero. We walked south along the waterfront to the USS Midway Museum. The USS Midway was commissioned in 1945, had a 47 year history of combat and peacetime operations, and was decommissioned in 1992. She opened as a museum in 2004 – and what a museum! We climbed on board at 10:30 am, and stayed aboard her until our legs wore out at 4:15 pm.
Here’s a few pictures… Looking down Midway’s launching deck from the Deck Boss’s perch up the tower:
Looking across SD Bay to Coronado, we could see two nuclear carriers: The USS Nimitz on the left and the USS Ronald Reagan on the right:
Mike standing in front of an F4B Phantom. When in the Marines, he got to ride in one several times.
Looking aft from the bow, down the launch deck, tower on the left:
After crawling all over the three main areas open to the public (flight deck and tower, hangar deck and forecastle, then the three “city at sea” decks under the hanger deck), we were exhausted. HUGE ship and very, very interesting. You could spend days there and it’s too bad we don’t have time to go back. But, we were beat and needed to get off our feet.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the same little deli at which we’d eaten breakfast two weeks ago. They had a nice array of sandwiches that served as a very late lunch/early dinner. With our bellies sated, we walked the last 100 yards to the Holiday Inn and checked in to our room. We were assigned a bay-view room on the 12th floor – just what we wanted. It has a spectacular view over the north end of San Diego Bay starting with a view of SD airport to the north, sweeping the north end of the bay and ending with the San Diego bay bridge to the south. Very, very cool! Here I am, the USS Midway is to the left, the bow of the Constellation is to the right.
We settled in to the room and immediately hooked up the computer to the free and unlimited Wi-Fi – how nice after the expensive charges of the ship! We watched the Constellation depart at 5 pm. She is headed for the Panama Canal and then Florida. We had thought about staying on board for the passage but just couldn’t envision Mike being away from the office from that long.
Here’s Mike enjoying the sunset view:
And San Diego Bay at sunset:
And finally – here’s the Embarcadero after sunset. You can see the ships of the Maritime Museum to the right and the pier at which the Constellation was docked is at the left:
Tomorrow we’ve got an 11:45 am departure, flying Continental through Houston and getting home around 10:30 pm. It’ll be nice to be home. And that’s it for this trip – thanks for reading along!
