Thursday 9/15 - San Francisco & home

We managed to get our suitcases out in the companionway just before the midnight deadline. Then things started going downhill.

We'd planned to have breakfast in the cabin, finish up packing our carryons then head to immigration. But the steward had cleared out a bunch of things - including the room service breakfast order forms! A call to room service let me know that only a "continental" breakfast would be available in the cabin, so we bit the bullet and planned to go to the cafeteria (which meant getting up half an hour earlier).

After we got up, we quickly dressed and headed up to the Oceanview Grill (cafeteria) where I discovered there were no half&half packets for the coffee! A steward did manage to snag me a pint of milk. There were also no saucers for the coffee cups - not sure what happened to them.

We were due to immigration at 8:30, but at 8:15 an announcement was made that the line was so long that everyone should delay 10 minutes. 30 might have been better. The line stretched from the theater out through the photo gallery into the casino, doubled back through the gallery to the theater and then back out thru the gallery to the casino again. The same casino which barely had room for two people to (carefully) slip past each other! All so that some clerk could see that your passport photo sort of looked like you.

We were also supposed to wait in the theater for our group to be called for disembarkation, but were told to go "elsewhere" until immigration was finished. We went back to our cabin. Eventually, we were called to the theater where we sat for 45 minutes while groups were called in seemingly random order to get off.

While all of these events seemed like "hurry up and wait," the scene in the baggage shed was like feeding time at the shark tank. Too much luggage, and too many people, in a very small area. No luggage trolleys. A few porters, but I couldn't get one to even look at us until I waved a $20 bill under her nose (which she followed like a dog on the scent!)

I left Anne Mary to work the luggage out to the street (a mob scene even worse than the luggage shed, since there were now departing passengers from two ships as well as early arriving people looking to get on those two ships all in the space of about half a block) while I went to the parking garage to get the car.

The car, which had a dead battery.

I'd not taken my phone with me.

I walked back to the pier, found Anne Mary, lashed the luggage together and we walked it the three blocks to the parking garage. Then called AAA and waited 40 minutes for the service truck.

It all came close to undoing the good feeling that 11 glorious days aboard ship had created. Very close.

But, all in all, it was a wonderful trip. Celebrity didn't become our new favorite cruise line, or even our second choice, but if the itinerary were right then we'd sail with X again!

Until that day, blue skies & gentle breezes...