It’s a chilly day today, but fortunately, the forecast now does NOT call for rain which makes us happy since we will be walking from the car rental return to the ship.  We leave the hotel and head into town about 9:30 which should put us at the ship a little after 10 or so.  Traffic is smooth with a little stop and go at a couple of highway merges, but even then it isn’t very bad until we get off at the exit for the gas station – which is weird and confusing, but we manage to navigate through 4 lanes of rights/lefts/straight and get our cheap gas (at least as cheap as you can find in this city) and head on to the ship. This is when the traffic gets bad!  We’ve just come 15 miles in about 25 minutes, but the next 2 miles takes us 20 minutes!  It’s nuts.  We sit on the street leading down to the Embarcadero forever, then merge into dead stop traffic on the Embarcadero.  Wow – to have to do this every day would just stink!

Finally arriving at the port, they’ve got the traffic all organized.  Lots of traffic cops, everybody efficient and happy to point you in the right direction.  We pull up, just as planned, find a nice porter, tip well and hand over our bags.  Then its off to the rental drop off – which takes no time at all and is totally easy to find since we’ve been here before.  There are about 100 cruise passengers in the lobby waiting for transport to the ship – yikes!  Hurry up!  We need to beat them to the ship – that’s for sure.  Turns out we don’t have anything to worry about – there isn’t a bus to be seen as we walk the half mile or so back to the ship.

It’s a pleasant walk on a chilly but sunny day.  Arriving at the terminal we are ushered in, lined up to go through security (watching multiple people who are actually bringing all their bags on with them – not just their carry-ons, but all their huge checked bags – what gives with that?) then make it to the check in desk pretty seamlessly.  There’s a little confusion when the counter guy goes to get the key cards, but they finally figure out they need to take us to the Concierge for suites and all is well.  Gian, our concierge, meets us and we are escorted aboard by a sweet casino cashier, then happily whisked up to Cagney’s for lunch. 

We’ve upgraded to the cool 2 bedroom suite we liked so much on the Star, so we’re excited to get settled and start our journey.  After lunch, we dump our bags in our room, then start to wander a bit to get our bearings.  We got so used to the little Insignia that the wide stairs and multiple venues are still a shock to our system, but we’ll survive!

Everything else proceeds as normal on the first day – muster drill, gym, dinner, show. Sail away is amazing! We’re sailing out past Alcratraz, then into the fog under the Golden Gate Bridge. What a fantastic way to start our 21-day Panama Canal transit!