Review of the Star repositioning cruise -- part 4

[ute_fan]

The Captain announced Wednesday night that we'd be sailing under the Golden Gate bridge between 6 and 6:15 AM. So, Wednesday night was another early-to-bed night for all of our party. We scheduled a wake-up call for 5:45 to make sure we didn't miss anything -- but we might as well have slept in as the bridge was almost totally obscured by fog. We finally started to see an orangish glow as we got closer, but our view was limited to one of the bridge supports and a tiny bit of the underneath of the bridge deck. By the time we sailed past Alcatraz, we were able to see a little bit more, but it was too dark for a very good view.

The Star was docked at Pier 30/32, which is seldom used for cruise ships. The advantage was that we got to sail under the Bay Bridge, and even though it's not as beautiful as the Golden Gate Bridge is, it was pretty in it's own right from the ship. We had arranged to rent a mini-van here in San Francisco, but ended up with a Ford Expedition instead, and appreciated the room since we had 6 adults in the vehicle. We'd decided to drive to Muir Woods. Again, the Golden Gate bridge was hiding from view -- both ways -- but Muir Woods was beautiful. It had been years since I'd been, and it's so totally unlike anything here in Utah that we enjoyed our visit. We drove back into San Francisco, and had the obligatory clam chowder and sourdough bread for lunch. I'd forgotten what a pain it is driving in San Francisco. Luckily my BIL wasn't rattled by all the traffic, and we were able to return the rental car by about 4:30 M and were back on the ship in time for dinner.

The show tonight was the performance by Second City. My DH and I have seen them several times, and no one else in our group was interested, so I returned to our cabin for a nap after dinner. The rest of our party tried to see the bridge as we sailed out to sea -- but again, it was foggy and I didn't miss anything.

Thursday night was also the Chocoholic Buffet. It was set up in the Versailles restaurant, and was probably the best experience we've ever had at one of these events. The announced time was from 11 PM to midnight, but they opened it as soon as everything was ready -- which eliminated the crowds as people were sent in as soon as they arrived. We got to Versailles about 10:45, and walked right in. Since we'd frequently spent quite a bit of time waiting in a long-line on other ships, we thought this was a great improvement. As always, it's prettier to look at than anything else, but I do love the fruit skewers that they dip in melted chocolate at the chocolate fountain.

Friday morning dawned cloudy and foggy. Again, no sunrise, much to my dismay. We spent the day in various activities. I joined my DS and BIL for a team trivia event. My BIL participated in the ping-pong tournament, and we returned to the Blue Lagoon for another round of fish and chips. Friday night was our last night at sea, so after another fairly early dinner at Versailles, we returned to our cabins to start packing. We went to the later show of Band on the Run, which my DH and I saw on one of the other ships. It's OK -- but most of the music isn't what I'd pick if I was doing music from the 70's. With most of the passengers on this cruise being retired, I'd be surprised if most of them enjoyed it.

We left the theater, and stepped out on the Promenade deck to find that the clouds from earlier in the day were totally gone. We had a beautiful view of the moon and stars, and it had warmed up signifcantly. I wish it had done that earlier in the cruise, so our first-time cruiser friends could have enjoyed more of the experience of relaxing in the loungers on the Promenade deck. That's normally my favorite part of a cruise. As we were standing there, we noticed that we had dolphins playing alongside the ship, jumping out of the water and we watched them for quite a while.

We went to the Internet Cafe and printed our boarding passes for our flights the next day ($.50 per page), and then returned to our cabins. When my DH went out on our balcony, he discovered to his amazement that we had MORE dolphins swimming along the ship. We stood outside and watched them for probably 30 minutes or more. What a wonderful experience to end our cruise with!

Saturday morning, I woke up to see us pulling into the San Pedro pier area. Unfortunately, our cruise was ending . After a final breakfast in the buffet, we returned to our cabins, waited for them to call our luggage tag color, and joined the line leaving the ship. I don't know why, but it's the first time we've ever experienced any sort of line leaving an NCL ship. We located our luggage, went outside, and discovered to our dismay that the taxi line was VERY long. As we were flying home from Long Beach at 12:30, I was starting to get a bit stressed about making our flight. Luckily, the wife of our friends had the good sense to find the taxi supervisor and got our name on a list. After waiting for about 45 minutes, they called our name and we were able to get into a van for our ride to the airport. We arrived about 2 hours before our flight, and since the airport is so small, it only took us about 5 minutes to get through security. If we hadn't put our names on that list though, I think we still might have missed our flight.