Pacific Coast Cruising

Cruise prices were great this spring and ships were not full.  We took advantage of this and went on a West Coast cruise with friends.

We flew to San Diego and sailed north.  First stop was Santa Barbara.  This was a perfect stop because we have friends who live there.  They met us and we spent a lovely morning at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. 

   

   

 

For lunch, we went to a restaurant right on the beach!

 

From the bluff near their home, they had a view of our ship sailing away.

    

We sailed next to San Francisco, where we stayed 2 nights.

It was cool sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge on a gorgeous day.

 

The ship docked right downtown so we took a walk that afternoon. 

The Ferry Building

We caught a tram to go the other direction and ended up at Ghirardelli Square.

Another stop – The Buena Vista for an Irish coffee.

The next day we did a Segway Tour in Golden Gate Park with our friends.

The gardens were beautiful.  Not many pictures, though.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t take pictures and balance on the Segway at the same time!!

We’d worked up an appetite, so had a late lunch at The Stinking Rose, a restaurant known for its garlic dishes.  Yum!

They had a big mirror on one wall so we couldn’t resist a selfie.

Then back to the ship to put our feet up before the sail-away.

The next port was Astoria, OR, named for John Jacob Astor of NY who brought commerce to the area.  The Astoria Column is the thing to see here.  It was built in 1926 to salute Astoria’s explorers and early settlers.  The 125-foot pillar is made of concrete with a pictorial frieze that involves cutting outlines through wet plaster to reveal a dark base coat.  The Column depicts events of American exploration and development of the Northwest. 

  

There are wonderful views from Coxcomb Hill.  It’s quite a hike up to here but we did it the easy way.  We rented a car and after a quick look at the column we drove down the coast to see Cannon Beach and Seaside. 

When we lived in Portland we often visited these towns.  It was fun to see what had changed and what had not.

Our last day was spent in Victoria on Vancouver Island, Canada.  We made reservations for high tea at the Pendray Inn and Tea House.  

A real treat!

A final dinner with our friends.  (You can see how empty the dining room was.)

Our cruise finished in Vancouver.  Any other year we may have taken the train back to Seattle but, because of Covid, they were not running yet.  So, we rented a car for the easy drive home.