San Francisco Catch Up Day

Hello from sunny South San Francisco.

Usually we head right to a hotel near Fisherman's Wharf when we come to San Francisco, but this time we went the cheap route and stayed out by the airport. In a Best Western, of course. That Diamond loyalty level came in handy again as we were upgraded to a an executive level room on the top floor with great views of the bay and turn down service in the evening. Chocolates included, just like on a ship.

But today wasn't about the hotel, it was about how we spent the day at the hotel. When we return from these upcoming cruises we'll be doing the tourist thing by spending the day at Fisherman's Wharf before our late afternoon flight. That gave us today to fill with non-touristy things.

• We walked over to Costco to pick up snacks for the crew. 
• We walked to McDonalds and ate lunch outside in the sunshine. 
• I took a picture of a saying they had by the register to motivate their employees. It's very blurry because I took it stealthily from afar, but it was important enough to share anyway. It read: Do everything with a good heart and expect nothing in return. Always a good reminder for us all.

• Taking the saying to heart, as soon as we got back to the hotel I gave the housekeeper who had just finished our room a encouraging word money pocket.
• We did a load of laundry at the hotel ($1.75 wash, $1.25 dry) using the detergent we bought at the dollar store in Islamorada, Florida.
• Hubby watched football on TV.
• We found out it snowed even more back at home. It started during the Boise State game last night. (A game hubby was so happy to have on the TV here.)

Notice we have yet another crooked TV screen?

We are excited to start wrapping up our cruising year. Tomorrow we'll be heading back to the airport to take the Princess transfer to the port. We rarely take a Princess transfer and we said we never, ever would do it again in San Francisco. (We had a bad experience with it in San Francisco a few back.) We also had a bad experience with a shared shuttle service in San Francisco, too. They totally lost our luggage on our way to a 15 day Hawaiian cruise and took no responsibility for it. Try doing a 15 day cruise without any of your stuff!

So the past couple years we've been using the same private car company from Viator. We were going to use him again, but since we had additional Princess credit to use up (from the hurricane-diverted cruise) we went ahead and booked the Princess transfer. We shall see how it goes. I know we'll get there, but at what time, and how much walking through the airport terminals we'll have to do, I don't know. All we care is that we get to port before 2:00. One of our crew member pals is leaving to go home tomorrow afternoon and we'd love to be able to send him off with hugs and kisses before he heads out.

See you tomorrow from the Grand Princess!