Day One: San Francisco & Embark

We left Minneapolis with a wind chill of -30 below zero and things improved in San Francisco. A big busy city on the pacific ocean and it was bright and sunny at 53 degrees. We were able to meet with Dawn's brother Greg who lives in the area for a little food and drink. We even met up with good Customer Jim & his wife Tracy who were in the city for spud business! On the morning of the 6th we were all up early because of the two hour time change. We decided to walk down to the ocean to see what we could see. The walk was down a very busy Market Street in Downtown SF. Lots of people and traffic moving at big city pace. Many sights that are rarely or never seen in Central Wisconsin. We made the walk to the ocean and then turned left at Pier 1 and walked along the ocean down to Pier 27 and got our first glimpse of the Silver Whisper, a small white cruise ship that holds 384 max. passengers. We ended up walking all the way down to Fisherman's Warf where we had breakfast of crab omletes. My fitbit showed our walk was 15,000 steps, about 5 miles. Early afternoon brought embarkation which was easy and quick so we toughed out lunch on the cold pool deck. All bags except one arrived on time. A very important bag of mine never showed even after we left. Luck struck and reception had the bag as "unidentified" and it was the very last bag on the ship. We left the Port of San Francisco on time at 6:00pm but it was dark already. The Bay Bridge is a newer bridge across bay and it has a spectacular light show. The main bridge the Golden Gate is much more famous but too old for fancy light shows. Our ship went under the Golden gate bridge with 50' of clearance to spare.

The headline in today's San Francisco Chronicle read "Major storm to hit area Saturday with high winds and major flooding". Up to 50mph winds were possible and for us, we were heading into it. Our Captain predicted 12' seas. Dinner was very good and very calm in the main dining room. It wasn't until about 1:00 am that the ship started to rock an roll. Lots of movement and banging around. Drawers opened and shut, our shower door was banging into the toilet, etc. We have high hopes for better weather at sea tomorrow.