Busman's Holiday

Met Mom at Midway Airport and had a great dinner Friday night. (First food I'd been able to keep down in two days. Stress, don't you know.)

Slept almost the entire way to San Fran. (Good thing, as I hadn't slept much in the 48 hours before.)

Crazy cabbie who kept referring to Mom as Mama (accent on the second syllable), and sang the whole way from the airport to the hotel (all of three notes, over and over again) at Fishermen's Wharf.

Saturday, we took the street car to the end. I had purchased round trip tix, but Mom had no patience for lines, so we cabbed back to Fishermen's Wharf.

San Francisco in late September is [insert favorite dirty word here] COLD (59 degrees. Yikes!). Had to buy Mom a fleece jacket. (The biggest racket in San Fran is selling those suckers. They're on every street corner. The good thing is that a jacket that would sell for $30 plus anywhere else sells for $12 EVERYWHERE in San Fran. Somebody is making a fortune on those suckers.)

Caught up with a city tour bus trip. Fog made it impossible to see the Golden Gate Bridge. Popsicle Mom. (Pix to follow, once Blogdaddy shows me how to upoload the bloody things.)

Dinner at McCormick & Kuletos... relative to McCormick & Schmick in Chicago. For the foodies out there -- Mom had two appetizers -- oyster stew and pan-fried yearling oysters. That's more than she usually eats... by a lot. I had Tombo, seared, with sticky rice, seaweed salad and a soy, ginger, miso sauce. Yum.

Sleep. Major YUM.

Mom had proposed going on another tour today, but I cut that idea off at the knees when I saw how tired she was last night. So NOT going to do that.

This morning we lazed around the room, went to breakfast, did a little last-minute Walgreen's run, lazed around the room on the balconey a little bit (much warmer today), and then headed for the ship. Yay, yay, YAY for bellman, cab drivers and porters everwhere.

The Coral Princess is beautiful and HUGE. We checked in early, did an impromptu tour, did the safety drill, and then did an early dinner. Beautiful food. Beautiful service. Oh, yeah -- brand new, beautiful ship.

Mom headed off to bed right after dinner. I, of course, headed off to find new friends... which I managed. More on that later. (I met the DJ. I think there's karayoke in my future...)
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