Coastal Day 2 - Avalon

Our ship did come in, but the Norwegian Jade came in first and docked on the other side of the pier. Our ship, the MS Nieuw Amsterdam, arrived around 6am, and we hung out on our balcony with Josh on his balcony and watched it come in and dock. Jen and I went to yoga while Josh worked out, and we all got cleaned up and grabbed various breakfasts. My plan for the day was to go to Balboa Park until noon, then come back and grab some lunch and get on the ship between 1:30 and 2, which would be at least 1.5 hours after boarding started but still plenty early, with the goal of avoiding standing in line. The Nieuw Amsterdam is a bigger ship than both our beloved Zaandam and Oosterdam, so crowds were a possibility.

Jen had suggested The Museum of Natural History as a compromise between her choice, the Art museum, and the other choices, aerospace and toy railroad museums. Balboa Park is cool, and they have a multi-museum pass, so it would be a fun place to spend a day if you came in early for a cruise. BUT, in San Diego the airport is so close to the cruise terminal it probably isn’t necessary to come a day early. Note to selves.

Anyway, the Natural History museum turned out to be awesome. They had a scavenger hunt and we enjoyed having it to give shape to our visit, but it’s a nearly perfect museum – lots of things to touch and crawl through and very, very short descriptions of everything which is my favorite way for museums to be. They also had the biggest hunk of tanzanite we’ve ever seen, and an ankylosaurus, which is my favorite dinosaur! We spent about an hour and a half there, which was just about the right amount of time for that museum, but a little longer than we should have stayed per my plan.

We Ubered back to Miguel’s for lunch, and there was a wait for a table that put us even more out of our timeline (we should have left the museum right after the scavenger hunt and not gone to the basement of amazement), and once we picked up our luggage and got it dropped off there was a huge line to check in. We stood in line for a couple minutes before word got passed back that we were in the Norwegian line, and once we got into the HAL line it was maybe 10 minutes before we were completely checked in and heading for our cabins. So my plan and the timing turned out to be perfect.

We split up to tour the ship, and by the time Jen and I visited our muster(d) station and got back to our stateroom all the suitcases but hers had arrived. I unpacked and then Dave unpacked, because the verandah cabins on this ship are about 30-40 sq feet smaller than the comparable Vista Suites on the Zaandam, so there’s less space to put things away in and also less space to stand in when you’re putting things away. We had a little time to relax before the Sail Away party.

We’ve never gone to the Sail Away party, because it is loud and rah-rah and that’s not usually us, but we did go this time and it turns out there was line dancing and it started with the Cupid shuffle which I learned on our last cruise, so this girl got up and boogied. A very cool woman named Barb was next to me and we had great fun.

While I was dancing everybody else went to watch us cast off, and discovered that there are almost no places on the ship where you can be outside and not glassed in. Once I found them we did more exploring and came even more to the same conclusion. We did watch the harbor pilot come off the ship onto the Pilot Boat, and while we were still on deck an F-18 zoomed by from the nearby Navy base and gave us a friendly wing-wave.

We had some relaxing time before the 3 star and above Mariner welcome party, where the champagne was free and abundant – when I waved off the second glass, the server just put it down in front of Dave. Then we had a little more resting time before dinner, and then dinner – we are at the later seating, which we may or may not change. Our table is in a nice position by the back windows and our server Arta is very chatty, but I strongly prefer the earlier dinner seating. Dave had two desserts.

After dinner Josh went to bed while the rest of us went to the magician. He was very entertaining and did a lot of tricks we’ve not seen before. The theater was pretty empty, so we’re curious to find out how many folks are on the ship.