Voyage: San Francisco to Honolulu – September 2024
We booked a long voyage, 23 days, on Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth, crossing the Pacific from San Francisco to Melbourne. We’ll spend a couple of days in San Francisco first. Here we leave Seattle on the first day of fall.A short flight on Delta, but the photographer was happy with the meal. A second lunch of sorts.On approach, seeing the familiar San Mateo Bridge outside our window meant we were indeed landing in the right place.We stayed at the Grand Hyatt on Union Square. We’ve stayed in many hotels in San Francisco over the years, but never this one. A half block away is E&O, once a favorite restaurant. It’s still there, but our dinner was so disappointing the photographer took no pictures. Once a great place for pan-Asian dishes, its menu is now a short list of boring offerings, headlined by a burger.The next day, we hit the streets early to make the rounds of our favorite spots, starting with a Powell & Mason cable car ride from Market street up Nob Hill. (Above and below.)At the end of the line is Fisherman’s Wharf, where we jumped off and browsed for some disposable odds and ends so we could exercise without digging too deeply into our luggage. $4.99 got the photographer a pair of stripped Alcatraz shorts. She was the only escapee in the gym.We walked from Fisherman’s Wharf, past pier 39, and stopped at pier 27, where we’d board the Queen Elizabeth. No ship yet.After lunch at the Ferry Building, we headed back up Nob Hill, past China Town …… to Huntington Park, which is a small park at the very top of Nob Hill, just in front of Grace Cathedral.It is a favorite spot with many benches, where locals come to read, walk their dogs, and enjoy any sun to be had. We read and watched dogs and people.The City is still charming, but it has suffered since the pandemic. On many streets, half the storefronts are empty. And restaurants have cut back hard, or changed hands, as did Hunan Homes, once our favorite Chinese restaurant. Dinner there was not good. So we ended up 0 for 2 in the favorite restaurants category.The next morning we woke to fog, and found the Queen Elizabeth in port, just visible from our hotel room.After breakfast the fog cleared, and we headed to pier 27 to make our embarkation time slot. The ship was indeed in port.After dropping our bags, we found a line. The first of several. The get-in-the-building line, The show-us-your-passport-twice line. The security line. And the check-in line. It all went smoothly enough, just a bit heavy on the lines.Once checked in, the boarding was fun, only one of us having ever been on an ocean liner, and that a lifetime ago.The greeters obligingly posed for the photographer. Once on board, we found our midship cabin among the long halls. Our luggage was already waiting for us, probably thanks in part to the aforementioned lines.We had upgraded our stateroom to a Princess Suite, a junior suite really. At 335 square feet, it’s still small by land standards, but it gave us a bit more room …And a bit more bathroom. At least compared to the regular cabins.Sandwiched between the bathroom and the bed area is an open walk-in closet and dressing area of sorts.Then it was off to tour the ship. The grand lobby, above and below.The Royal Theater.The Garden Lounge – just one of many hangout areas about the ship, like the Commodore Lounge, Yacht Club, Queens Room, et cetera.The sterile looking spa, where the photographer would spend as many hours and days and she could get away with.And one of the two private decks for suite passengers …… with a little protected courtyard for lunch on nice days.Then a late lunch at our table in the Princess Grill restaurant. In typical ship fashion, space is at a premium, and elbow-to-elbow bistro seating almost unavoidable, but we were assigned the perfect table: large, private, and facing the wide windows. This would be our dedicated table for the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners we chose to take here.After unpacking and stowing our luggage for the duration, we wandered the decks and enjoyed the sun and views. Above is Yerba Buena Island, the halfway point for the Bay Bridge on its way to and from Oakland.And Alkatraz standing against a late afternoon fog bank. After dinner at our favorite table, we watched the ship pull away from the dock, helped by a tugboat, one of the photographer’s most favorite things, right up there with puffins and mangroves.As the Queen Elizabeth got underway, we waited for its passage through the Golden Gate. From our stateroom’s balcony, all we could see was the ghostly Golden Gate Bridge as we passed beneath it. Like a teenage driver in a tunnel, the captain sounded the ship’s horns as we passed under.As it turns out, the waters off the coast of San Francisco are rough. We woke queasy, and the photographer opted out of breakfast. Our dining steward had toast and orange juice sent to the cabin for her. After a morning spent taking an antihistamine-induced nap, she felt better, and we walked the ship trying out different spots, like this sheltered one at the midship Pavilion Pool.One evening, we had dinner at the Golden Lion English pub. Fish & chips, burgers, savory pies, and the like. It was really more pub than restaurant. We spent our four days at sea looking to see where we were going …… and where we’d been.As the waves became milder, we settled into a routine of eating, exercising, reading, and eating.With the occasional lecture and stage show thrown in. White hair and hearing aids were de rigueur.Then one morning we woke to find Oahu’s leeward coast off our balcony, with Diamond Head amid the lights.And we watched the sun rise off Makapu’u Point as the ship turned toward Honolulu Harbor.It was fun seeing Honolulu from our stateroom, having watched so many ships come and go when we lived in Kakaako.The Queen Elizabeth docked at Pier 11, where ocean liners have called since the 1920s. Times have changed, though – no Royal Hawaiian Band greeted us, and confused communications and long lines before we could disembark.Once off the ship, we walked the two or so miles to Ala Moana Park and Magic Island, where we found a shady bench and simply enjoyed the views – above and below.When lunchtime came around, we headed over to Ala Moana Center and the food court. It was good to see the place back to being busy. We visited a few shops, including Kanile’a Ukulele. They’ve been making ukuleles in Kaneohe since 1998 and are now one of the three top ukulele makers in Hawai’i. We’ve twice met the owners, the Souzas, at Seattle’s Aloha Festival and have wanted one of their pieces ever since. We bought a beautiful spalted maple one from Kayla, the fiancé of the eldest Souza son.That evening we had an early dinner at the Aloha Tower Grill and watched rainbows dance over Honolulu. We ate early so we could get back on board in time to enjoy the keiki hula halau that performed on the one evening that the ship stayed over in port.The next morning, we found that the island-hopping Pride of America had joined us in port. Ironically, one of our friends, who we were to spend the day with, had been the director of HR for NCL in Hawai’i.Speaking of CharlAnn, she and Allen picked us up at the pier and took us around. La Tour bakery for kouign-amanns, a drive to the windward side to have lunch and talk story (above), malasadas from the Leonard’s Bakery truck, and a visit to the Kaneohe Higashi Hongwanji temple (below).CharlAnn had recently returned from Kyoto, Japan, where she was ordained as a first-level priest in the Shin Buddhism tradition. Her post-retirement mission (one of them, at least) is to rekindle community interest in the little, century old, poorly attended temple.The drive there and back took us through the Koolau mountains. We think they are among the most beautiful on Earth.Then we were back at sea. Early breakfasts in the Lido Restaurant …Favorite spots on deck …Promenade walks (above and below) …Lunches in the Grills Courtyard …Time in the library …And an evening in a reserved box to watch a musical – with chocolates and champagne. We visited the theater a few times, listening to lectures, watching movies, and so on.The selection of movies was pretty good, but the image quality was a bit too nostalgic. Think VHS.At the end of each day, there was dinner. One night we dined in the Veranda Steakhouse …The steaks and chicken were good, and dessert was obligatory.When we were about the ship, Sherwin our cabin steward looked after our stateroom. Here he is with his friend Henry. When we asked if we could take his picture, his response was simply “Come Henry, we’re getting famous.”The Pacific remained placid and true to its name, give or take a scattering of squalls as we approached the equator. Fives sea days to Samoa.
