Oceania Insignia Embarkation

San Francisco, with $6.00 Luggage Cart

            Sunday, 26 Jan 2020 – We checked out of our hotel at 11:00 AM, and returned our rental car.  This time, Jesse was smart and paid the $6.00 to rent a luggage cart.  Although we had signed up for Uber while in Claremont, when we tried to schedule a ride from the rental car location, we received a message that Uber service was not available in the area.  Luckily, about that time a taxi was dropping off a group of passengers, so we hired that driver to take us to the cruise terminal.  Once inside, we waited for about an hour to board the ship.  Boarding was delayed due to a norovirus onboard the ship, which required extra time for the crew to clean the ship thoroughly.  While waiting, we met Larry & Kathy from St. Louis, MO.  They would be cruising from San Francisco to Santiago, Chile.
            Once onboard, we went to the Terrace Café for a light lunch.  We had been told to wait there or another public area until our stateroom was ready.  Although the café was pretty crowded, we managed to find seats outside on the terrace.  Several passengers remembered us from previous cruises.  Since it was rather cool outside, after we finished our lunch, we moved inside to the Insignia Lounge.
            When we got to our stateroom, our luggage had already been delivered, so we started unpacking.  Our stateroom steward was Wayan, from Bali, Indonesia.  He worked with another steward, Sylis, from Cochin, India.  At 4:15 PM, we were interrupted by the mandatory safety (lifeboat) drill.  There, we said hello to Dan & Carissa, and Canute & Julie, whom we had met on previous cruises.  It was 7:00 PM by the time we finished unpacking.
            For dinner, we went to the Terrace Café.  We remembered some of the staff and they remembered us:  Ossman from Honduras; Sara from Peru; Claudine from the Philippines; and Marlon, the lobster cook, from Jamaica.  Since we were both very tired and Jesse had a headache, we were in bed by 9:30 PM.