San Diego Maritime Museum

The Star of India, the keystone of the San Diego Maritime Museum,

with Soviet Submarine and the ferry Berkely in the background

On the Sunday of our San Diego trip, we had planned a quick trip to the San Diego Maritime Museum to get some pictures of the passenger quarters of the Star of India, followed by lunch at Anthony's Fish Grotto next door and a whirlwind tour of the Wild Animal Park on the way home. The Maritime Museum has added some features since the last time we saw it, when it had only the Star of India, the Berkely and the Medea, so we scrapped the Wild Animal Park plan in favor of spending the afternoon at the museum, as well.

The Star of India began life as the Euterpe and transported passengers from England to New Zealand. The below-decks area has sections fitted out to represent the various passenger accommodations on the trip. Since our ancestral Isaacs family made a similar voyage from England to Australia, the bunks are probably very much like the ones they used, so I got some photos for my family history project.


Single passenger bunks were very narrow and separated by a low divider from the adjoining bunk. When Martha traveled with her two daughters, she may have had a double bunk like the one on the bottom left. It's about the width of a modern twin bed. Samuel would have had a single.

View from a porthole of the Star of India: the Soviet Sub and the HMS Surprise from the movie Master and Commander

After lunch, Evan and I went aboard the Soviet Sub. It is marginally more spacious than WWII era American submarines we've toured, but not as well appointed as more recent American subs. (If you ever find yourself anywhere near Groton, Connecticut, you should go see the US Navy Submarine Force Museum, which is where they keep the historic USS Nautilus, among others.) Ducking through the oval hatches gracefully required a bit of a knack, which I never quite got.

Torpedo tubes

The HMS Surprise was originally built as a training vessel, the Rose, and was acquired for the purposes of making a movie. Changes made for filming rendered it unseaworthy, so the museum's staff is working on restoring it to sail with the Star of India and the Californian, a replica revenue cutter.

The HMS Surprise

In the meantime, the museum has fitted up the below-decks areas with tableaux and displays to take advantage of some of the movie props they got along with the ship.

Cannon, run out

Another notable addition to the museum package is a harbor tour aboard a pilot boat appropriately dubbed "Pilot." For aircraft carrier afficionados, especially a San Diego Harbor cruise is a treat. Three nuclear flattops were berthed at North Island Naval Air Station, and the World War II carrier the Midway is a permanently-docked museum at Navy Pier, right next to the cruise ship ports.

The Midway, with the San Diego Skyline in the background

San Diego Zoo

The San Diego Zoo is well known for its captive breeding program.
Some animals are less inhibited than others.

Evan and I had a decent breakfast on Saturday morning and arrived almost thirty minutes later than the professor's stated meeting time. Only about half the students were there yet, but amazingly enough, so was the prof. We still had another forty-five minutes to wait until our tour actually got underway.

As an educational group, we got our own, private tour guide and bus, and we got to go backstage at the camel and giraffe exhibits. That is definitely the most relaxing way to see the zoo. Anyone who has been there will know that it is very large and built on a couple of steep hills; it even has some flights of strategically placed escalators to make some of the climbs easier.


After our two hour tour, Evan and I caught a wild animal show and then went to lunch at Albert's, a nice restaurant at the top of one hill. Virtually all of their food was too highly spiced for me (I have a sensitivity that burns my lips and throat, then makes my eyelids, and eventually my whole face, swell), but I found a barbecued salmon salad I could eat. The addition of peppers and pepper sauce to virtually everything in Southern California restaurants seems to be getting out of hand. I can choke on grilled chicken with cream sauce because the chef can't make anything so bland as it should be. The chicken corn chowder, a luscious, creamy concoction, at Disneyland's Storyteller's Cafe is rendered inedible by the addition of pepper sauce. This is probably just as well, since I have the recipe, and I don't make gravy as rich as that soup.

I took over three hundred pictures at the zoo (the joys of a digital camera and huge flash media chips), but I didn't get any truly phenomenal ones. A different camera might have made the difference in some of the shots; a faster shutter speed would have helped a lot. A different photographer would have probably made the biggest difference, but there's no help for that.

San Diego Trip - Seaworld

I walked by this 24 Hour Fitness Center on my way around the corner between my hotel and the supermarket and had to get a picture. While I was taking photos, everyone walked up the stairs in the middle, but after I was out of range, some guy all kitted out in spandex shorts and muscle T rode liesurely up. In all fairness, the fitness center just happens to be in the middle of a two-story mini-mall so that the mall escalators debouch there.

Evan and I went to San Diego for a field trip with his biology class: Seaworld on Friday, the Zoo on Saturday. His prof requires four field trips, which can be taken with the class or freelance, so I renewed our San Diego Zoo membership, booked a cheap hotel and went with Evan to San Diego on Thursday evening. Friday morning, we bolted a fast food breakfast (egg and bacon hockey puck) and presented ourselves punctually at the Sea World Research Center as directed, but they had no record of the existence of the class. So then we went to the main gate, waited awhile until they started allowing vehicles to enter (got lucky there - they weren't charging the usual $10 for parking) and followed the signs to the Education Entrance. We still didn't see anybody from Evan's class, but there were a few other people there, and it seemed the most likely place, so we waited.

Presently, Evan saw someone he knew, and while we were talking with her, a couple of guys drove by and informed us the professor would be an hour late, and they were going to get breakfast. As promised, the prof was about an hour late, but then we had to wait for the guys who left. Finally, a mere hour and forty-five minutes after the assigned meeting time, we entered.

First, we caught the last bit of a trained dog and cat show, and then we rode the Wild Arctic ride. The ride itself is entertaining, but it goes by way too fast. The best part of Wild Arctic has to be the exhibit attached, which showcases beluga whales, polar bears and walruses. Evan's prof went on at great length, but in spite of being long-winded, he was entertaining. I did find his advice to eschew farmed Atlantic salmon in favor of wild Pacific salmon a bit amusing. While Atlantic salmon is widely available and reasonably affordable, I haven't seen Pacific salmon in a seafood market around here for a long time at any price. Then he recommended a couple of expensive restaurants in San Diego (among them, Ruth's Chris steakhouse) to community college students who had probably already blown their budgets just to come on this field trip.

Fortunately, his comments on the topic of marine wildlife were far more appropriate. I already knew a lot of it, but I did find out the way to tell the difference between male and female walruses. As our tour guide at the zoo explained the next day (about camels), "you have to look at their boy and girl parts."

Beluga whales at the San Diego Seaworld Wild Arctic exhibit.

Kissy walrus

Polar Bear just chillin'

After leaving the Wild Arctic exhibit, we went on to see Alcids (the penguin habitat was closed), sharks, and numerous other marine mammals and fish. After the sharks, I started to lose interest, since it was time for lunch. Finally, at about 1:30, the prof outlined the rest of our visit. He was going to let us out on our own, but we would need to see the Whale and Dolphin Show at 3:00, the Pinniped Show at 3:30 and the Killer Whale Show at 4:30. We should, he told us, have plenty of time for lunch and the two rides - Shipwreck Rapids and Journey to Atlantis before the first show. Ha.

Evan and I cut out before the prof had entirely wrapped things up, went to the first decent eatery and had a reasonable lunch. After this, we tried to find a map, but finally gave up and went to the Journey to Atlantis ride, which was new since our last visit. On inspection, it didn't look like something I was willing to get wet for, so I encouraged Evan to zip up his jacket and go by himself. He did, and fortunately he only got mildly splashed. He did not find it a particularly impressive ride, but at least he's got another coaster credit. Coaster Enthusiasts count each different coaster they ride as a credit. Evan has over a hundred.

The dolphin show was just beginning as we got to the amphitheater. It was nice, but nothing new or spectacular. I do hope that the dolphins and pilot whales love to splash the audience, since that comprises one segment of their performance. Seaworld marks the seats likely to get splashed, and plenty of people sit there, even on a cool November afternoon. I, as you may guess, avoid those seats. The pinniped show was a lot of fun, if terribly hokey. The best part was the mime, who warmed up the audience and then had a couple of amusing cameos during the actual show. The sealions and otter performed their roles capably and seemed to be having fun, as did the trainers.

Oh, no! It's a mime field!

The killer whale show was impressive, largely because of the size of the performers. I did conclude that a show's humor content was inversely proportional to the mass of the animals involved. The bigger the stars, the more serious the show. Except for the requisite "splash time," the Killer Whale show was dead serious, if, in its own way, as hokey as the Pinniped show.