[speedmum]

Mon 12 Aug - Day 16: San Francisco

Sadly today was our last full day of holidays which made us all rather depressed... ;(

We had Alcatraz booked for 9.10 which meant being at Pier 33 by 8.40! This meant an earlier start and by 8am we were heading back to the stalls in the Ferry Building for breakfast! We wandered along the waterfront drinking our coffee and commented on how much busier it was today...

We arrived at the Pier at about 8.40 and joined the 9.10 queue. I was surprised there was no security to go through, just another photo opportunity!

We got on the boat just before 9 and managed to fight our way upstairs and onto an outside bench. At this point youngest is looking a bit grey & we haven’t even left the harbour... (am silently thankful that we hadn’t tried to do a sightseeing boat in Monterey!) fortunately she was ok and much happier once we were on dry land at the other end.
We were incredibly lucky with the weather and didn’t need the hoodies we’d all brought as it was so warm & sunny!

The Alcatraz audio tour was fab - it really brought the place to life and kept everyone interested. The only downside were the numbers of people so sometimes it got rather congested.. after almost 3 hours we headed back to the boat and back to the city.

We continued walking along the seafront to Ghirardelli Square. This wasn’t what I expected as I thought there’d be some information about the background to the Ghirardelli chocolate and how it was made etc. Instead there were about 3 Ghirardelli shops mixed with other shops & restaurants... each chocolate shop we went in to gave us a chocolate each to sample! 😋by now we were flagging a bit from the heat so decided to eat lunch at Picos - a Latin Street Food restaurant with amazing views of the bay. We had 3 sandwiches and one chicken nachos and they were all tasty.

After finishing these we were all quite tired and decided to get an Uber back to the hotel for a rest and to drop off the extra jumpers etc that we were carrying!

After a quick rest we headed back out as the girls wanted to go to Bath & Body Works and we’d decided not to buy lots of heavy smellies early on snd carry them throughout the trip! 😁

We wandered back to the hotel via Macys, Union Square & Walgreens for some drinks. Once back we started the depressing job of packing and got changed for our final dinner out.

We’d decided to go to Mortons steak restaurant as a final blowout meal! We’d been to the one in New York previously and all enjoyed it and hubbie had been to this one. It lived up to expectations - the food tasted great, the restaurant was busy but not too crowded and the staff were friendly and helpful. We shared lobster bisque and prosciutto wrapped mozzarella starters then had steak with sides of mash & onion rings. The girls then shared a huge chocolate soufflé for pudding!

We reminisced about our trip and discussed our favourite & least favourite parts, places we’d return to & those we wouldn’t! None of us were keen to return to the reality of work and exam results! 😢

We slowly walked back to our hotel physically and slightly emotionally tired and made a cup of tea before bed...