Day 5 - Thursday 29th March – Travel to San Francisco
Lee was up first (again) the rest of us joined him at 7.30am. We were in no rush to move from this location, it is weird being on a road trip because you find so many nice places that you don’t want to leave but you know you are travelling to another nice place so the excitement to move on is also there.
Today we were travelling to San Francisco, which would be another new place for the Moreton family. Usual breakfast fare of eggs and cereal (not together). Watched a bit of Chicago PD, which was weird as it was 8am in the morning. We loaded up the car and took some final photos of the cabin and resort area. We stopped in the gift shop and I picked up a lovely Christmas tree decoration. The lady in the shop was lovely and told us to be sure to visit again, I assured her we would be back sometime in the future 😊.
We topped up the car with Fuel ($20 for ½ a tank) and we started the 203-mile journey. It was great scenery for the first half of the journey with lots of mountains and open spaces, the 2nd half was more traditional US views (6 lane highways).
We stopped off about 70 miles out from San Fran at a place called Manteca at our version of service station area. The boys were happy as they got to have a McDonalds.
The rest of the journey was all I-Roads. When we got to the Oakland Bay Bridge which was a $4 toll to cross, traffic began to get really slow, it was bumper to bumper.
We eventually made it to our hotel which was the Columbus Motor Inn, although they were having a refurb so the building was covered in scaffolding so it meant we didn’t see it first time round. By the time we checked in it was 3.30pm, we were given room 311 which was one of the rooms that had been recently refurbished.
I was a little bit worried that the hotel would be a bit of a dump but it was perfect and the big bonus was that it offered free parking which is not too common in San Francisco and in a great location to the Fishermans Wharf area.
We had a quick freshen up before we headed out to find some where to eat. We walked down to the Fisherman’s Wharf area which was about 10 minutes from our hotel. The area was really busy but there was a nice atmosphere. I had read a lot about homeless people in San Fran and the area being a little daunting but we felt fine. We ended up in Applebees for dinner, you will notice that we tend to stick to what we know when choosing restaurants, we are trying to be more adventurous but the boys (mainly Lee) are quite fussy eaters.
Anyway, our meal in Applebees was average at best, to be fair the food was fine but the service was shocking. There was no wait for a table but we waited 20 minutes for someone to come over and take a drinks order. We then waited ages for our food.
There is a balcony area which overlooks the main square so we took it turns to go on the balcony and see what was going on. There was a street entertainer playing some music which was ok but the real entertainment was the homeless man dancing, he looked like he was from the 80’s but he was pulling out all the moves. Lucas found it hilarious.
The bill at Applebees was $65 plus minimal tip for the poor service. We continued to explore the area, we contemplated going on a cable car ride but decided to leave it for another day.
We then came across Musee Mecanique which I had seen in my research. It is an old fashioned arcade full of retro arcade games. We all loved it in here, especially the boys. I found a pac-man machine so I was happy. We spent over an hour in there probably would have been longer but we were aware we had to get up early tomorrow as we were on the early tour of Alcatraz.
We strolled back to the hotel. There was traffic everywhere so you have to keep your wits about you, despite his protests I kept hold of Lucas’s hand. There were a lot of more homeless people on the way back to the hotel but none of them said anything to us or bothered us in anyway. Jacob said it made him sad that someone could become homeless and wanted to know how somebody would become homeless. We watched a bit of TV in the room before nodding off, the alarm was set for 6.15am to ensure we wouldn’t be late for Alcatraz.