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Old 21 Apr 19, 01:25 PM  
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BONZO
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Let's go... to San Francisco March 2019 - Day 5 (San Francisco - Hop On Hop Off Bus)

Thursday 28th March 2019

Let’s go…to San Francisco
March 2019


Cast (it’s the usual one!)
Me: Shaun, 50’s, loves travelling, eating and drinking (not necessarily in that order!)
Alison: 50’s, ditto to the above!

Link to Index: Here

I woke up early this morning as expected only to see the low glow of Alison’s iPad, she’d been awake since 03.45 local time. We sat in bed, chatted, drank coffee and ate biscuits – as you do.

Eventually we showered, dressed and headed to the club lounge one floor down to get some breakfast – during the whole trip it felt odd going down to the lounge rather than up! The spread was good – cereal, oatmeal, pastries, cakes, fruit, bagels, toast, salmon, cream cheese, plus eggs, sausage and bacon.

We ate too much (no surprise there then!) and headed back to the room to relax a bit before heading out. We got our bearings and walked slowly down to the ferry terminal area and along the water front soaking up all the sights and sounds.













We paused at Pier 39 to see the sea lions, if you couldn’t see them you could certainly hear them!





They are great to watch – we spent ages laughing at their antics – pushing each other in, climbing over each other etc., typical teenage boy behaviour.











We walked through the boardwalky/touristy area which was very quiet



over to the Big Bus tour office to redeem our voucher then jumped on the waiting bus. We nearly always do one of these tours when we go to a new city for the first time, although touristy we like the overview it gives us!

We hopped up on the top deck but once again it was a bit cold and blustery, a bit like Sydney but we stoically toughed it out.




We stayed on for about half the trip, seeing various neighbourhoods and sights sounds and smells along the way. Talking of smells, you could get high by just breathing in the air in the Haight-Ashbury district! –The tour guide called it “The burning leaves district”.




After a while we arrived at our highlight, The Golden Gate Bridge.










It was interesting that the “other bridge” or Oakland Bay Bridge is more impressive, double decked, longer and has a digital light show each night. Saying that, it doesn’t take anything away from the iconic Golden Gate Bridge in any way.

We took a bunch of pictures before swapping tour buses to go on a tour of Sausalito where we had coffee and cake to warm up.







Nice to sit down out of the wind and the cold to take a break and re-group to plan through the upcoming activities. Although we had a bit of a whistle-stop tour of Sausalito at this time we did go back for fuller look around later in the trip.

We arrived back at the bus stop in time to catch the bus to the swap over point to get the bus back to the city centre. We waited some time for the connecting service then 3 buses turned up at once! – Go figure! We had a good view while we were waiting though...








Once back at the piers we popped into the famous Boudin Bakery for lunch – soup and sandwiches (clam chowder and tuna on sourdough for Alison, tomato and turkey/Havarti cheese on sourdough for me). All very fresh and delicious, the place rightly deserves a visit.








The interesting thing here is that most of the baking operation is open view to the public and accessible. This is accessed by a couple of rooms above that hold a small museum that overlooks the entire process.









We walked back along the road to Pier 39 and watched the sea lions again, the crowds were significantly higher than earlier on in the morning although predictable really. We bought a couple of bits and bobs from the shops and took some more photos (the sky was getting dark!) before getting the hop on – hop off bus back to Union Square.















I was flagging a bit by now and as we reached our stop the heavens opened! Nothing else for it but to run like mad. We were absolutely drenched despite the short dash to the hotel across the square, we looked like drowned rats!

Took our wet clothes off, dried our hair generally got ourselves together before heading into the lounge for beer/wine and snacks which was enough for us for dinner. Not a bad selection of food here, I had some hot beef stew and pasta, just the job to warm up after the drenching. Alison had salads, dips and french bread. We don't tire of the view from the lounge!





After being in the room for a while and flicking around the TV controls we discovered that you could Google cast onto the TV so we connected to Netflix and watched another episode of Black Mirror before grabbing a last cup of coffee and cake from the lounge.

Overall it’s been a lovely first day in San Francisco – we like this city!
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