Day 6 - From San Francisco

Typical Trolley

Our last full day as we travel home tomorrow.

We have a shuttle booked at 11:00am to take us to the airport.  Our plane is scheduled to leave for Dallas at 1:20pm, arrive at 6:50pm and take off for Peoria at 8:15pm arriving at 10:15pm so we should be home by 11:30pm.  Then it is off to baseball games for the weekend.

The first tour today started at the 

main and original ferry building so we took a trolley at 8:30am and had a sweet roll at the food court in the ferry building before joining our tour group.  The tour was a 2 ½ our tour of Market Street, which is called the street of gold because it was the main path of gold during the goal rush era.  It is also the equivalent of 5^th Avenue in New York, Michigan Ave in Chicago and other great streets in major cities.  It starts were all of the railroads where originally headquartered and includes were all of the major newspapers started.

Lunch

The tour was a narrative of all of the major buildings and how the owners contributed to the greatness of the town.

Then we had lunch at a downtown Boudin Market and had a couple of great sandwiches with soup to warm up us.

After lunch, we hustled over to our 1:00pm tour of North Beach, which is the Italian community.  This was a great tour as there were only 4 of us on the tour and the guide was very knowledgeable.

Owned by Francis Ford Coppola

One of the pictures is of the building  housing Café Zoetrope which is owned by Francis Ford Coppola and the top two floors are his work area.  He wrote the Godfather at a coffee shop right around the corner from this building.

Then we walked around for a little while and ended up at the Palace Hotel.  The Palace Hotel was and still is one of the greatest hotels in San Francisco.   See its web site at www.sfpalace.com to get an idea of how beautiful this hotel is.  It was first built in 1875, partially destroyed in the 1090 earthquake and totally restore in 1991 after the 1989 earthquake.  The Garden Court (see the picture) has 63,000 pieces of Iridescent Glass in its ceiling which is 12,000 square feet, one of the largest expanses of Stained Glass in the world.

The Garden Court of the Palace Hotel

We ate our best meal of the trip in their Pied Piper Bar & Grill, which also opened in 1875.  It is also totally restored and features very dark wood and a very old world charm.  When the waiter was taking our picture, we told him it was our anniversary and the chef made us a wonderful dessert, on the house.  It was a wonderful dining experience – a bit of a splurge, but it is our anniversary.

About San Francisco –

The real estate market is booming here and some think that there could be another dot com bubble being created.  The prices for the houses within the city are incredible for what you get – three stories straight up on a 20’ wide lot and a one car garage.  No street parking and no yard all for 1 million and up!!

The Pied Piper Dining Room

What also is amazing is that even at rush hour, there is very little traffic on the streets.  The public transpiration system is really exceptional.  They are also utilizing trolleys that have been retired from service from cities from all over the world.  Most of the trolleys and busses are also electric which is good because regular gas is $4.49 a gallon!!  All of the public transportation units are clean and run well – so their system works.  There are also very few taxis on the street, which is amazing for a major city of 800,000.

After the earthquake of 1989, they even tore down some freeways to create more open space.

Dessert

The people are very friendly, especially the drivers of the busses, trolleys, street cars and cable cars as we rode them all – what a great public transportation system – the best we have seen.

It is a wonderful city – would we like to live here – yes, but not without a summer which they do not have, so it just a fun city to visit.

Thanks for reading about our trip – see you at home or somewhere down the road.

Ed & Barb

Day 5

Lombrd Street

We took our first true cable car ride today, right from the bottom of the hill at the waterfront.  It goes up an incredible grade and part of the way up we got off at Lombard Street, which is supposed to be the crookest street in the world.  There were no seats so right from the start we were one of those that you see hanging on to the side of the cable car!

We walked ½ ways down the sidewalk next to the street and then back up to catch the next cable car.  We rode it to Union Square, had a snack and met out tour guide. 


This tour took us by bus first and then by foot for the next 2 1/2 hours viewing Victorian houses and then walking around the Pacific Heights neighborhood overlooking San Francisco Bay.  This is where the truly rich and famous live and it was fun walking tour.  We then took a cab to the Stanford Court Hotel, one of the oldest in San Francisco.  There we grabbed a sandwich from a corner stand and met out next guide.

This tour started at 2:00pm and went for 2 hours and was a tour of Nob Hill.  The top of the hill, where we spent most of our time is the location of some of the most famous hotels in the world, The Fairmont, The Mark Hopkins and the Huntington Hotel.  It is also home for Grace Cathedral, the third largest Episcopalian church in the United States.

The view from the side

After touring Nob Hill, hearing about its history and going in the hotels and church, the tour was over.  We then took a bus to an Italian Restaurant we had heard of called Tony’s in the Italian section called North Beach.  At Tony’s we had a slice of Pizza and a Calzone.

Then we headed back to the hotel to change for the fireworks.  We dressed very warmly and thank goodness because it was cold on the ship where we had seats.  The ship was a former WWII Liberty ship and gave us a great view of the bay and the fireworks.  Ed even bought a stocking cap and Barb had five layers of clothing on.

It is amazing when we looked at the forecast before we left Illinois; the weather was predicted to be in the low 70’s during the day.  The problem is that nobody told us about the wind off the bay and how cold it would be!!  Ed brought 1 pair of blue jeans and 4 pairs of shorts.  He has not worn the shorts yet.  Barb bought warm clothes for the evening and has ended up wearing them during the day and night!  But, it has to be better than 100 degree tempetures back home.

$3 - 5 million each

The fireworks were fun and we were very fortunate that we were only a few blocks from our hotel because the street was packed on the way out after the fireworks were completed.

We arrived back at the Marriott by 10:30pm and were we cold – but it was a fun evening.  The fireworks were just ok and there is no question that the fireworks in Boston were the best ever last year.

We finished the evening watching the Boston Pops and the fireworks in Boston on the television in the room.

But – we have made new memories here in San Francisco, frozen as they may be.

Mary Martin and then her son, Larry Hagman

Of course it's cold!!

Tomorrow is our anniversary – Happy Anniversary Barb!!

Day 4

Breakfast

Our day started with t a trip to the Boudin Bakery and we had a breakfast of a warm cinnamon breakfast roll for each of us – disgusting but good!!

They we took the trolley down to the main ferry building which has been totally restored and was having a market outside.  The building was beautiful and held a huge number of food stands all selling food grown naturally.  They had a great farmers market outside.

The trolly

From there we took the trolley across town for a 2 hour tour of the Castro region of San Francisco.  This is the home to the gay and lesbian community and we had an outstanding tour.  We learned about the history of the gay and lesbians in San Francisco and how they came to live in this area.  The pictures of homes on this page are from that tour.  A lot of the homes are in the million dollar plus range. 

Then we went to the top of Telegraph Hill, which is the highest point in the city.   At the top is Coit Tower, which was built in 1933 and the top is 210 feet above ground and has fabulous views.

A mulit-million dollar house

After that, we went back to the waterfront to see the historic vessels of the Hyde Street Pier where the National Park Service has five vessels that you can tour.  We really enjoyed touring a three-masted schooner of 185 feet and had sailed until the early 1900’s.  One of the neat boats was a 100 foot long steam-powered tug boat that is still in working condition.  The conditions that the sailors lived in were unbelievable.

Next was dinner at a very good Italian Restaurant on the waft were we finally sat down and rested from the day.

We then went back to the Boudin Bakery and took a tour of their museum and bakery, which stays in operation until 10:00pm – seven days a week.

he view from the Coit Tower

Just a couple of million dollar houses

Then it was time to get back to the hotel to plan our day for tomorrow.  Only two full days left and tomorrow is July 4^th – it should be fun.

The steam powered tug boat

Day 3

The Bank

We started the day with a two hour walking tour of Chinatown, which is the largest Chinese community in the country.  Being in San Francisco meant we did a lot of walking up and town hills!

It was a fun tour and we had a good tour guide.  After the tour, we went back and ate at a Chinese lunch restaurant.  It was simply a walk in place, with no seats, where they were cooking right behind the counter.  There was a big sign that said no English was spoken and they were right.  I knew what to ask for and it costs us only $1.50 for lunch.  I know one item had pork in it and we have no idea what was in the other item and I wouldn’t do it again!!

The "Drug Store"

Then we took a bus to Union Square, which is basically the main high-priced shopping and entertainment area in San Francisco.  After walking around a little, we decided we could see these shops in any big city.  We went to a deli that had been recommended on the Travel Channel called Lefty O’ Douls, named after a famous baseball player and we had a really good corned beef sandwich.

Next was a bus to Fisherman’s Wharf where we took a two hour Gray line open top bus tour of the city.  We saw some areas that we wanted to visit and also stopped at the end of the Golden Gate Bridge to see it and take a break – what a bridge.

After the bus trip, we ate dinner at the Boudin bread factory.  Boudin is a very famous sourdough bread company and this restaurant is very busy.

The Fish store

Only 4.2 miles walking today.

At the end of the day we planned out the next three full days – it should be fun and we will share it with you.

Night for now.

The Fortune Cookie Factory

Barb bought some scarfs!!

First time we saw the full bridge out of the fog

Arriving at Sausalito

Day 2

The deli for lunch

???

Oriental influence

We had the first good nights sleep in quite some time.  It seems like the entire month of June we were not getting enough sleep.  We left the room at 9:00am and walked down to the ferry pier and bought tickets to Sausalito. 

This morning, the entire bay area was covered in fog until about 11am and it felt like it was a light rain all of the time.

Sausalito is eight miles north of San Francisco across the bay and you can take the ferry.  It is a Mediterranean-style artist and boating community with a quaint shopping district.  We went there to take a 3 hour tour of the house boats that are docked on the north side of town and there are hundreds of them.  We took a cab to a deli, had a sandwich there for lunch and at 12:30pm, met our tour guide Victoria who is a local artist and very active in the boating area.

For the next three hours we had an amazing tour of the house boats.  Some of them were multi millions houses and some of them were almost junk.

After that tour, we took a taxi to the largest rescue program for sea mammals.  They had about 75 sea lions, sea elephants and seals. 

Then we took another cab back to the main area of Sausalito and walked around, ate dinner at a gourmet hamburger restaurant and then took the ferry back to San Francisco.

A house boat

It is cold here and everyone who lives here thinks that it is great.  We didn’t bring enough warm clothing so Barb will have to buy a jacket tomorrow because the high is going to be in the 60’s.  For sure we are not going to the beach!

We are back in the room early because we walked 5.2 miles today, we are tired and it is cold outside.

Interesting

Not so nice

The Spaulding Wooden Boat Center