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