A Day in San Francisco

Today we did so much. We are staying in Oakland, so we took the ferry over to San Francisco this morning and then got on another boat to tour the bay. We went under the Golden Gate Bridge and past the island of Alcatraz. (Unfortunately, all the tours of Alcatraz are sold out until after we would be back on the train.) Then we walked to Ghirardelli Square and had sundaes, which we got 10% off of because we had purchased mass transit passes. My regular readers know what a mass transit geek I am, and this pass lets us use whatever kind of land transit we want for three days, so that means trolleys and cable cars as well as more prosaic things like busses and subways. We took the cable car up Powell Street, which had breathtaking views, and then we took the bus to Golden Gate Park. We walked through the park, which is beautiful and smells wonderful, like cedar, until we got to the Japanese Tea Garden. Wow, was that ever gorgeous! We had green tea cheesecake and iced green tea there. Then we took a bus that went right through the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, which is kind of like Willy Street in Madtown - lots of hippie stores and murals everywhere. We walked up Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower, which was closed by then, but we could admire the views from the top of the hill. We caught a bus to Chinatown and had Chinese seafood for dinner, then we took the ferry back to Oakland, sitting facing backwards so we could see the colorful lights of San Francisco. We ended the evening by going to Slainte, a little Irish pub here in Oakland. Tomorrow they have live music, and maybe we won't be quite so dead - we walked almost nine miles today!

Famous Hat