Chris Stoddart’s Wanderings

San Francisco, CA

Last day in San Francisco and an epic bout of packing and repacking after another fine (but final) breakfast at The Home Plate. I think they were sad to see us go because we’ve been pretty regular customers there in the last 4 days. We finally checked out of Day’s Inn around 9.30am, which was far too early to return the car (1pm) so we decided to re-visit the Presidio park – there’s a lot of it we didn’t see the first time as we didn’t have a map or our bearings or anything. The park itself is a lot bigger than we thought – a heck of a lot bigger. We had a good drive round looking at the restored military buildings – now all leased to commercial organisations, but still kept the way they would have looked when the place was a military barracks. In particular we were on the lookout for a bronze Yoda – apparently the HQ of George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic company is here, but alas we didn’t see it. The roads are such a warren it’s hardly surprising. Maybe I should have googled it the night before?

Somehow we found ourselves down by the seashore under the Golden Gate Bridge again. It’s hardly surprising, it’s such a magnetic place. Once again the weather was being exceedingly kind with with sunshine and temps in the 70’s. We were happy just to while away an hour here, buying drinks from the Park Services Warming Hut (no need for a warming from the fogs today), and watching the passers-by. However it quickly struck us that the joggers were overwhelmingly female. Hmm, it’s a Tuesday morning – all I can think of is that rich husbands are out earning money and bored wives are burning off the frappacinos with a circuit of the park.

Eventually we have no choice but to hop in the car for the last time and fire up Jane the SatNav girl and see if she can find her way back to the airport. I fully expect her to take us back the way she brought us, but no she has different ideas and chooses a completely different freeway that worryingly makes no mention of the airport until the last 5 minutes. Nevertheless she steers us straight into the Hertz garage and we’re back at SF International with the car checked in and waiting for the AirTrain to take us back to our terminal in no time.

This is our first flight by Virgin Atlantic, so we’re quite pleased when the check-in lady is happy to give us boarding cards for the Manchester shuttle as well as the Heathrow flight and more importantly, checks our baggage in with MAN stickers on. Whoo, we won’t see them again until Manchester (hopefully), which is bloody handy since I am sure mine reads 23kg on the scales! Looks like Virgin are flying us out on an A340 Airbus – a lot bigger than the A330’s that Air NZ were using and I hope faster. Finger’s crossed this is a nice flight – see you in London.

San Francisco, CA

Another fine morning and another fine breakfast at ‘The Home Plate’. Far fewer customers than yesterday, which means it must be a local Sunday treat for some. Never mind, we’ll be back tomorrow, but for the last time.

Today the plan was to follow another of the popular guided tours but doing it ourselves at our pace instead of the ‘all on: all off’ of the tours. Also at $49 each these tours are hardly cheap when we have a car sat idle. Anyway first trip out was to Muir Woods, which is right next to Mount Tamalpais State Park and the closest giant redwood forest to San Francisco. It’s about 11 miles from our motel north along Hwy 101, which means it’s over the Golden Gate Bridge, yay! I’ve already crossed it twice in a tour coach, but does it count if you can’t see it? So it was straight out over the bridge, trying to take in the views whilst not accidentally changing lanes (very tricky) amongst quite heavy traffic. From the bridge it was off at Hwy.1 and follow the frequent signposts. No bother to do. Hwy.1 is quite narrow and twisty and has speed signs for 25mph and even 15mph bends. I couldn’t but reflect that the average New Zealander would be taking the road at about 60mph with the cellphone in one hand and probably a coffee cup in the other.

Even though we were early at the woods, we ended up quite a long way back in the parking lot. It felt like there was going to be a lot of people there, which is not so good. However, once we’d paid our 5 dollars at the entrance station the car park noise and people quickly thinned out as we entered the redwood forest proper. Apparently redwood trees are the tallest living things, and some of the trees in these woods were over 250 feet tall and 1000 years old. The trails through the woods were easily accessible boardwalk paths, a bit like we saw in the Kauri forest in New Zealand. However instead of one walk there was a choice of routes ranging from the shortest 25-min walk to longer 3 and 4 hour walks. I was determined to get out to the so-called Cathedral Grove which is the largest single stand of trees and actually on one of the shorter routes. It’s also where an international meeting was held that brought to life the idea behind the United Nations at the end of the second world war. The woods were beautifully looked after and there were a small army of rangers and volunteers flitting hither and thither with barrows of tools and soil and seedlings off to do some maintenance somewhere. It’s also unusual as they don’t allow pets or even food and drink into the woods. They take it pretty seriously. The trees themselves – well, words don’t really do them justice. One one hand it’s just a lot of very big trees, but on the other it’s a kind of spiritual place. They do a nice hot chocolate at the ranger station as well!

From Muir Woods we returned a different way under a blazing Californian sun round the mountainside and back on to Hwy. 1 to Sausalito. This is a very posh little town full of yachts and mansions overlooking the city from the other side of the bay. The main street runs along the foreshore of Ric*******s Bay and is lined with little cafes and shops selling more upmarket tat than you’d find at Fisherman’s Wharf. The views across the bay were also pretty stunning. The whole town if famous for it’s artist community, many who used to live afloat in the marina. Alas I think the town is a victim of it’s own success because most of the boats there now are more likely to be owned by dot.com millionaires than Bohemian artists. We spent the afternoon here, inc. a late lunch at a little cafe where I tipped the waitress entirely too much purely because of her resemblance to Keira Knightley. I wonder how many others do the same?

Eventually we left Sausalito and allowed Jane the SatNav girl to take control for the first time today. She got us back across the bridge very quickly indeed (requiring a $6 toll fee this time for southbound traffic) but I’m afraid I have to report that she threw a hissy fit after she brought us down Lombard Street southwards. The trouble is Lombard Street has a median with trees and bushes in and our motel can only be accessed going northwards… She went very quiet as I sailed helplessly past. I got her out of her mess by doing a U-ey 2 blocks down. Girls and maps, eh?

Tomorrow afternoon we fly out of ‘fall’ in sunny San Francisco to winter in cold and rainy England. Been a long journey and a lot of miles – something like 31,000 km so far and another 9,000-odd tomorrow. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

San Francisco, CA

Well the clocks went back last night but even so, we weren’t up right early. Judging by the people leaving the motel, going for breakfast, etc, we weren’t the only ones either. The forecast was for a warm and sunny day and they weren’t kidding – even at 9am it was warm enough for shorts. I had to remind myself we’re in the Northern Hemisphere again and it’s November the 1st. We walked 200 ft. down the road to ‘The Home Plate’ for breakers, a tiny little breakfast/brunch cafe that is widely mentioned in the local press. It was packed, but we got in and had a nice breakfast indeed.

The plan today was to explore the two big SF parks – Presidio Park and Golden Gate Park. Now to confuse matters, the Presidio overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate doesn’t. Clear, eh? Anyway, to the Presidio first. It was a straightforward run from the motel, remembering to turn off Hwy 101 at the last min or be swept over the bridge. We did it ok. First port of call was Chrissy Field (that’s a place, not a person). A one-time airfield it’s now part of the park. It’s right by the water and stretches all the way to Fort Point, right under the bridge. We spent quite a long time there just soaking the sun, watching the men, sea lions and pelicans fishing and trying to keep out the way of the joggers and cyclists (of which there were trillions). I think it was a pretty unusual day weatherise and sight-wise because joggers (who are presumably locals) were stopping to watch the pelicans and take in the view. I now have a vast library of pelican pictures -alas no sea lions because there were a little too far out for the camera’s reach.

I also have more pictures of the bridge than any human will ever need, but at least we could see it today. From Chrissy Field we climbed in the car up to the Golden Gate overlook, where we arrived at a time not much later than we had the day before. A somewhat different view from this point today! More Golden Gate Bridge pictures in the collection. We then drove down the other side to Baker Beach, which was notorious at one time for being a nudist beach. Alas today it is nothing like that, but if offered yet more good views of the bridge, only from the other side!

A straight run out of Presidio Park on Lincoln Blvd and 25th Avenue took us directly to Golden Gate Park. It was quite difficult to find our way round this as they seemed to have closed off the underpass that links the two halves together where it is bisected by Hwy.1. By accident we found ourselves out on Point Lobos again. Never mind, the views were even better today. I made plans for lunch at the Cliff House, but one look at the queues (where were all you gits on a foggy Saturday, eh?) and we hopped back into the car and scuttled back to Golden Gate Park. This time we successfully crossed Hwy.1 into the other half of the park and managed to find a parking place at Stow Lake for a late lunch.

From there we drove down to centre of the park where the Academy of Sciences, the de Young Museum and the San Francisco Botanic Garden are located. The whole area was rammed with people and cars, so we splashed out for a parking place in the underground garage. Oooh, $6.50 it cost for the afternoon. We took the elevator (ok, the lift) up to the Academy of Sciences – I wasn’t sure what this was, but turned out to be a natural history museum, planetarium and aquarium in one. £24.95 each to get in. Nah, not that bothered to see yet another big fish tank. The de Young museum had the Tutankhamun exhibition – you know the one that was at the O2 in London a couple of years back? I dread to think how much tickets were here in SF… ah, $32.50, I just googled it. Glad I didn’t bother. I saw it back in 1972 at the British Museum and we queued for hours and hours (when I were a lad, etc, etc). That left some nice walks and the Botanical Gardens. Obviously we partook of these.

You should know by now I am not much of an expert on Botanicals, but even I thought the SF garden was scruffy. They did have quite a few labels and quite a few varieties, but Wendy wasn’t much impressed with their garden maintenance. They did say that there had been a serious drought in California for the last 3 years, but it looked to be that the dearth was more to do with weeding and tidying than watering. One of the first things we came across was the Australia and New Zealand gardens, so it was, in the words of Yogi Berra a bit like deja vu all over again. After a while we retrieved the car and let Jane (my bossy SatNav girl) guide us to Fisherman’s Wharf for some tea.This she did by taking a very exciting route indeed – shades of Steve McQueen (except at 30mph in a Ford Focus rather than 80mph in a Ford Mustang).

Still, it’s been a lovely day with 70 degree temps and I have a definite tan line where my wristwatch was. Tomorrow is forecast to be even warmer. With any luck we’ll be heading out further afield and the crowds will be back at work. Here’s to tomorrow!

San Francisco, CA

Today we have been on an all-day tour with Tower Tours, with the idea being to get as much out of the city as possible in the small time we have here. The shuttle picked us up outside our motel at 8.20am on the dot and took us to the staging post at the harbour. There we boarded a bigger bus with more people and set off at 9am. The city itself was cloudy and cool this morning and the harbour was shrouded in fog. The bad news is that it made the Golden Gate Bridge invisible. I can tell you that we have stood at the Golden Gate overlook and that we have crossed the bridge not once, but twice, but I haven’t yet seen it! The driver promised to go back if the fog lifted but sadly it hadn’t by the time we left the bus. I’ll have to have a crack myself later.

The weather was clearing in the rest of the city though and by 10.30am we were in the sunshine. The tour basically took in all the major SF landmarks, some of which we had heard of, some of which we hadn’t. There’s pictures here of a lot of them. Main things I noticed were that; Haight-Ashbury was a lot smaller than I thought it would be – did the countercultural revolution really start here? Some of those streets are STEEP, yikes. Aren’t San Franciscians laid back drivers? Are those people in Halloween costume or do they dress like that all the time?

At 12.15 the driver dropped us at Pier 33 for the ferry to Alcatraz. This was included in the tour, so we had time to collect the tickets and have some lunch before the ferry left at 1pm. The crossing to ‘The Rock’ is only about 10 mins, but gives some lovely views of the harbour, including a Golden Gate Bridge slowly emerging from the fog. On Alcatraz a group of Civil War re-enactors are doing some re-enacting (the island was a military garrison and fort before it became a prison). There is a 1/4 mile uphill hike to the cellblock, but they have a wee electric train thingy for Wendy, which is good. Not so good for me, forced to walk. The whole tour round the prison is self-guided with an audio commentary. It’s very, very good indeed and takes about 2 hours to go round. Some of the views across the bay are also pretty spectacular. The fog has of course completely gone by now.

We catch the 3.30pm boat back to the harbour, which gives us time for an amble down to the Hard Rock Cafe at Pier 39 and tea. Groan, too much food there. It’s also Halloween, so all the staff are in fancy dress. We are served by a cheerleader, which is nice (for me, anyway). We time it perfectly so we only have to wait 10 mins or so for our shuttle back to the motel. 10 hours exactly we’ve been gone and one of us at least is pretty jiggered. Wendy is apparently tired too!

San Francisco, CA

Well despite the aircraft going technical for 10 mins before take off, we dropped lucky with that flight – there were just us two between three seats so we had both length and girth (oo-err) this time. I slept most of the way, so for me it seemed like a really short flight over the Pacific instead of a 12-hour sit-in-the-dark-a-thon. Wendy said she slept a good deal too. Maybe we’re getting the hang of these long-hauls. Somehwere about 10pm Auckland time we crossed the International Date Line, which sort of made it Friday 30th morning all over again. It doesn’t pay to think about it too much I find.

We arrived 30 mins early at San Francisco and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I am going to say controversial stuff now, but American immigration was fast, the guy on the desk was chatty, friendly and cheerful and our cases were among the first dozen off the aircraft. This contrasts with everything I have been used to at New York or LA in the past. Mind you, I have never had all my fingerprints scanned to enter a country before! We then had to catch a wee train thingy (a bit like Hong Kong but free) to the rental car place – all the hire companies are in a big building together, side-by-side. It’s super efficient. We even kept our baggage trolley right up to the car boot (sorry, trunk). We’re with Budget car rental here and the lady on the desk was really helpful. She even offered us a free upgrade to a Beetle convertible, however given the amount of junk, sorry luggage, we have I thought it best to stick with the trusty Ford Focus.

I’ve chickened out this time and borrowed a satnav and frankly it’s been worth it every single inch of the way. The Budget car lady had put the motel in and the airport car return place, so basically we followed the bossy British voice to Days Inn on Lombard and it was pretty much a doddle (apart from the amount of traffic). I thought traff was a bit heavy for a dinnertime Friday, but when we got to the motel all was explained – apparently the Bay Bridge is ‘broke’ today (stop me if I get too technical here) and all the traff is heading over the Golden Gate. Unfortunately Lombard feeds directly on to Hwy 101 over the Golden Gate… say no more.

Anyway we didn’t hang around long in the motel. Instead we took the car down to Fisherman’s Wharf as it was such a lovely day (about 21 degrees C too – not bad for the end of Oct!) and did some exploring. Walked the length of the Embarcadero and down Pier 39 for a look at the treasure (ahem) shops the tourist stuff and the sea lions. Everything seems so amazingly cheap after New Zealand. It was alright, very alright. Finally ended up in Bourdin Bakery (another ‘world famous’ place) having some of their sourdough sandwiches and fries for tea. The satnav brought us home again without a hitch and thats the end of a very long birthday for Wendy indeed!