Wonders Of The Golden West Part 13....

After a good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast we joined our fellow travellers for a tour of San Francisco.

I've put together a  slide show of some of the most interesting places we saw, which I've described below.

 

The first interesting place we saw was Galileo High School, which Clint Eastwood and O.J. Simpson attended, then City Hall which was rebuilt after the '87 earthquake in the same style pre the 1906 earthquake.   I managed to get a photo of the Great Seal of California.   We drove round Alimo Square,characterized by Victorian architecture and a row of houses known as the 'Painted Ladies' , some of the most expensive houses in San Francisco because they usually appear in the foreground of panoramic pictures of the city's downtown area, movies, TV shows and commericals.  We continued our journey through the Castro area, to what our tour director described as the hidden gem for the day - Twin Peaks - which he explained he had not been able to visit for the previous three months because of the weather.   It was a truly beautiful day and the views were magnificent, I hope you think the photos do it justice, we even saw a Cayote, which I managed to photograph.

Travelling back down from Twin Peaks we found ourselves in the part of San Francisco noted for its role as a centre of the 1960s hippie movement, the Summer of Love (1967), the Haight-Ashbury district.   This was a special time in mine and MWMs life, so it was great to see this famous place for ourselveves and as we drove through the neighbourhood the local radio just happened to be playing the song most synonymous with the era, "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" by Scott McKenzie, how cool was that?  

Next on the tour was Golden Gate Park, developed by John McLaren when he was appointed park superintendent in 1887,he stipulated that "There will be no 'Keep off the Grass' signs".  He built two windmills to pump water to the park and had the sweepings from San Francisco streets delivered as fertilizer.   I got a quick shot of the  'Living & Hilly Roof'  in the  California Academy of Science within the park and the Japanese Tea Garden. 

The next slide show features another highlight of the day - our walk over the Golden Gate Bridge, something we never thought we would do.  The views from the bridge were fantastic and well worth the hour's walk and apparently this was another part of the tour that previous travellers hadn't been able to do because of the weather.  Alan, the tour director, called us his lucky tour!

Once across the other side we continued our journey to Sausalito, where we had time to explore before taking the ferry across the bay back to the city.   Alighting the ferry at Pier 41 we headed to Pier 39 where we had a delicious lunch of fresh crab and prawn sandwich, washed down with a beer, before walking on to our hotel on Fisherman's Wharf.  We were amused to see some people on a Segway tour, not something I would like to do but fun to watch.  

By the time we got to our hotel we were in need of a nap but had only managed about thirty minutes when the fire alarm went off, reception explained it was a false alarm but 10 minutes later it went off again and we had to evacuate.  Luckily it was another false alarm though the fire truck did arrive, and after getting the all clear we were able to return to our room and get another hour's zzzzzzing, before it was time to shower and change and hop in a taxi to fulfil our ambition of dining in China Town..  

We asked the taxi driver if he could recommend a restaurant but he was unwilling to do so, saying they were all good as far as he knew but he would drop us off near the most popular ones.    We found a small place called Hunan Home's Restaurant on Jackson Street, where the food and service proved to be superb, if you ever find yourself in San Francisco I can thoroughly recommend it.   Absolutely stuffed to bursting after our meal we walked back to our hotel more than ready for a good night's sleep after another busy and thoroughly enjoyable day.

 

We went to sleep looking forward to the following day, when we were booked on a tour of Alcatraz and intended fulfilling another ambition - riding a cable car.  I hope you'll join me for Wonders Of The Golden West Part 14.