|
|
|
Monday, September 8, 2008 Day 3
At 5:38am, we awoke, dressed and went to McDonald’s for breakfast. We had to wait 10 minutes for them to open at 6:30. We went back to the room and I grabbed some juice and another cup of coffee at the motel lobby.
We walked over to the train station to catch the 7:39 train to San Francisco. A big double decker train arrived to take us into the city. We had a lovely view of people’s back yards for about 40 minutes. We walked about a mile to get on the famous cable car. I thought it went up one hill and down the next but it went up and down several hills making some turns. We got off at Hyde Pier and looked around. The Golden Gate Bridge was shrouded in clouds. We walked over to Fisherman’s Wharf and got on the open-air double decker tour bus. Still cloudy, we decided to pass on the tower; our first stop was Chinatown. The atmosphere was rather like a Chinese Boardwalk as far as the shops went. Lots of T-shirt stores. The next stop was the Japanese Tea Garden. The museum was closed on Monday but the gardens were open. We strolled around, took photos and had some tea in the Tea House. Next, we headed over the Golden Gate Bridge. It was windy and cold. On the return across the bridge, I pulled my jacket over my head and tied the collar string under my chin to make a hood. I felt like I was in a wind tunnel. I’m glad we didn’t decide to walk across the bridge. We would have been chilled to the bone.
We rode the tour bus back to Fisherman’s Wharf with the tour pointing out various sites of interest and people could get off and on as they chose. The buses ran continuously. We ate lunch at the wharf. I got a Louie Salad of shrimp and crab, served with clam chowder. We walked around the wharf and took some photos. We wondered where all the seals were and then I heard a barking noise. We saw some swimming behind the boats at the next pier. We couldn’t get a good view of them until one popped up out of the water in front of me. I took a picture. I hope it turns out. The clouds cleared off so we got the tour bus back to the tower. We had to first walk up the mountainside to get to it. Fortunately, we could ride up the tower in an elevator. Spectacular views were all around. We warned up hiking up that mountain, now, we had to walk down. We just missed the tour bus and were waiting for the next. We would have to walk over a mile to the train station from the nearest stop of the tour bus. A public transportation bus came up with a sign on it “CALTRAIN Depot”. By the time I realized what it was, it left. We caught the next one in about 5 minutes. It went through the real China Town. The bus quickly filled with Chinese people speaking Chinese. There were fresh produce stores and shops the Chinese people went to. There didn’t appear to be any tourists. After a few stops, the Chinese people got off and we finally arrived at the train station just in time to catch the 4:56 to Menlo Park.
We went to the Safeway to get something light for dinner and called it a day.