Woke up 8:45am and was ready and out by 9:15am to pick up and return car. The hotel doesn't offer breakfast but does do complimentary cookies all day, as well as tea / coffee in the reception hall. I suppose there's pro's and con's to this method.
Not dressed properly for the weather in SFO though, because it was still rather chilly and we were in T-shirts (no jackets), so we hot-footed it back to the hotel.
Kat needed a nap because she was still exhausted from the long and stressful drive, so I put her to bed and then hit the wifi internet (freaking fast ... Must be 20mbps again but I haven't tested it here) to plan our day and also update the blogs. Kat managed about forty minutes before she was woken up.
One thing we've learnt from our first overseas holiday together is, we need to have a basic idea of what we're doing at each city and where the major attractions are because we spent half of our morning sifting through brochures to figure out what to do. Eventually we concluded what Kat would most like to do on her last day off work, and we headed out just after 1:30pm.
We bought 3-day MUNI passes for $20 which gives us unlimited cable car rides (usually $5 each), bus rides (usually $2) and subway (have yet to see a subway) and put a $10 deposit down on a $28 airport shuttle for Thursday night.
The cable car is a real novelty. We boarded an already crowded cable car and headed uphill (uptown) to Pier 39 area. The cable car driver wasn't very happy and moaned at us for not standing properly and also complained to a young businessman for him "asking too many questions" about where to sit etc.
This girl isn't zonked. I just caught her in a blinking phase.
People, don't mock the beanie, that's why I took the picture, okay? :)
The cable car goes slowly but steadily along, and has to stop at virtually every intersection to shift brakes and gears (I think). There are two operators on each car, one in front and one in the back. There's a cool bell that rings whenever it starts or stops, to alert passengers. Also, you get the opportunity to "hang out" which means outside the cable car. It was a lot of fun, but I couldn't imagine too many locals use this service at $5 a ride (without a pass), but I may have underestimated its usefulness.
The view from the crookedest lane in San Francisco (the world?)
The hills are so steep people have to "curb" their cars so they don't run away!
Along the Embarcadero (essentially the waterfront AKA Fisherman's Wharf) there are loads of shops. We bought ourselves a $5 footlong SUBWAY for lunch and walked down the tourist avenue alongside the pier.
Nope. Not weirdo's, this is the SEGWAY tour.
Spans of chocolates!!
As with yesterday, there are LOADS of beggars and also weirdos. One dude hid on the sidewalk by the rubbish bin with a bunch of palm leaves covering himself and whenever a pedestrian walked past he'd jump out and scream. Funny to watch, but also very sad to think this is what some people have had to resort to.
We visited the San Francisco Aquarium for $12 each minus $2 coupons, but it wasn't too far different to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We decided to visit it simply because we would have viewed two California aquariums (aquaria?) for $10 each (normal value $42 each). We skipped past the touch pools and jelly fish exhibits and focused our time in the two underwater tunnels. The first one is about 50m long and houses lots of smaller fish (apart from the giant sea bass; the biggest fish in this section), but the second one is way cooler, with 7-gilled sharks and manta rays. It's truly magnificent to be walking amongst these large creatures, and to have them swim directly over your head!!
This fish seemed to like Kat's top, which was a similar colour to its scales, so it followed Kat along the tunnel!
You can get views inside some of the displays.
Afterwards we just explored the wharf area, but Kat was underdressed for the cold so we headed back.
One interesting scam experience was when I went into a corner camera shop (in New York they looked cool, but by the time we've hit SFO I've learnt they're all the same) and I asked about HD camcorders. The guy only had one type in stock and when I asked the price he said $440. I said I'd look around for more options elsewhere, and he dropped the price to $400 on the spot. I then started to leave the store and another guy said to me (over his lunch) "what price would you be willing to pay for it right now?" at which point their desperation for a sale was tangible and we started to wonder why they were so eager to match my budget. I then said I wanted to shop around some more before I formed an opinion, and he finished off by saying "we'll beat any price". Sure thing, thanks buddy - now I'm really suspicious!
Violence in San Francisco is almost non-existant, except for the occassional mindless shooting.
We went to our hotel to grab laundry and the hotel supplied us with a wonderfully big transparent bag for outside laundry services. Not to be deterred, we took the bus to our laundry of choice, met a really cool manager who helped us do our own laundry (detergent and drying included) for less than $5. He recommended the "best burger" in town next door, and we tried it out. Apparently it may very well be the "best burger" in San Francisco since it has a whole bunch of awards in the store, but it was a tiny store and we had to fight for a seat. While we were there two people got into a dispute about seating, with this pregnant woman apparently taking the place that a young lady wanted, and when the young lady was talking, the guy accompanying the pregnant woman started shouting at the young lady and swearing something hectic. That was rather unpleasant, but the burger ($8.50) wasn't. We shared one and it was pretty decent, but I'm cautious about declaring it the best in town. Still, it was a good burger! We collected our washing and returned triumphantly to our hotel to hang it all up.
A bunch of irresponsile people in this place.
Ophir Winfrey lives at 666!!!
Afterwards we took an evening exploration of Westfield Shopping Centre, where we enjoyed playing with their touchscreen information screens and riding the spiral escalators. After that we went home for an "early" night for Kat to get prepared for work the next day.
Touch-screen iDirectory.
'nuff said about CROCS...
Spiral escalator
Cheesecake Factory!
THAT's amore!
It's been a very bittersweet experience in San Francisco because it's a lovely place (despite the multitude of weirdo's and beggars), but the knowledge that the holiday is almost over and that Kat's got to start working is very sad. I think for both of us we've learnt a lot from this experience, and specifically how much more fun it is to travel together. It's been a real adventure and although in the past I've been very skeptical about travelling, it's been a real blast this time around that I'm really looking forward to doing something like this again, and soon!
I keep convincing myself we'll be coming back, so we don't miss out on the things we've already missed out on. Who knows? Maybe we can come back soon, and maybe we can do a group thing to reduce costs and have more people helping us to organise our precious times :)
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