Saturday, November 7, 2009

San Francisco Day 1

I'm going to write short blogs about each day, even though we are already 4 days into our trip.

Our first day in San Fran was a nice day, temps were about 70 degrees. We got settled at the hotel and walked out the door to the cable car. When I envisioned "cable car" I was thinking State Fair with cars up in the air going back and forth. Obviously I am an idiot as these are more like street cars, except they are pulled by a cable under the city streets. They also have electric buses in downtown San Fran which was pretty neat. No diesel filling the air from all the buses. The Cable Cars were very slow and I think more for tourists than anything else. We stayed downtown in the financial district and I didn't see anyone riding them to work. We worked our way to Fisherman's Wharf which is a big tourist attraction in San Fran. It is a bunch of shops and street vendors along the water, similar to Navy Pier in Chicago. Out across the Bay you can see Alcatraz and The Golden Gate Bridge. We decided a good way to see the city was by bike, our group thinks it was my idea. It was a strenuous 16 mile ride up and down hills and through neighborhoods. The finale was a 1.6 mile ride across The Golden Gate Bridge. I'm going to admit to this now as I'm sure it will get brought up again. If you know me you know that I am scared of heights. Well, this bridge is 225 feet above the water and we hit it in mid-afternoon with rush hour traffic. We were safe on the bike path, but the cars/trucks/buses were flying by us at 50 mph and the bridge was moving underneath our bike. So, I freaked out about 1/4 of the way across the bridge and we had to turn back. Nicole was ok with it, we got some good pictures and we knew we would be traveling across the bridge the next day on our way up to Napa! The bike tour was a fun little adventure. I like to call it a good 4 hour session in Marriage Counseling. We decided to rent tandem bikes and it tests all facets of the relationship. We had to compromise, communicate, and once in a while yell. We did very well! Here are some pictures from Day 1 in San Francisco.


Cable Car






Fisherman's Wharf. We saw a lot of fish being unloaded and here is one pic of an exchange with a customer. A lot of restaurants buy their fish this way for dinner that night.



The Tandem Bike Tour



The Gateway To San Francisco, The Golden Gate Bridge

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