San Francisco
Home to the Golden Gate bridge and Alcatraz,
an American west coast gem
We were only in San Francisco for the day and its definitely not long enough to do this beautiful city justice. We flew in from the UK and and picked up our hire car, the Dodge Grand Caravan and after a quick trip to Walmart we headed for the city. We parked the car up on a car park near Pier 33 with the hope of getting tickets for the Alcatraz tour. These are usually sold our several weeks in advance, but if you turn up to the ticket office on Pier 33 they sometimes release a few for that day when they open. Unfortunately when we got there they had sold out so we had to settle for a view from the city and a walk around the harbour area and meet the sea lions that occupy Pier 39.
From the piers we had a walk up through pioneer park and up to the Coit tower, a 210ft observation tower that looks out over San Francisco bay. The tower offers stunning 360 degree views across the bay and over the city.
After Coit tower we had a walk through the city admiring the modern skyscrapers mixed with the beautiful architecture of the older buildings. We found our way over to Taylor Street near Fishermans wharf where the cable cars run from and we caught the cable car over to Union Square. Now the cable cars in San Francisco are not what you might imagine them to be, they are more like trams that are attached to underground cables, originally installed in 1873 they are the worlds last manually operated cable car system and one of the biggest tourist attractions in the city, consequently they can be very full and you can expect to queue to get on one.
Union Square is a busy shopping area with the usual shops and hot dog stands so we sampled the local delicacy for our lunch, mingled with the crown a little, but as neither of us are really city folk we decided to head back on the tram to walk over to the Golden Gate bridge.
Form the tram we returned to the car and had a drive over to the Golden Gate bridge. We drove over to the other side and back, but decided to park up and have a walk over to fully appreciate what an incredible piece engineering it is, especially as it was first opened in 1937.
From the Golden gate we returned to our car and left the city, off to look for a place to park up for the night.
