San Francisco, California

On Thursday 4th August we flew from Portland to San Francisco, arriving in the early afternoon. The flight was under two hours, then we took an Uber Pool to our hotel. Uber Pool is Uber's ride share service, and only available in a few selected cities worldwide. It is significantly cheaper than the usual UberX private car service we use. We shared our trip from the airport with one other rider. I was a bit dubious about our hotel (Hotel Europa) which we had booked for three nights, as it had terrible reviews on pretty much every site we looked at! Unfortunately we didn't have much choice in booking, as this was pretty much the last room available in San Francisco with a private bathroom. Actually, that isn't quite true... There were other rooms available, at around $300-$400 USD per night, which was a bit (a lot!) outside our budget. It turns out we were visiting San Francisco the day before 'Outside Lands' which is a huge 3-day music festival held in Golden Gate Park, attracting over 70 000 people each day. Despite my reservations, and the reviews, the hotel was actually fine. It was a lot quieter than some places we had stayed, and plenty clean enough by my standards! It was right between two strip clubs, with a kebab shop right next door. Unlike a lot of the reviewers, I actually saw this as a positive... It meant there were always big burly bouncers milling around the hotel entrance, so we always felt safe! The hotel had a narrow entrance way at street level, but then extended over the neighbouring businesses a couple of stories up. Will did muse out loud in bed one evening that he wasn't sure whether he was sleeping on top of gyrating meat or gyrating girls!

The best thing about this hotel (other than the price!) was its superb location on the intersection of Columbus and Broadway. This was right on the boundary of both Chinatown and Little Italy, making for some fantastic dining options. We found an amazing little pastry shop for breakfast one day. It served the best coffee I've had to date in the States, plus an almond croissant that was out of this world...

Compared to the places we've been, San Francisco was cold. I wore jeans and a hoodie every day we were there. It has been months since I've had to wear a jumper! There is a quote that (wrongly or rightly) is attributed to Mark Twain that goes "The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco". Wellington, NZ is often said to be like a mini San Fran, and I understand why the comparison gets made. They are both on a picturesque bay with steep streets leading down to the harbour, and cable cars (above) as a form of transport. They are also both susceptible to earthquakes and are known to be rather windy!

On Friday we had a big day exploring. We walked to Fisherman's Wharf and enjoyed wandering around the waterfront.

It was a reasonably fog-free day so we got nice views of Alcatraz, but didn't bother taking a tour.

We took the ferry over to Sausalito and got some nice views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

The ferry was seriously cold and windy, it was just like being home in Wellington!

We did manage to get a selfie where my hair wasn't too crazy from the wind! Will relished the rare  opportunity to wear his UCI Anteaters beanie (Southern California isn't exactly conducive to beanie-wearing...).

Sausalito is very cool. It is across the bay from San Francisco and full of cafes and art galleries. We had a lovely time looking around.

Once we had wandered to our heart's content, we decided to walk to Vista Point, the northern end of the golden Gate Bridge. From here we had awesome views of the bridge, and the San Francisco skyline across the bay.

 

By now we were both pretty much chilled to the bone from the wind (so much for summer!) so we walked back to a bus stop we had seen earlier and caught the bus back over the bridge to near our hotel.

Saturday was our last full day in San Francisco. I'm still playing Pokemon Go as I travel through the States, and Eevee is my favourite Pokemon. This super cute one that I caught in the hotel room helped us plan our day! 

We returned to the Fisherman's Wharf area and spent some time watching the sea lions at pier 39.

We then went up Coit Tower. The bottom of the tower is covered in murals depicting life in California during the depression. We then took an elevator to the top of the tower for stunning views of the city.

One of the attendants at the top of the tower obviously had a (not so secret) desire to be a wedding photographer...  She practically grabbed our camera out of our hands and was posing us left right and centre! She was actually pretty funny, if a little scary...

She did take this very nice photo of Will in which he bears a strong resemblance to his dad.

 On the way back to our hotel we walked down Lombard Street, aka 'Crooked Street'.

On Sunday morning we took another Uber Pool to the airport for our flight back 'home'. We were flying direct into John Wayne Airport, which is Orange County's local airport. We had lovely views over Newport Beach and Balboa Island during the flight, it really did feel like we were returning home. It had been 6 weeks since we left Irvine, and during that time we managed to see and experience an incredible amount, although it was very nice to be returning to Southern California.