San Fran day 3

Well the weather man was wrong yesterday.... Wow was today a beatiful day. Woke up and the sun was shining into our hotel room.  We could actually see the ocean out the window as fog didn't fill the bay.

We began the day with a walk through the farmers market, right out the door pretty much of our hotel, on the peir.  We didn't buy anything, just browsed and watched all the locals picking up fresh produce, coffee and speciality items like jams, honey and seafood of course.

Venturing down the way to the Exploritorium was our next adventure.  And the name served it correctly.  You definite explore.  It was filled with hands on activities to make you think about different things.  Thousands of hands on activities in 6 different exhibits.  The first was about social sharing.  I learnt that Arizona Adam has a horrible poker face, that we can comminicate about creating the same image, and that asking AA to think about different situations changed his heart rate.  Other exhibits showed many aspects of light, motion and electricity.  At the end of the exploring, we explored "nature" about some animals, land, and plants.  Other parts about the ocean and tides, and specifics about San Francisco Bay.

Oh yeah drank out of toilet water fountain.... That was a challenge to get your mind around that.

Adam described how to put the shapes.... Not quite but not bad.

We then ventured back to the peir near the farmers market to grab a bite to eat at Grotts.  The food was awesome and we got to eat outside in the beautiful sunshine!

Adam finally got his hot dog and it was loaded.  I had a great lettuce wrap.

Venturing into the bus to try and get to the golden gate park was not an easy one.  Finally we got on a bus where the bus driver helped us understand where to go and where to get on and off.  Made it to the park where we went to the California Academy of Science.  It was a neat place.  My favorite part was the rain forest where you walked up different levels of a large sphere to understand the different parts of the rainforest,  from the swamp to the top of the canopy.  There were even penguins but the exhibit wasn't as good as others I have seen before.

Back on the bus to head to Union Square.  It isn't as impressive as time square, but still pretty neat, and full of people walking and shopping.  Then onto the trolly car to head back to the hotel as we were tired from walking all day.  

Supper was at a resturant a couple doors down from our hotel as we were too exhausted to walk anywhere.  The food was great! 

This evening we packed our bags and watched the stadium series hockey game on TV, it is just across the bay bridge in Oakland at Levi stadium.

AA is a little sad this evening as he is sad to leave San Fran, but I keep reminding him of what is to come.  The temperature in Maui is supposed to be high 20s tomorrow, so we are excited to just relax on the beach when we get there:)

Till tomorrow, Lola

SF day 2

Happy anniversary to us!  Today we started off with going to Alcatraz Island and walking around exploring the erie sights of the now decommisioned penitentiary. 

We started off with an audio tour of the prisoners jail cell. 

The tour was actually really well done.  It went through the riot of 1946 and the escape of 1962. It was pretty ominous walking through the jail looking at all the cells that housed some of the most notorious criminals from the 30's to 60's. 

The cells were roughly 5' wide by about 7' long. Lola says she wouldn't find it too crowded, I would probably go stir crazy. 

The cell block as viewed from the recreation yard

After touring the the prison, we also took in a few sites from an art exhibit at the penetentiary. The most impressive site was the Lego exhibit that had portraits of people (out of Lego) who were influential in human rights. 

After the tour, we went to Pier 39 (again) this time having lunch at Hard Rock Cafe. After lunch, we made our way to rent a bike and bike across the Golden Gate Bridge (10 miles round trip). 

Here are some photos of the trip:

I got one video on the go pro but failed to hit record to capture the majority of the return trip... Which was too bad as there were no clouds, the sun was shining and there was very little bicycle traffic. Oh well, it was still a very cool ride, sorry we can't share it with you. 

After the bike ride, we took a cable car ride to Lombard street, which has many switch backs to go down the hill. Such a weird street...

Lombard street

We hopped on another cable car and made our way to within 3 blocks of our hotel, saving our feet from walking. We enjoyed the free cocktail hour at the hotel, well Arizona Adam did at least, and then got changed for dinner back at Fishermans Wharf. 

All in all, we enjoyed our 5th anniversary very much. We had to change our plans today as the sun was shining and tomorrow is supposed to be cloudy so we definitely took advantage and saw the Bridge in its full glory (and got some sun). 

Tomorrow should be a little more relaxing. However, we will see what Lola has in store...

San Francisco day 1

We made it to San Francisco!  What was to be a 2 hrs drive turned into about 3.5 with traffic and a few stops along the way. 

We started with breakfast in Carmel at one of 20 "fairy tale" buildings built in the town between 1929 to 1931. It was definitely the most dwarf-like building we have been in. 

After breakfast, we made our way along the coast to San Francisco. We got into the city at about 12:45 and made it 7 miles to our hotel by 2pm. 

After dropping off our bags and parking the car, we took a walk down The Embarcadero to Pier 39 which has lots of shops and restaurants. We took a cruise around the Bay, under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz Island. After the cruise we needed to warm up so had dinner at Pier Market. Lola enjoyed a seafood stew with rice while Arizona Adam had clam chowder in a bread bowl and a Caesar salad. 

After supper, we got a hot beverage for our walk back to the hotel, 1.5 miles away. 

Tomorrow will be an earlier start as we have a tour to Alcatraz departing at 9:30. Afterwards we will spend some time exploring San Francisco, maybe ride a streetcar. 

Here are some photos from the day:

Golden Gate Bridge

Alcatraz

Bay Bridge

Downtown San Francisco

Aquarium and Pebble Beach

Today we went to Monterey to the aquarium. It was pretty amazing seeing 10,000 sardines eating chum in the million gallon "deep sea" exhibit. 

The sardines

Other items we saw at the aquarium:

- penguins being fed (Lola was pretty excited)

- LOTS of jellyfish

- four octopus (octopi?)

- three otters playing in the pool

- many sharks (hammer head, lion and others that we didn't see signs for)

- manta rays

- Sea horses 

- two giant sea turtles

- some kelp (the Monterey aquarium was the first to have live kelp in their exhibits)

After the aquarium, we went to Bubba Gump for lunch. Lola had her usual crab and Arizona Adam had a fish sandwich. 

Lola enjoying her lunch

After lunch, we took a leisurely drive from Monterey to Carmel along 17 mile drive. We went along the coast and stopped in at Pebble Beach golf course.  There were several "large" homes. Maybe it should be "large homes" because these were not just homes in my opinion but massive living areas that could house three families of 6 each. 

On the drive

The 18th hole at pebble beach 

Once we got back to Carmel, we parked the car at the hotel and walked half a mile to the beach. AA was hoping to see a good sunset, camera in hand but unfortunately the clouds had other plans. We still enjoyed the sunset from what we could see. 

The beach at Carmel before the clouds rolled in

Dinner was at The Forge. Lola ordered the vegan plate with chicken. The waiter laughed. 

At dinner

Tomorrow will be more driving. We enjoyed our day of exploring and tomorrow will put us in San Fran for a few days. Hopefully the weather forecast is correct - sunny and 17*C, much like today which felt much warmer than 17...