San Francisco II

On August 5 - 7, we went to San Francisco. We were so surprised when we got there. The sun was shining! We had heard so much about how the summers there were cold and miserable. I think it was Mark Twain that said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." On Saturday (the 5th), we went to the cable car terminus and watched them turn the cable cars around and then rode one to Lombard street (look closely one of the pictures). It's the crookedest street in America and great fun to drive down. We then went to Fishermans' Wharf where we had some clam chowder in one of the famous San Francisco sourdough bread bowls. We rode the cable car back as close as we could get to our hotel. The cable cars are $5 to ride each way with no transfers (if you get off you have to pay $5 to get back on again). We were going to get a three day pass for $18 each, but when I was standing in line a nice English gentleman came up and gave me two one-day passes and said that they weren't going to need them anymore!! I was very thankful. We had gotten a great deal on a San Francisco hotel. On Priceline I offered $80 for a three-star hotel and got an upgrade to a 4-star Hilton!! We were so excited. It was in a nice area of town, too. There was one hitch: parking was $48/night!!!! We paid more to park the car than we did to spend one night there! Everyone told us that that was the average amount to pay for parking in San Francisco. If you go, don't take your car. One the way back on Saturday night, we walked into a Chinese night festival. Our hotel was right on the edge of Chinatown. San Francisco has the largest Chinatown in the U.S. It was so cool!! I could have spent hours there. On Sunday morning we walked through Chinatown and ate brunch at a local restaurant. We went back down to Fishermans' Wharf and just watched people until it was time for us to go to Alcatraz. You can see one of the prisoners there if you look at one of the pictures. That's also Alcatraz Island in that picture with the sailboat. We really enjoyed going to Alcatraz. We walked back to our hotel. On the way, we stopped at an Italian restaurant. They sat us right by the kitchen. We had a lot of fun watching the chefs and waiters yell at each other in Italian. Monday morning was overcast. We drove around San Francisco a little bit to see the "Painted Ladies" (row houses painted very extravagantly). We then went to the Golden Gate bridge. I could have spent more time there, but we needed to get back in time to get the dogs out of the kennel.