Holiday to Pacific West Coast in Jun 2012: Day 15 – San Francisco

Well we are now into our third week.  It seems so long ago that we were sat in Manchester and Frankfurt lounges waiting for flights, or even sat in Applebee’s having breakfast in NYC. 

It feels a mixture of the time having gone slowly and quickly.  Still not yet half way through our holiday – I only wish I could do this for a living.

Just a quick one this to explain that we are going to have an exciting trip to the launderette early this morning (opens at 7am).  I’ll post a couple of photos from last night later on today.

The launderette was indeed thrilling, but it had to be done.  It was a bit shabby but seemed to do the job, although the socks didn’t come out very well.  Not sure anyone is really that interested in the detail so I’ll leave it at that.

We weren’t really sure what to do in SF today – we have both been here before and we had to try to fit in quite a lot today, so rather than pick one specific thing we tried to do a lot of things linked together. 

The key driver was going on the cable car which led to an awful lot of video being taken as I stood on the running board at the front.  I’ll try to turn it into a compact video and post it later, but for the time being you will have to be satisfied with a few photos.

We picked up the cable car on California, and got off to pick up the cable car headed to the Powell terminus.  The ups and downs were amazing and we even learnt about how the cable car works in SF once we got back to our hotel room later on.

From Powell we got back in the queue to get another cable car to Hyde Street.  Another series of ups and downs, this time with a real character at the wheel. 

From there we found a Starbucks for lunch (thanks Gill) and then walked around the harbour and took a few photos etc. 

We then headed round to Pier 39 and checked out the sealions who have sadly reduced dramatically in numbers, and have become a lot more shy – lying well away from the public. 

Apparently this is due to a change in food supply (we always shop at Sainsbury’s). (Editor’s note – that is not funny on 2 counts).

We headed out to the Stinking Rose later for dinner – before that we managed to fit in a visit to the lounge for appetisers.

The Stinking Rose is based around garlic – their famous saying is that “they season their garlic with food”. 

We booked a romantic candlelit secluded booth for 2 which was really impressive, but neither of us were entirely happy with the food – we were both a bit worried about how much garlic they were throwing at us and what impact it might have on our bodies!!!

Vick complained about her calf muscles all day today, something to do with having a bit of a walk at Yosemite the other day.  I need to find a woman that can keep up with me…

Stats for Day 15: 0 miles, 2 Starbucks coffees (one each), 0 Hollywood celebs spotted (although I thought I saw a guy on the exec floor who looked vaguely like Damian Lewis), 0 Subway inches consumed, reasonable load of calories consumed, minimal amount of calories burned (walking in SF), items ironed: loads (where are you when I need you, Gill?).

Plan for tomorrow is to go see Alcatraz on the first boat out at 9am, then watch the England game in the hotel lounge, then hit the road to Sonoma Wine Country.

Follow the whole story here: Holiday to Pacific West Coast in Jun 2012