San Fran Foggy!

Before we knew it this morning we were travelling over the Oakland Bay Bridge and entering San Francisco - all before 9.30am! Turns out they are trying to make the first section of the bridge earthquake proof so they have rebuilt it and are going to move the rest of the bridge over to join the new section over the labour weekend. Moving a bridge in 3-5 days - is that really going to happen? We'll see!

Ron then drove us on a tour round the San Fran neighbourhoods. We saw some lovely Victorian houses, which they call painted ladies (we'd use that term for something else), went up Twin Peaks to look at the very fogy view of the city and also around the Castro district. I was glad we went round there as didn't get the opportunity to last time i was in the city, since we found out so much about it in lectures it's always nice to see for yourself.











Golden Gate Park was our first stop. We had time for a stroll around, in the cold i might add, saw the Japanese Tea Garden, Sarah 'walked like a man' through the centre of the square before making our way down to Golden Gate Bridge.

As ever the fog was still strong and you could see the glimmer of international orange through the mist. Whilst some walked across the bridge then went for lunch, we all went down to Pier 39 and had a few hours to potter about. Windy it was!











After fresh fish and chips we found a great left handers shop! Sarah was not amused! It was well good, full of gadgets, the guy in there said that in the US only about 10% of lefties are female - don't know how true that is - he also said that I'm losing my London accent, sounding a little like i was from Newcastle! He advised i visit London more often to not lose it completely, how sweet. We saw the sea lions and gazed across the bay to Alcatraz which we are visiting tomorrow.











Turns out our guide was telling us on the way to the hotel that the guy who hides behind the bush and jumps out on people was arrested as one person took it that badly and called the cops - I thought he was a homeless person - didn't realise he does it all the time, he scared the living daylights out of me the last time i was here!

Very excited as went to Bubba Gumps for dinner, overlooking he bay when the sun went down with a great night view of Alcatraz. The shrimp was lovely - as was our server, Luke. We had split a fab pudding of a giant chocolate chip cookie sundae, mmmmmm. Turns our Luke was also a leftie - maybe it was meant to be! To top our night off - aside from the 2 hour chat in reception with some of the others when we got back - another city, another free public transport ride! Though this time it wasn't out of pity - the trolley's pay thing had broken! Oh well!!