When faced with a 10 hour flight you can do without an hour spent on the runway while various excuses about gangways and tugs are given out. At the other end long queues at immigration are an irritation (especially when you find yourself in the line behind a lone travellor Indian lady who apparently has lived in the UK for 20 years but speaks hardly any English. Eventually though, we were in the taxi and travelling through the streets of San Francisco (ok too much of a cliche).
By the time we had checked into our hotel and unpacked there was very little day light left. But it was quite obviously sunny and warm as we strolled Fisherman’s Wharf and found ourselves a bar for a drink. By 8pm though (4am back in blighty, and 23 hours since we had got out of bed) we felt the need to sleep. The next morning (thank goodness for the coffee maker and free internet in the holiday inn when you wake at 4am) we set off to explore the sites of the area. By 11am it was already pretty hot and we had covered much of the financial district, skirted around china town, been on our first cable car and made our way to the sea. In danger of peaking too soon we made our way back to Fisherman’s Wharf for some lunch and a bit of an afternoon snooze before heading out for dinner.
Most places where tourists go have somewhere that is a kind of unlikely attraction and I guess San Francisco has Alcatraz. Apparently the flies head there for 2 weeks a year, and of course even before we got onto the boat they were with us. Alcatraz is one of those places that is pretty unpleasant, yet iconic and a must visit place. I find it hard to imagine the place populated with men, living in those awful cells, but with the tour you experienced the sound effects and commentary that brought the whole thing unpleasantly alive. On the same day we did another boat tour (yes two in a day) around the bay and under the golden gate bridge, we were after all tourists and as such you must do touristy things.
The main things I will take from San Francisco are the steep hills (my feet hurt but it was good for the thighs), the great food we had there and the shopping, oh yes there was time for shopping. The pound may already have been on its way down but not so far that it made any difference, though of course teen son was at the front of our minds and now should have sufficient Levis and tee shirts to last him into next year!
So from a sunny and warm San Francisco we headed to the airport for our flight to Vegas for hubby’s 50th birthday. Vegas is always hot isn’t it? Well no actually it isn’t – part 2 tomorrow.
