San Francisco

After spending the summer at home, we once again did a fly drive at the start of our trip, this time flying into San Francisco at the beginning of September.   

Rather than stay in San Fran, we’d decided to stay across the bay in Sausalito picking up a hire car when we left.   To get to the hotel we advance booked and paid for a shuttle service which had good reviews.   It was not good.   Partway to our hotel the driver stopped and demanded more money.   To cut a very long story short, eventually, and without paying extra, we were taken to our hotel.   Needless to say the driver didn’t get a tip.

To satisfy our curiosity we checked the shuttle company website putting in the same details as the original booking, the price was exactly the same amount we’d advance paid.   Talk about how not to welcome visitors to San Francisco!   

Our reception at the Hotel Sausalito was totally different and when we said what had happened, even though it was absolutely nothing to do with them, our room was upgraded for a couple of nights, how nice was that!

Hotel Sausalito, where we received a lovely welcome.

Along the Sausalito waterfront.

As we rode the ferry each day we had fabulous views of the San Fran skyline, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge and one day we saw porpoises swimming by the boat.

The San Francisco skyline from the ferry, I think the tall building is Tower of the America’s but I may have got that wrong,

but, this is definitely the Coit Tower.

Street cars run along the waterfront.

On our first trip across the bay we bought ‘clipper cards’ as we could also use them on trams, cable cars and buses, they turned out to be invaluable and made life so much easier. 

There is a Starbucks close to the Ferry Building, very convenient and most days it was our first stop when we arrived.   From there we walked along the waterfront to Pier 33 to get tickets to visit Alcatraz.   We couldn’t get early morning tickets, so we booked tickets that included a trip to Angel Island State Park, which was fine as it was on our ‘would like to visit’ list. 

After that we continued to Fishermans Wharf and the sea lions at Pier 39.   The sea lions are a ‘must see’ in San Fran and they’re fun to watch.   

Fishermans Wharf was interesting and we enjoyed looking around but as you would expect it was very crowded and touristy. 

Have fun, we are!