We decide to begin the day by heading to a farmer's market at the Ferry Building since it was way too crowded with pretentiousness the night before. We wander around, take some pics:
The inside of the Ferry Terminal
The outside of the Ferry Building with bonus Farmer's Market.
Then, we decide to head towards that infamous Golden Gate Bridge. Being somewhat smarter than last time, we don't walk the entire way. We take the streetcar up the Embarcadero to the end at Jefferson Beach right near the Maritime Museum. From here, we start one of our favorite walks, walking all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge.
I stop at my new favorite bookstore (heck we literally passed right by it!), and that's the last time I do it for this trip, I promise.
It's here where one gets great views and pictures such as this:
We make our way to Fort Point, which is the fort that's right at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. We'd never actually been there before so we were doing something new here. I like it, if for no other reason that you get some really unique views of the Bridge and Bay.
Some really unique views of the Golden Gate Bridge
We even get to see a Coast Guard search for a missing surfer (nothing comes out of it, so we're not sure if the person was never found or if the person was never actually lost).
Next, we start the long walk back, only we decide to walk down Union Street where we grab a lunch. We keep walking the really long walk, and make our way to North Beach, where we wind up having a dinner at Trattoria Pinocchio (http://www.trattoriapinocchio.com/). The walk from Fort Point to North Beach is around 4 miles, and keep in mind, you kinda wind up hitting some hills in there.
Dinner is good, as we sit in a sidewalk table and people watch while listening to firecrackers happening in the next neighborhood because of Chinese New Year happening the next day.
Stuffed from dinner, we headed back to the apartment to rest our beat up feet and legs.
Sunday
Well, I have to admit, I've never been kicked off of public transportation before, but that all changed on a cable car. You see, after waking up, deciding to find Cottage Row (more on this in a bit), and my wife grabbing her morning cup of Starbucks, we got on the California Street Cable Car to get us closer.
A view to a...street (from a cable car)
So apparently, one cannot have coffee while riding in a cable car and since my wife had just bought the coffee and the conductor told us to lose the coffee or get off the cable car. Knowing my wife's priorities, we got off the cable car. Now, I could see what they don't want you to have coffee on a cable car, (steep hills, etc) for safety reasons and to keep things clean, however, there is a bit of flaw with this logic:
ONE CAN HANG OFF THE SIDE OF THE CABLE CAR WITH YOUR ARSE HANGING OUT IN TRAFFIC.
So let me get this straight, coffee is unsafe, but hanging off the side of a cable car with your butt inches from traffic is OK. Got that kids? Coffee=Evil, Arse in Traffic = OK
At least we got off after we went up the big hills, so we lucked out.
We continue along and find Cottage Row (http://www.noehill.com/sf/landmarks/nat1982000983.asp) which is a small street of historic houses.
Cottage Row
From there, we make our way over to Japantown and have a nice lunch.
This is where we had lunch - Miyako.
Next, we hop on two buses and make our way out to the Cable Car Museum (http://www.cablecarmuseum.org/) which is exactly what it says it is, and where you can see this:
The cables for the cable cars being pulled.
We decide to walk back, passing the famous curved street, Lombard Street and the Transamerica Pyramid.
Lombard Street
The Transamerica Pyramid
Back at the apartment, we watch a San Francisco DVD that I picked up. On it, we see that we've done most of things they show, but the one thing we haven't done is Muir Woods, which is a forest of big Redwood trees. We decide to rent a car for the next, our last, day in San Francisco.
