San Francisco

TRIP DAY 23
Tuesday 27th September, 2011

We were all a bit stiff and sore in the morning so popped a few nurofens to start the day! And just when we needed rest it was driving again... this time our destnation was the big smoke - San Francisco, however we did another hike in Yosemite first!!! How could we not hike down to the grove of sequoias? It just had to be done.... just another 2 miles... the sign didn't say it was steep but it was very steep and we hurt but we enjoyed it. The kids actually found they could scrable through a fallen sequoia for around 60m which gave them a thrill they couldn't stop raving about so that kept them quiet for the long mundane drive to SF.

We are thankful for "Tom" our talking navigator, he seems to know how to get around and david just does as he's told so it wasn't our fault when only 7 miles from our motel we had a car accident!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep - a young local hit us from behind in his dad's BMW but he was nice and our car seemed to have more plastic flexy bits so we suffered no actual damage - it just sounded bad and the bmer didn't fare so well.

So again, another long and eventful day but everyone was safe and happy and our hotel was .... well, not so great but the area (Alameda) was great. We took the kids out for a walk along the "beach" and that got bogged in the slushy low-tide seaweed andblack mud and then squealed with delight running and slushing about in the low tide muck.

I made another home cooked meal in our room - more steak and vegies for us and spaghetti for the kids.

TRIP DAY 24
Wednesday 28th September, 2011

We left our motel early and drove 10mins to the Alameda ferry terminal then jumped on the 8:15am to pier 1. We found we'd scored one of the bay's two days per year of clear skies and not a speck of fog to be seen. We used the cable car to get up to pier 39 (the tourist part), saw the seal llions etc and then took a 2 hour open-topped bus tour of the city, including Lombard Street, Chinatown, Golden Gate Park, Union Square and of course Golden Gate bridge where we got out and walked.