Tuesday 7/1/14
Mental note: Buy flowers for hair...
We had an early check out, after some challenging
shuffling of the many new items we had to try and find room for in
out bags. Finally we set off on our longest drive from Vegas to San
Francisco. With Stephen's (Fry) help we began our 8 hour journey
across Nevada, into California and towards our second to last stop on
our tour. We drove for a few hours and decided a break was needed, so
we stopped in a place called Bakersfield for some lunch. We had some
very average food at a burger place called Carl's Jr and,
unsatisfied, I took the wheel of the car for the first time and after
some practice laps of the car park, we headed onto the highway. It
seemed that Andrew got lucky with the traffic, because as soon as I
was behind the wheel, all of a sudden it was bloody trucks and heavy
traffic for a hundred miles!
I eventually became somewhat relaxed with doing
ludicrous speeds on the wrong side of the road in heavy traffic, but
it's not something that felt comfortable and after two hours or so it
was time for another rest. The most challenging thing for me was
trying to adjust my sense of how wide the car was and the road
position, as everything is reversed. We wanted to buy cowboy boots at
some point, so we asked the GPS to find us a Boot Barn (the
recommended boot shop) and we made our way to one that was en-route
to San Francisco. We found it and, after much humming and ha-ing we
both decided on some boots. It was also dinner time and Andrew wanted
to try In-and-out burger. With one close by we went in and had
perhaps the best fast food burgers of the trip so far. They only have
about three items to choose from on the menu and they appear to do
them well. Rested and satiated it was time for the final haul, which
Andrew completed (the traffic magically disappearing) and we got into
San Francisco at about 10.30pm that night. We were both exhausted so
we went straight to bed, ready for our first proper day tomorrow.
Wednesday 8/1/14
Today was all about The Rock. We awoke in our
(very basic) room early and printed off our tour passes for Alcatraz.
The wharf to catch the ferry is about 3km from our hotel, so we
decided to walk the streets and get a feel for the city on the way,
and what a lovely city it is! The architecture is very similar to
that of New York, but the addition of trams and the crazy streets
make for a very different feel. People appear to be slightly more
relaxed here (you can smell the 'relaxant' regularly) and the pace is
calmer, with everything less crowded. It didn't take us long to find
the dock and soon we were on the ferry to one of the most notorious
islands in the world.
We disembarked, having taken some lovely shots of
the bridges and bay area, to spend about three hours learning about
the surprising history of the island, which began as a military base,
before becoming a prison, then hosting a political protest which
lasted for over a year, until finally being taken over by the
National Parks and Wildlife people and being turned into a tourist
attraction and bird sanctuary. Our tickets included the audio tour,
which was excellent, and I'll admit a little part of me was slightly
disappointed that Ed Harris and Sean Connery didn't feature more
during our visit :) We wandered around ourselves for an hour or so
before heading back down to the dock to catch the ferry back to the
wharf.
A short ferry ride later and we were back on the
mainland and looking for some food. We made our way to pier 39 and
spent some time wandering from restaurant to restaurant deciding what
we wanted. We settled on clam chowder (the local speciality) and fish
and chips. The chowder was excellent, a bit like cream of chicken
soup but slightly more seasoned and of course with seafood in it,
plus potato, served in a sour-dough bun. The fish was a bit weird, no
idea what kind it was. We had a great view of the marina whilst
eating and Andrew pointed out that there were hundreds of sea lions
gathered at the end of the pier. Very excited, we finished our meal
and headed towards the viewing platform. It was lovely. Apparently,
following the earthquake of 1932 the sea lions turned up and never
left, no one really knows why. We watched them for a while then
wandered the shops, grabbing some cinnamon doughnuts on the way,
before heading back to our room for a brief rest (and to type this
up). Now it's time to go and grab a light dinner and drink.
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