With my bike secured within its mini-jail for bad behaviour for the day, Jeremy and I were free to rent a car and explore California a little more.  Today’s destination – San Francisco.

We crossed into San Francisco via the San Francisco – Oakland Bay bridge and headed for the visitor’s centre on Market Street.  We were not sure what we wanted to see in San Francisco, so we thought the visitor’s centre could give us some ideas.  Well, all we really needed to do was follow the crowds of tourists.  I am amazed at the number of tourists in San Francisco in September!  I can not imagine what it must be like during peak season . . . or maybe San Francisco is like Las Vegas – peak season is every day.

We bought a day pass for the public transportation in San Francisco – a MUNI pass (municipal railway pass) – and then lined up with the rest of the tourists to be harassed by pan handlers and ride the famous San Francisco cable cars!  The lineup seemed really long but it moved quickly.  We had a front row seat for the cable-car turn table and bathing pidgeons.

Our cable car to Fisherman’s Wharf was lucky number 13 and we managed to get bench seats in the open air section of the car.  We did not have to hang precariously off the edge of the cable car by the handles; on the other hand, that could have been fun if we kept our butts tucked in.  The cable car ride was like a roller coaster without the free fall at the end (thankfully)!  We even had a close call with a car that tried to cut off the cable car.  Our cable car driver was able to bring the car to a very rapid stop and avoid an accident.  Once everyone recovered from the sudden stop, the jokes started flying about whiplash and lawyers etc. but it was all in fun.  We were all tourists and found the close call exciting – I do not think the driver enjoyed the experience, though.

San Francisco is just a city of hills.  We were definitely impressed with the parking skills of people that live here.  They definitely have to make sure their parking brakes are always in good working order!

We debarked from the cable car with all the other tourists at Fisherman’s Wharf.  The Wharf was a serious fishing port at one point in time but now the “catch of the day” is definitely the tourist with money in his or her pocket.   We walked right down to the piers and checked out the historical Naval ships permanently docked at Pier 45 – the USS Pampanito, a submarine from the 1940s, and the SS Jeremiah O’Brien, the only WWII Liberty ship that survives that participated in the “D-Day” landing at Normandy.  We wandered into one of the converted warehouses near the Naval ships thinking it was a museum related to the ships and discovered a real treasure – the Musée Mécanique.  This little museum housed an incredible selection of vintage arcade machines, automated diaramas, fortune telling machines, and automatic pianos, most of them functioning enough to actually activate with a quarter.

We wandered along the bay front all the way to the greatest tourist trap of them all – Pier 39 – taking in the scenery and the smell of the ocean all the way.  Jeremy enjoyed chasing the seagulls and we even saw a seagull fight.  They can be pretty vicious!

Much to our surprise, when we got to Pier 39, we saw an advertisement for the “Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Restaurant & Market.”  Well, that was too interesting to pass up and we were ready for lunch, so we navigated Pier 39 right to the end and found Forrest Gump’s little oasis at the end of the pier.  What a fun lunch!  OK, it was touristy, but it was fun.  They even had a dessert selection called “Jenny’s Minis.”  How perfect is that!

After lunch Jeremy found a candy store on the pier and stocked up on some salt water taffy for later.  They must have had close to a hundred flavours to pick from, all in barrels lined up down the middle of the store.

We found the sea lions after the candy store, camped out in the marina beside Pier 39.  They were smelly but pretty cute, all huddled together snoozing and cuddling on the docks.  The sea lion attraction at The Wharf in San Francisco is a fairly recent addition and happened “naturally.”  After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, they started arriving in droves.  Now, the tourists arrive in droves to see them.

After watching the sea lions snooze, we wandered around the piers a little more, pondered Alcatraz from afar, and then navigated through the throngs of tourists in the gift shop sector.  We actually found a postcard of the cable car that we were on earlier – lucky number 13!

We decided to try a San Francisco street car (electric instead of cable) for our trip back to Market Street and our car.  We hopped on a street car that took us all the way down the Embarcadero, the main street running along the bay that connects all the piers.  The street car was pretty packed and we had to stand for awhile.  It reminded me of OC Transpo in so many ways!  The cable car was slower but I think it was more enjoyable.  The street car was definitely more of an antique then some of our OC Transpo buses in Ottawa.  The sliding doors were made out of wood and the light fixtures looked like home light fixtures from the 1920s.  And, oddly enough, the lighted exit signs were in Italian.

Once we made it back to Market Street we did a little browsing at the Apple Store and the Ferrari Store (apparently the largest Ferrari store in North America).  By the time we got out of the Ferrari store, we were definitely done for the day.  There is really so much to see in San Francisco and I am sure we missed seeing some incredible things, but at least we got to see a bit of it (even if it was the touristy part) and experience those crazy hills!

By the time we returned to Sacramento, it was already dark but we captured a night-time picture of Arnie’s seat of power.  Maybe we will see him tomorrow.  Apparently, he is in town to sign some big environmental bill.