Days in San Francisco

We had 2 days to travel around SF and visit the attractions. Our first mission was to get a tourist pass to drive with the public transportation without a limit. We jumped onto a CalTrain train and drove around 20 minutes to San Francisco station. We thought to be able to get the tourist passes from the train station but it wasn’t like that. We had to walk for about a mile to Market Street and buy the tickets at a Visitor Center. After getting the ticket we took a local tram called Muni which got us to Frisco’s port. We had planned to begin the tourist tour at Alcatraz so we bought the tickets for it’s tour right away. The ferry to the Rock as it is called was full of people. No wonder since the weather was awesome, over 20°C degrees and a blue sky :) In Alcatraz we were offered a 30 minutes guided tour and after that a longer audio tour through the cell house.. It certainly was one of the most interesting spots we’ve visited during the past weeks!

After Alcatraz we walked to Fisherman’s Wharf to eat some local seafood. We had high expectations but we kind of were disappointed because everything was deep-fried for some reason. It was like fast seafood.. One of the main attractions SF is well-known are the old-school cable car lines. There re 3 lines running on the roads of the city and we wanted to ride all of the from start to finish. On the first day we drove from the Wharf to the main street with the cable car. The queue was huge because the station is one of the landmarks of the city with a beautiful view at the Golden Gate Bridge and we stood there for about 45 minutes. We drove the two other lines on the second day. In the evening we went to a local pub for a couple of beers. There was one of the friendliest bartenders we’ve ever met and he really liked that we were from Finland and had found his bar. He even gave us a free big beer each on the house. We did leave the pub a bit after midnight and walked to the train station to catch a train back to our hotel. It was a surprise to see that the trains don’t run during night here.. We thought the busses would run and walked back to the city center to look for a bus but we didn’t find any. After asking a few locals for help we finally understood that the busses are neither a good option. We decided to take a cab, as we were so uncertain about the busses. Just like we the day before our taxi driver had also some problems finding the hotel. Finally, we arrived at 4.20am to the hotel after 3 hours of travelling :)

Due to the nights happenings we were quite tired on the next morning and it took a while before we got out of the hotel. We didn’t have any big plans for the day. We drove the two remaining cable car rides, ate very well at a Chinese restaurant and just walked around the city.. We headed pretty early back to the hotel as we were so tired and wanted to rest well before tomorrow’s journey back towards LA. We are probably staying the next night in Santa Barbara where to we have a pretty long drive from SF. We’re going to drive along the coastal freeway with hopefully gorgeous views at the Pacific.