Golden Gate and Pacific Coast Highway

Sunday started very early for us as we were facing a long drive from SF to Santa Barbara with a lots of interesting things to see. The alarm woke us already at 6.20 and after a considerably feeding breakfast we jumped into the car. Although our main direction was about 550km south, we started towards north first. In the first days we didn’t have the chance to really get close to the Golden Gate and we wanted to have a great look at it, so we drove about 30km right next to it. Thanks to the great weather again, we got some really nice pictures.

After the quick stop our next destination was the Pacific Coast Highway, also known as Cabrillo Hwy that runs at some points right at the Pacific coast and it’s very well known as one of the most beautiful roads to drive. There was no doubt about that. There were a lot of people like us stopping several times at various turnouts to take photos.. Despite the amazing landscape and views the ride didn’t go without any problems. Due to a mud and stone slide the road was closed after around 250km. We had seen the signs informing the passengers about that but we kept determined going and believed that there would be a detour possibility. We weren’t the only ones who believed so and among others we had to drive 80km back to reach the nearest way to the freeway heading south. So that was about 2 hours extra driving but thanks to great views it was certainly not pointless :) We also found a great restaurant on the way in which we had lunch on the terrace looking at the Pacific!

After a long day we arrived in Santa Barbara at 7pm. The last hours went pretty smoothly on the freeway and we even happened to drive close to the beach at sundown. On the way we also drove through Solvang, a small Danish village in the middle of California :) The whole architecture was just like in Denmark and most if its inhabitants are originally from Denmark.. We had no clue about our hotel in Santa Barbara, we just reserved some place the day before, but we were very positively surprised by it. It’s by far the best hotel we’ve been staying so far. The Sandman Inn is quite big with two pools and a Jacuzzi. We had reserved a small room with two queen beds but we got really big two-bedroom room. We’ll spend the day here before continuing to LA tomorrow. Hopefully the weather stays as good as today so that we could hang at beach for a while. 

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.