Blogs from San Francisco, California, United States, North America - page 10

Weather: Partly sunny, cloudy, sprinkles and 60s States: Nevada and California Miles: 218 Hours: 3 hrs and 26 min Restaurant: Pompei’s Grotto Hotel/Home: Courtyard Marriott Fisherman’s Wharf Movies: Audible: Escape From Alcatraz After a nice sleep, we woke early to get head start to San Fran since Reno itself is a bit of an armpit. Sorry. Where we stayed, in Sparks, is nice. It is about 10 minutes from downtown Reno. On our way out, we stopped in downtown Reno to see what it was about. Pretty much a seedy pit of druggies and down and outs. We had the kids step over a couple of syringes to get a picture of the Reno Arch. Ben says sarcastically, “Now I can tell my kids about the time I was in Reno.” Similar to the trip Paul’s ... read more

Here’s a quick virtual visit for you to the Californian Academy if Science in San Francisco. Christine and I went for lunch at Twitter and then took a Lyft to The Golden Gate park and this amazing place. Butterfly forests, reef and river environments, penguins and planets. Enjoy ? (that octopus! ??)... read more

We used the remaining hours on our 24 hour HOHO bus ticket to get us down to the docks to catch the ferry across to Alcatraz from Pier 33 in the harbour area. The trip was about a mile and a quarter and only took 12 minutes but everything was very efficient. The weather was cool but fine and the crossing was smooth. Brochures and maps were available outside the Visitor Centre on the island, with an honesty box for the $1 cost. Many people just took them for free. C’mon, it’s only a dollar – where’s your conscience? We saw the sally port, guard house and guard tower on immediate arrival, then the post exchange and officers’ club (now a ruin), the electrical repair shop, mortuary, chapel, warden’s house, lighthouse, barracks, recreation yard, water tower ... read more

I wasn’t looking forward to this journey; a) it was overnight and I’m hopeless with those, as I can’t sleep on planes, b) we had to transit to another plane somewhere in the middle and our experiences with plane swaps had not been good so far and, c) we were flying with American Airlines and the airline crew I had spoken with in Hawaii had told me they were the pits. It didn’t get off to a good start as we were told, at the departure gate, that the flight was overbooked and three volunteers were needed to move to another flight the next day. OK, well that can be anybody but us given that we have a connecting flight to catch. Much to my surprise we actually boarded and took off on time, at 11.25 ... read more

Herve has had a dream of working in one of the High-tech companies in Silicon Valley. We both loved San Francisco when we travelled there in 2015 with the girls. The journey to get here has been a long and challenging one in many ways. The interview process took long time to master and there were many skills that needed to be learned and sharpened. The house also required a lot of attention: we needed to leave it in good condition for the girls and I wanted to get rid of all my stuff so they could feel it was their home for the few years we were gone. This took months! tossing, scrubbing, painting, repair work, gardening (Lisa and Greg did most of this) and lots and lost of sorting. Herve went through many initial ... read more