SAN FRANCISCO & TOUR END

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We awoke to rain – heavy rain and all thoughts of walking the city for the day quickly disappeared. We were also thankful that we had done the bridge walk yesterday, which meant that we would not have to brave the elements high up above San Francisco Bay. We were reminded of Mark Twain’s observation that the coldest winter he had experienced was a San Francisco summer. Today was to be spilt up into two parts. First we would do an included highlights tour of the city by coach and then there was an option of a ferry ride to Sausalito on the opposite side of the Bay. Narelle and I had steered clear of the optional extras to this point as we like to take the time to do our own thing but we opted in on this one. As we walked across the bridge yesterday we had liked the look of SF – it had a comfortable feel to it and we both commented that this looked like our kind of city. Our tour guide on the first day had said that SF was an easy city to love – whereas LA was not an easy city to love; we were starting to see why. There is a Wellington feel to it with the houses reaching up from the city centre and harbour – and perhaps a comparison with the earthquake activity. Not many days go by without a small jolt from the San Andreas Fault.

It is not the biggest city in the US by a long way. In fact only 800000 live in the SF city area but this increases to approximately 8 million people if you include the Bay Area. It has been a city that has redeveloped extensively over the recent years and in doing so has lost the unfavourable moniker “Baghdad by the Bay”. One of their major redevelopments has been the new waterfront stadium for the SF Giants baseball team. The AT&T Park is a custom built stadium designed in the style of an old time baseball park but with all the modern conveniences of a modern stadium. It is far more boutique in style than the previously shared Candlestick Park and even though the capacity is lower the Giants have increased their annual gate threefold. It has facilitated the rebirth of the area with apartments, restaurants and shops all being built within this previously unloved area of the city. The pride of place is Willy Mays’ Gate recognising one of the favourite sons of baseball.

A lot of the recent redevelopment can also be traced back to the 1989 earthquake, which struck during the World Series of that year. The city was badly damaged but out of the ruins came new designs and roadways. One of the ideas was the increased use of cable cars around the city – an idea that had lost favour over the years has now not only become a city favourite but also a much-loved tourist activity. The city has inherited cable cars from around the world to make their fleet look like a bygone era – they place a sticker in the top window to show you where your car came from. The rapid transport network in the city is efficient and well used – this differs greatly to LA, which is very much a city controlled by the motorcar. Perhaps in the way we will watch Christchurch rebuilt over the next decade San Francisco has taken a negative and certainly made a positive for future generations. Another event that is going to bring world focus to SF will be next year’s America’s Cup; the spectacle of the large catamarans on San Francisco Bay and under the Golden Gate Bridge will be quite something. Here’s hoping that Grant Dalton and Dean Barker can make it all but a temporary home.

I love the architecture of this city. There is quite an eclectic mix of styles with the large cathedral nicknamed “the washing machine”, the pyramid shaped Transamerica tower in the CBD and the large concrete buildings that line the Wall Street of the West in the Financial District. You could easily be in New York. The houses are mostly of wooden construction and were built very close to each other. The building codes stipulate a ¼ inch gap and no shared wall but this would be hard to regulate as many of the structures have settled against each other and in all probability could not be changed without affecting the neighbour’s house. There is no chance of painting these walls as no one could fit into the gap. The famous Painted Ladies are Victorian style homes built tall and skinny and when you look at them from the road they look as one. However, each has been painted in a different colour to give some individuality. Think Full House and Mrs. Doubtfire – two classics of the 80s and 90s.

I forgot to mention in yesterday’s blog that we drove past the infamous San Quentin Prison. This is an imposing building set back from the city that was the replacement for “The Rock”. It has had many notorious residents over the years including Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, the killer of Robert Kennedy. Alcatraz’s only inhabitants these days are the steady stream of tourists who make the trek each day. Along with the bridge this is quite possibly the biggest tourist attraction in the city and if you do not pre-book it is very hard to get a ticket. There is irony in the fact that the island everyone wanted to get off 50 years ago is now the island everyone wants to get on to today. We did not do the tour but did the next best thing – we grabbed the ferry to Sausalito on the other side of the harbour. The ferry companies have made sure that they as close to Alcatraz as they can so you can get the photo shots. We were actually lucky to make the trip as the ferry company had changed the departure times - our tour guide was brilliant to watch as he managed to find people in bars, fast food queues and basically wandering around Pier 39. Herding cats was the call. He got us all aboard and managed to get them to hold the boat for seven minutes; if he didn’t we would have been stretched across the city with no bus back. Could have been fun!

Sausalito was a beautiful harbour side village that looked back at the city centre. We wandered amongst the houses, which cannot have been cheap. It was all prime real estate. There was a real village feel to it and it was hard to believe that there was a city of 8 million across the bay – doubly hard to imagine as the low cloud had come in with the rain and SF had disappeared from view. There was the most amazing photography shop in the main street. It sold old black and white photos of sporting moments, film stars and presidents; I had to fight the desire to buy another JFK photo. The night before on Pier 39 there was a signed Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald artefact that the guy in the shop offered me a 50%!d(MISSING)iscount on. I was tempted as this brought it down to just on $9000US but I politely declined as it was just too big to carry….

We left the next morning for Monterey with Tony Bennett singing I Left My Heart in San Francisco and I could see why some people do. With just over eight months to go I am not going to start planning my next trip (Narelle is) but I would certainly like to revisit this city. A few more days to explore the streets and sample the restaurants would be high on my wish list – I may also get chance to visit the famous Citylights Bookshop, which we only managed to see from a steamed up bus window. Our trip out took us past the large reservoirs that SF rely on; most of California’s water needs to be piped in and this water came from the Yosemite area where we had been a few days before. You also see the fault line, which the locals speak about with a calmness that defies belief especially when there is almost universal agreement that “the big one” will be triggered there. The country side is dotted with unseen sensors that record every movement – they have even drilled to two miles deep. It is perhaps the most scientifically watched piece of land in the world. With their history of earthquakes it needs to be.

Our hidden gem for this morning was a trip through the Stanford Campus – you will remember that Narelle has been following their women’s basketball team for just over a week. It is now time for the Top 4 Playoffs so we will be watching that. The campus visit has been on Narelle’s Bucket List since last Tuesday so it was good to tick this off early in the piece and I feel that dragging Narelle to Houston for the PGA Golf and Dallas for the JFK Museum is now completely warranted. Stanford is in the Silicon Valley and is one of the most expensive colleges in the US – full tuition fees are around US$40K. Thankfully there are lots of scholarships available.

The trip down the coast is stunning and just past our destination of Monterey is the famous golf course of Pebble Beach. You take the 1 Mile Drive (US$9.50) and wind your way past houses that are just out of this world. Not much would be less than a million and they head north of that quite steeply. It is common for them to be rented for the golf events at well beyond market rates - $100,000US is not unusual. I have watched this course on TV for many years as it has hosted numerous US Opens – in fact it is so highly regarded that it was awarded the distinction of hosting the 100^th US Open. Northern Irishman Graeme McDowell was the last winner of a US Open at Pebble Beach in 2010; it will next be contested on this course in 2019. I am not sure what I expected but I think it may have just been a brief comment like in the distance you can make out the 18^th fairway. How wrong was I. Suddenly, the bus pulled up to the gates, then through them and then we stopped yards from the Pro Shop. I think how difficult it is to get into some courses in NZ and here we were at one of the most famous courses in the world and no one battered an eyelid. We stood at the first tee and watched players tee off – it is a long dog left to the left. The caddies were saying aim for bunker in the distance as you could not reach. If I was playing I would need to be mentally prepared – topping one here would take some living down. It made me feel better when one of the players we watched hit it all of 15 yards and he was allowed a mulligan! I managed to uplift a scorecard from the shop manager when I bought a new sweater; one the ladies on the party who wanted a freebie was told (politely) that she could get one if she joined the queue by the starters hut – they were selling for US$495 and included a round of golf. So that was Pebble Beach – it goes on the bucket list Slicko! It may not have been Zion for everyone on the bus but for an avid golfer it was brilliant.

After this we headed to Clint Eastwood’s former home town of Carmel. This is the town that he was Mayor of for one term. Carmel drips money. The cars are large and shiny and have exotic names. The shops are all designer. The restaurants and bistros are a step above the average. There is a bit of a Truman Show feel to it as everything feels perfect. There are no stops signs, no house numbers, no stop lights, and no pedestrian crossings – in fact pedestrians have complete right of way. Even the public toilets had a shine to them like they were expecting guests. Narelle and I found a house we liked – it was listed at US$18.5m with a possibility to make an offer in the region of US$17.2m – a bit like the Jack Ruby signature it was just a little big for our needs so we will keep looking. As we got back on the bus it was apparent that the group had not shopped as much as in other places – the outlet style stores favoured were not big here. A Tiffany’s Outlet store will not be on management’s business plans anytime soon. As an aside this group has shopped – suitcases are groaning and in more than one case (no pun intended) new suitcases have been bought. We on the other hand have had to instigate a policy of if you buy an item one item has to go – so far Narelle has resisted any temptation to buy, which is unheard of. It will not last; if it does she will be mentally gone by Chicago.

Late afternoon we hit Monterey and found ourselves wandering down by Cannery Row and Fisherman’s Wharf – today’s local beer was called a Fat Lip. We have not done any of the evening optional extras. It is not that we are unsociable but rather we like to get to our hotel, have a bath and grab a drink. Tonight’s excursion was to the Bubba Gump Shrimp House, a Forrest Gump themed restaurant – it is one of the biggest chains in the US, whose success can be put down to the owners buying the Gump rights when their seafood restaurant was struggling and about to close. As we have eaten our body weight in bacon, eggs, hash browns and pancakes most days (and I am still experiencing shooting pains and momentary spells of blindness when I eat) we decided to do our own thing. That ended up being an hour and a half of wine tasting with John from the wine shop – we were supposed to have four wines but I lost count. I think the last one may have even been his cordial from lunch. Even Narelle lapped it up and by the time we left was speaking either in tongues or braille. Thankfully our hotel was only three steps to the left so we got home. To send ourselves over the edge we then found an Italian restaurant with a jazz band so sat there for an hour. We ended up buying the CD from the girl who was singing – we have yet to listen to it sober so could be interesting! We did get her to sign it just in case she is discovered and I think so we knew her name.

The tour is fast reaching its final day. It seems quite surreal that we will be back in Los Angeles – when we left LA nearly a fortnight ago everything seemed so far off. Now I am in the swing of things it will be funny to not be on the tour. Today’s major highlight was the Hearst Castle built by the world’s first media mogul William Randolph Hearst high up on a ridge above San Simeon. To say that this is a treasure is an understatement. Nobody in today’s world could construct such a home and place such items of heritage within it. It is actually unfinished and will be forevermore. He was an obvious egomaniac who used his family’s fortune to build this home; a family that then gifted it to the State to allow the entire collection to remain in one place. There are European Masterpieces on the walls, mosaic floors taken from old Roman sites, ceilings from Spain and fireplaces taken from castles in Europe. He built an art décor cinema to preview Hollywood’s movies and all of the house guests and staff would sit down after dinner to watch. He bought all of these items and then had an architect fit it to the house, which does mean that it has a slight mismatch feel to it. His reason for this home was to entertain the stars of the day – Charlie Chaplin, Clarke Gable, P G Wodehouse and many more household names spent many a night here. They networked and lived life to the full – although Hearst was not that free with the wine; David Niven said the wine at the castle “flowed like glue”. It was a breath-taking sight looking up at the towers and pillars above the tree line and it was made all the more isolated by the ride up to it. If he had wanted seclusion then you can only see that he achieved it. I had never heard of this castle let alone the story behind it – it was a stunning look into an age of elegance and personal excess and anyone travelling down the Monterey coast should make time to visit it.

The final night of the tour saw us on Santa Barbara Beach. There is not much to say other than we saw little of the place. Once we had checked in we took a quick walk along the beach and then returned for the final dinner of the tour. The dinner was great and the wine flowed, which was good as Trafalgar was paying! For some this will be the end of the road as they stop here; most will continue into LA but we are dropping off as we go along. To the sounds of Randy Newman’s “I love LA” in the bus we re-joined the urban sprawl of the city. We glimpsed Malibu’s colonies and then our tour had gone full circle. By mid-morning we were back on the beach at Santa Monica looking back at the hotel it all began at on March 14^th. We got another look at Hollywood, Rodeo Drive and Sunset Strip in much the same way we saw it from the “hop on hop off” on Day 2. And that was it – tour done. We were back at LAX and tomorrow will fly to Houston. The group has gone in a million separate ways and some are already on the plane home – a great two weeks! Not a bad outcome for a coach tour cynic who did not really want to go….

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Comments

[Rachel]

Hi there
All sounding fantastic. Will join you next time for City Lights! XXX