Day 12 - Yosemite National Park to San Francisco

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We had a fairly relaxed start this morning, we went down for breakfast, packed the bags and set-off at about 8.30am. It was a steady drive down from Yosemite and being Saturday traffic was quite light, but about 30 miles outside San Francisco there was an accident that closed the freeway for an hour. After that the only delay was the queue for the toll bridge to get into downtown San Francisco ($4.00).

We got to the hotel at about 2.00pm, checked-in and headed straight to the seafront. I’ve got to pay for parking in this hotel; I was warned that I might have to pay in some hotels but the others waived the fee. The normal rates here are £25 per night but it’s been reduced to £10 per night.

The hotel is in Fisherman’s Wharf, which is the main tourist area of San Francisco. There are some tacky shops on the front but there are also some very good seafood restaurants (and Sam found a skater shop so he’s happy). I’d read that one of the specialities here is the clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl so I ordered it in the first restaurant we came to, and it was lovely (couldn’t finish the bread bowl though!). We also found the Musee Mecanique, which is a collection of old mechanical entertainments (built long before t’internet and the computer chip, but I’ve got to say our ancestors were easily amused).

There were lots of scooters and buggies for hire and I suggested that we should hire one for a day to get around, but Sam wasn’t too impressed with the idea. He’s at that age when anything vaguely uncool is out of the question.

We couldn’t see much of the Golden Gate Bridge when we arrived, this place is notorious for fog, particularly in the Summer, and the bay was a bit misty. In the areas not affected by fog it was very sunny but the wind off the Pacific really drags the temperature down and by about 7.00pm it was bloody cold. I did wonder why a lot of people were wearing jeans and jackets when we arrived.

I wanted to do the guided tour of Alcatraz while I was here and I was told to get tickets in advance because it is a popular tour, but when I went to the pier to book tickets for Monday I found it was totally booked until a week on Monday. Gutted!

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