Day 13 - Biking the Bridge and cable cars

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We were up quite late this morning and went down for breakfast at the Denny’s attached to the hotel; there has been one of these in nearly every town we’ve visited so we decided to try this one. The breakfast menu has names like Lumberjack Slam, Grand Slam, All-American Slam and Grand Slam Slugger, so you can imagine the size of these things. We went for the French Toast Slam, which is at the healthier end of the scale.

After breakfast we went to one of the many bike-hire shops and got a couple of bikes to cycle across the Golden Gate Bridge. Sam wasn’t too happy and threw a bit of a strop because he had to wear a helmet and it messed-up his hair. The ride was from San Francisco, across the bridge and down to a little town called Sausilito to catch the ferry back across the bay. It was sunny on both sides of the bridge but it was foggy on the bridge and there was limited visibility back to San Francisco.

Biking the bridge is a very popular activity and there were hundreds of people doing it, unfortunately I managed to knock a lady off her bike (I’d like to blame the very strong wind on the bridge but really it was aggressive overtaking!) but she wasn’t injured and I’m sure she laughed about it later, I know Sam and I did! The ferry back passed quite close to Alcatraz and I got a few good photos.

Once back in San Francisco we had something to eat and headed for one of the cable car terminals. There are a few different routes around the city and it’s one of the must-do things when visiting. Looking at how people cram onto the cars and dangle off the outside there is no way they would be allowed in the UK; the Health and Safety people would have a fit! It was a bit annoying waiting in a long queue to get on at the bottom of the line only to see people jumping on and off at every stop up the hill.

After the cable car ride we went for a drive around the city and you either need to be very good with hill-starts or drive an automatic (I’m glad we have an automatic!); some of the streets are very steep and have stop signs in the most awkward locations just before the brow of the hill, so you have to stop then crawl forward past the cars parked on both sides of the street to see if the junction is clear. We also took a drive down Lombard Street, reputed to be the crookedest street in the USA. There are signs saying that it's not a 'through road' but we weren't the only ones driving down it just for the sake of it, and it must be really annoying for the residents.

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