Day Four--San Francisco

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Well, we are off to San Francisco!! I am definately leaving my heart in Ventura, though. I really did fall in love with the area. On the way to San Francisco we had to drive up the 154 for about an hour or so. Really beautiful area!! We drove past vineyards and olive orchards and Lake Cachuma. If I ever get back to California, I would love to spend some time in this area exploring. We also drove through a big algricultural area. There was lettuce, spinach, green onions, green and red cabbage, and other things unrecognizable. We drove through Dole farms where I imagine they grow all the lettuce and other produce for their bagged salads and such. Plus there are lots of places to stop for strawberries and other fruits. So we are finally approaching San Francisco because the traffic is rapidly picking up. We enter South San Francisco and there are 3 lanes of traffic and we cruising along then all of sudden 8 lanes of wall to wall traffic. We are right in the middle and need to get over to the far left. Well, that didn't happen so the next thing we know we are headed to Oakland on the bay bridge. I freaked out because of all the trouble they have been having in Oakland. Then we see a sign for the last exit to San Francisco and Dave fights to get over in the traffic. Alright we are now in downtown San Francisco and have no clue where we are. So I finally find our location on the map and we finally get to the hotel. The streets are crazy because people drive crazy and many people don't use the crosswalks and they'll just step out in front of your moving vehicle. After we check in to our hotel, we take to the streets ourselves and walk around the vacinity of our hotel. We probably walked about a five or six block radius being careful to stay away from the areas the hotel clerk circled on the map. She told me to be sure and stay out of those areas. Kinda scary. I didn't ask why, I just stayed away. 😊 Anyway, we found this little Italian place to eat dinner and everyone was so nice. The boys had pizza and I had the chicken marsala. Yummy. We saw lots of interesting stores and people. There were lots of homeless people sitting in the streets but they didn't talk to us or accost us or anything. But Trevor had a lot of questions when we got back to the hotel. The architecture in San Francisco is amazing. Every place you look there's an interesting building. Trevor took to the heated pool for the rest of the evening at the hotel. The wind really picked up and it was really chilly outside, but Trevor stayed in the pool until I made him get out. I walked around the pool deck as the sun went down and was amazed at what I saw. There were many apartment buildings around and most of them didn't have the shades down, so you could see all of these people going about their lives. It was just like in the movies where something different is going on in every window. There was a couple of girls getting ready to go out, a man just watching tv and relaxing in his chair, a family eating dinner, and a mom walking around with her newborn baby. It was really interesting. I tried not to hang out there too long because you start to feel strange watching people in their homes. As I went to bed that night, I felt blessed to have experienced the city and I would definately want to go back and visit.

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Photos

Cachuma Lake
The lake on Hwy 154. I thought it was so pretty.

Entering San Francisco
See all that crazy traffic??

Victor's
The pizzeria where we ate dinner.

The Pizza
A pic of the pizza at Victor's...it was really good. Definately the best pizza I have ever tasted.

San Francisco
The view from the pool deck at the Holiday Inn Golden Gateway.

The Apartment Building
The apt. building across from the hotel where I spied on people. :)