Day 27 - Sightseeing on a sunny day in San Francisco!

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Frankly, we didn't have much of a plan today. We set no alarms and made no attempt to get ourselves out of bed promptly, but ended up waking up naturally at about 9:00am. We didn't particularly rush to get ready; Craig went for a shower whilst Emma got ready in the room. A lot of what we have in mind to do whilst staying in San Francisco is dependent upon what the weather is like; for instance if it's cloudy/cold, then we would choose somewhere indoors. As it turned out, today's weather looked absolutely brilliant, so we grabbed our stuff and headed out of the hostel by about 11:00am.

Once again, it was a little too late for breakfast, but far too early for lunch, so we made the decision to have a small snack to keep us going for a bit longer. Knowing that 7-Eleven had just that sort of thing, we walked down to Market Street to grab a bite to eat. However, on the way, we spotted a Walgreens Pharmacy (just like CVS Pharmacy), which is also more like a supermarket than just a pharmacy. We popped in, thinking that we could pick up a couple of packets of dried noodles to add water to, to eat for tea later - soon realising that we had no utensils to actually eat them with! However, while we were looking around, Craig spotted that they sold 'Twinkies' (basically an oblong shaped sponge cake with a sweet cream filling), which he'd been seeing here and there for a while and fancied giving them a try. We picked up a pack of two, along with a blueberry muffin that Craig also wanted - in hindsight, he regrets eating nothing but cakes for his breakfast! Emma had her heart set on a croissant from 7-Eleven so we carried on walking up the street a little further. Unfortunately, it seemed that all of the freshly baked ones had sold out, leaving only the pre-packed (smaller) variety on the shelves that are sold in pairs. She bought them anyway, thinking "how different can a croissant really be?" - quite different apparently! She said it was too sweet but forced one down anyway (throwing the other away), to keep the hunger at bay.

We hopped on the 'F' line that would take us down to Pier 39, so that we could enjoy the views of the bay now that the weather was nice and sunny (it was pretty cloudy the other day). We rode the streetcar for about 15 minutes before reaching our destination, stepped out onto the pier and commented that we had picked a perfect day - there wasn't a single cloud in the sky! We strolled along the pier for a while, looking at the quirky shops and seafood restaurants. Soon enough, we reached the end of the pier - which had some really good views over the bay - but what grabbed our attention was that we could see the Golden Gate Bridge (and Alcatraz) as clear as day, which meant NO FOG! We wasted no time in deciding that since the bay was void of any fog, we should take our Bay Cruise today (included with our CityPasses), rather than risk it being foggy on another day. We made our way back to the pier's entrance, where the ticket kiosk for the Blue and Gold Fleet stood. We waited in line for a short time, soon reaching the window, where the lady informed us that the next cruise was due to set sail at 1:00pm. As it was already 12:40pm at this point, we exchanged our vouchers for tickets, and went to wait in line ready to board in 20 minutes.

As we waited near the water's edge, we heard the familar 'barking' of a sea lion! Bemused, we scanned the marina for the culprit, and spotted a huge group of sea lions (called a 'Raft' by the way!), huddled together enjoying the sun on some huge floating platforms in the sea. It turns out that after quite a large earthquake in San Francisco in the late 1980's, they turned up out of nowhere... and never left! The bay is now home to around 800 sea lions (sometimes reaching 1,000!), who spend most of their time lazing around (on top of eachother) in the sun.

Anyway, soon enough our boat arrived - unloading the people from the previous cruise - and the crew began to board the queue of passengers waiting with us. Of course, there was the obligatory photo in front of a green screen before they would let us pass. Since we were near the front of the queue, we headed straight for the top deck to secure us the best views once the boat was on the open water. It only took a few minutes to get everyone on board and we were soon making our way towards the distant Golden Gate Bridge. As we got further out to sea, we took plenty of photos of the San Francisco cityscape/skyline, as well as the surrounding streets, forests and the marina.

In all, it probably took about 20 minutes to reach the bridge, where we took even more photos of this iconic landmark - whilst trying to battle with Emma's hair and Craig's cap in the wind! Our boat went literally right underneath the bridge, before doing a turn, and passing back through in the direction of Alcatraz. We took even more photos, and as Craig was busy snapping away, Emma noticed a tour helicopter seemingly drop out of the sky - in some sort of stunt-style move - that then went on to swoop underneath the bridge. Amazing.

We soon reached the notorious island of Alcatraz aka "The Rock", which the boat slowly floated past, ensuring everybody on board could get some good photos. As we knew that our Alcatraz tour is booked for tomorrow, we took a few photos, but tried not to over-do it since we'll probably take a ton more then. This was the last real landmark that the boat went near, so it made it's way to the end of the island and headed back towards the marina. Just before coming in to dock, the captain told us to keep an eye out on the left hand side of the boat (which we were sitting on!), as we would be passing by the sea lions on the floating platforms we had noticed earlier, which gave us a great opportunity to snap some pictures.

Once we left the boat, and since it was just past 2:00pm, we took the short walk back to Fisherman's Wharf to see what food it had to offer. After walking for a short while, it became apparent that pretty much all the restaurants and eateries focus heavily on seafood, which Craig isn't keen on. He decided that to save endless time walking around, he would get a couple of trusty McDouble's from McDonalds. Emma, on the other hand, quite fancied sampling some of the local crab. We had spotted a placed called "The Crab Shack" when we were here the other day, and knew roughly where it was, so headed in that direction. We did pass plenty of other eateries, but most were proper restaurants with high price tags. We also passed a sour-dough bakery that had quite a few amusing creations on display in the window, made entirely of bread - see photos! Anyway, from what we remembered about "The Crab Shack", it looked a lot more reasonably priced and offered take-out choices too. We got there and sure enough, their menu was much more within our budget. After much deliberation, Emma settled on a choice of a 'Crab Cocktail' which consisted of a medium-sized tub of crab meat, a slice of lemon and a small pot of salsa-style sauce. She soon polished it off, but as it wasn't particularly filling (and still feeling hungry after the single, small croissant this morning), decided a trip to the Ben & Jerry's stall that we had passed earlier was called for.

We travelled back to Pier 39 (passing a street entertainer dressed as an over-the-top, dancing skeleton) and queued up outside the stall, browsing the menu for potential winners. We decided to share a 'Hot Caramel Sundae', choosing 'Cookie Dough' and 'Caramel Chew' as our icecream flavours. Don't worry, Craig IS aware of his lactose intolerance and is now suffering the consequences of this glorious dessert! We quickly devoured our treat (immediately feeling a little sick), before Emma suggested that we take a trip to the famous 'Crookedest Street'. Initially, the plan was to catch an old fashioned cable car up the very steep street that leads to it, but after seeing the huge queue to get on one, we decided to be brave and walk! Wow. They're really not kidding when they say the streets are steep around here. We JUST about managed to drag ourselves to the top of the hill (taking pictures along the way), before emerging at the top of the crooked street just to our left. We watched as the cars wound their way down the crazy street (who would purposely build a street like this?!), before walking down the little steps at the side all the way to the bottom. We took this opportunity as another chance to take yet more photos, then checked our map to find the best route back to our hostel.

It seemed a good idea to walk a couple of blocks down from the crooked street (which involved what can only be described as vertical descending) and catch a different (old fashioned) cable car. However, after waiting in line for about 20 minutes, and having two full-to-capacity cars whiz past us, we decided to catch the number 30 bus instead. One came pretty much straight away, which we boarded with our CityPasses and we took a seat ready for the ride back. We got off right next to Union Square and walked the couple of blocks to the hostel. We got up to our room and crashed on our beds for a couple of hours whilst organising the photos from today, deleting any that were not up to scratch. By the way, we played around with a few of the camera's built-in shoot modes today, so don't be alarmed if you see some very professional-looking, artistic shots - we're just that damn good!

As is common with our blog entries, it was approaching food-time! In all honesty, it was quite late at this point (8:00pm-ish) so we popped back out in search of nourishment. We had a quick look at the menus for a couple of local Indian restaurants but eventually chose the quicker (and cheaper) option of a burger from Carl's Jr just on the corner. Rather than eat-in, we brought our food back to the room and enjoyed it without the constant flow of weirdo's that seem to roam the streets at night around here. As it's been quite a long and tiring day, we don't plan on doing anything else tonight and we need to be up early in the morning to catch our Ferry to Alcatraz Island!

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