Blogs from Sausalito, California, United States, North America

Today we’ve signed up for a bus tour out to Muir Woods, which is about twenty kilometres north of San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge, and then onto the northern bayside village of Sausalito. Our guide introduces himself as Danilo. He tells us that he’s originally from Honduras, and he’s a mine of information, some of it useful, and some of it maybe slightly less so. He says that a range of diverse things were “invented” here in San Francisco including fortune cookies (I thought they were Chinese), cable cars - OK he can have that one, and Irish coffee - surely now he’s just making stuff up. We stop at the viewing point on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge, and then continue on through the Robin Williams Tunnel towards the Woods. ... read more

Sometimes when you’re travelling there are days you will carry forever. Today was one of them. Let’s start by rewinding to the early 1980’s when my parents were holidaying on Dunk Island. I suspect it was their first proper holiday without us kids. In all the pictures Dad still had his sideburns and moustache and, maybe I’m imagining it, but Mum was rocking an extremely cute crocheted bikini! It was on that holiday they met an American couple Bill and Connie. Well today we spent the day with Connie and heard how they first met. Connie told us they had booked the trip to Dunk Island on a working holiday at the last minute. Unfortunately they’d missed out on the snorkelling bookings and were really disappointed. They couldn’t believe it when an Aussie couple they’d just ... read more

Day 5: This day we will check out of Monterey and head north again towards San Francisco - great city! On the way I am extremely keen to check out Half Moon Bay. As I've mentioned before we always struggle to find somewhere that is reasonably priced and central and parking in SF. Last year we ventured across the bridge and into Sausalito for a few last hours of sun before our flight home and fell in love with it so have decided to stay there this year and see what we think. Famous for being the inspiration of where Otis Redding penned Sitting on the Dock of the Bay how can we go wrong?! We used AirBnB and rented a nice house (with a drive way for the car!) The drive from Monterey is just ... read more

How is it that 2014 flew by in the blink of an eye? And now here it is 2015 and that means it’s time to go on a world cruise. We disembarked the Silver Whisper in Hong Kong last February and after a week’s stay in an apartment, we flew to California to drop off our cruise clothes and then on to Florida. We had left our van in Ft Myers in December 2014 and we were going back to pick it up and drive home. What had intended to be a one month trip turned into a seven month journey. Over that time period we rented houses in four places on the Florida west coast. Against everyone’s advice, we ended up spending the summer there and enjoyed it very much. Every house we rented had ... read more

We retraced our route down the Georgiana Slough and headed east to Tower Park. This is a popular marina close to Lodi which has many nice facilities. You can fuel up your boat, rent bicycles, pump out your holding tank, use the free wi-fi, dine at their restaurant and best of all swim and hot tub at the KOA camp which is associated with the marina. So we decided to settle in for a few days and just soak up the Delta atmosphere. There are several noted people who wrote about the uniqueness of this region. Erle Stanley Gardner, the author who made Perry Mason famous, absolutely fell in love with house boating on the Delta. I know what it’s like when the boat bug bites. He waxed poetic about Grizzly Bay, Snodgrass Slough, Lost Isle ... read more