As soon as we secured a hotel room in San Francisco we started researching things to do. One of my daily searches for good deals for our adventure involved checking groupon. One day I happened upon a bike tour that included riding over the golden gate bridge, seemed awesome and the deal was great. We decided Monday of our trip was a good day to go for our bike ride, we'd have a hotel to shower at after if we did it Monday. After a restfull nights sleep we awoke and prepared for our bike adventure. We were able to take a historic street car to the bike shop.
We arrived at blazing saddles and were outfited with bikes, helmets and met our tour guide Chris. He was a great tour guide, new lots of fun facts and was okay waiting for everyone never making anyone feel silly for being slower than others. I quickly made friends with a girl I will call Chicago since I don't actually know her name, I say we are friends because we were each other's crutch on the step San Francisco hills. We chatted with Chicago, road at a nice pace and enjoyed the amazing scenery you can't get by car. We started out at Pier ??, I don't know what number it was. Paused by the beach on the bay for instruction and an outline of our tour.
This is the view from our starting point.
First we biked up a rather large hill to a beautiful look out over Fort Mason and out onto the bay. After that we continued along the bike trail next to the water and ended up at the Palace of Fine Arts. This building/park are gorgeous! If you look closely in the picture you'll notice the woman ontop of the pillars are showing their backside. No one knows why the architect did this, some say he was upset, some say they are looking at something, some say he liked womans backsides. The architect took the truth to his grave so believe what you will. You know you are jealous of how attractive we look in the helmets.
After stopping for a photo opp we headed to Presido National Park, photos of a person from a bike tour are not very flattering....
Presido national park runs along the shore and up to the bridge. We stopped at a cute little cafe/shop, The Warming Hut. It had fun souveniers and baked goods that looks amazing! We didn't buy anything but wished we had about 30 minutes further into our bike ride, it was exhausting. We did have a gorgeous view of the bridge from the warming hut.
Now it was time to pedal up the switch backs and to the bridge, it was at this point Mark helped me get the gears on my bike set correctly and the hill got much easier. I have such a smart husband. Biking the bridge was amazing. You couldn't really look around much because it was crowded but it was amazing to just be biking across it. The breeze from the bay, looking down and seeing water way below...I can't explain it you just have to experience it yourself. Half was across we stopped to enjoy the view, watch dolphins jump around and of course take photos.
Mark captured this photo, it really shows how HUGE the bridge is.
Look close there are dolphins, I could have watched them much longer than we did :)
San Francisco skyline from the bridge
Proof we really were there and still wearing our bike helmets
From there we finished crossing the bridge and road down into Sausalito. It looks like seashore town out of movie, adorable houses, cute shops all looking over the water. We ended our bike tour in the middle of town by the ferry dock. We were on our own for the rest of the day, we had our bikes until that evening if we wanted them. First order of business was to find something yummy to eat. We took our tour guides advice and enjoyed lunch at Scoma's
We enjoyed some delisious seafood sitting on the deck over the water. We even got to have a little sea life to watch, pretty sure it was a sea otter but we didn't get a good picture.
We had a few options following lunch we could bike around Sausalito an the nearby towns or we could take the ferry back to San Fracnsciso. We were debating about what to do when we noticed the last ferry for 3 hours was leaving in 10 minutes, decision made! No way were we biking back, the hill down into Sausalito was one of those steeps hills that if you aren't careful you'll end up out of control quick. We jumped on the ferry and enjoyed a quick ride across the bay. Now to return to our bikes, we only had about 15 blocks to ride them but with traffic. We did as is legal in our town, we obeyed traffic laws. Apparently in California people don't do this, they were insane and I am surprised we didn't seen any accidents from bikes doing whatever they wanted. We made it back and turned in our bikes. Now it was onto a crowded cable car back to our hotel for much needed showers and air conditioning.
Feeling clean and refreshed we made our way to Lombard street. We walked down the side of it since we didn't rent a car that was the only way we were able to experience it, which was okay with me. I am not sure why someone built a road like this, it has not useful purpose other than being pretty look at. Maybe someday I will research it. My Dad & Mom like to tell the story of how my dads former boss took them down in a 15 passanger van (many years ago), knowing the boss they are talking about I believe it, having seen the hill in person I know he is officialy looney!
From there we wandered the streets slowly just enjoying being out in the nice fresh air. We decided a treat was in order when we found we found Norman's ice cream and wandered inside. As we looked over the flavors Mark became excited when he saw a purple ice cream with the name Ube above it. Apparently an ube is a purple sweet potato found in the Philippines, this is where Mark served is missin for our church so he loves everything Filipino. We were able to sample it, it was actually pretty tasty. We settled on chocolate and cocanut ice cream covered in their famous hot fudge. OH MY GOODNESS! The cocanut ice cream had real cocanut, the big pieces not the stuff you buy at your local grocery store in the baking section. The hot fudge sauce was AMAZING! We could have each had our own but were somewhat healthy and shared.
From there we wandered down the piers and in and out of shops looking for things to take home with us. We wandered to the beach at the end of the piers and put our toes in the sand for a minute.
It was rather chilly so we took a quick photo together, made a video for our little guy who we were missing and set out for our next destinitation.
Ghirardelli square, it was okay. There were fun boutique type shops and of course ghirardelli chocolate stores but the price was way more than buying it at home (I was tempted to buy it but resisted) so we took our free sample and wandered around looking at all the different flavors available. We had just had ice cream so a treat wasn't appealing to us.
We decided to wander around and see if we found something that sounded good for dinner. We ended up headed back to pier 39 when we saw this sign:
Walking by would not have been acceptable, we both enjoy games to much. In to Musee Mechanique we walked and it was like something out of an old movie antique games everywhere! I mean real antiques and you could play them! We had lots of fun trying out the games, giggling over what our ancestors found so entertaining and obviously we still find enteraining. I guess the simple things are the best!
Mark said I won because his hand slipped off the handle, I say I won fair & square!
Target practice
Once upon a time I was good at this game, not anymore :(
Mark was so excited to whac-a-mole
Classic black & green screen!
We didn't put money in to see what she did but as the plaque below her stays she is rather scary, not sure I would have been able to sleep if she would have done more than just stand there looking at me with her big eyes.
We would have probably stayed longer but our quarters ran out and our stomachs started yelling, remember our bike ride from earlier...we were starving! We do recommend this as a stop if you visit San Francisco.
Where to eat dinner.....couldn't decide and somehow we ended up in Chinatown trying to find somewhere to eat. Obviously Chinese sounded good but where does one start in such a place. Finally we asked to nice guys where they suggested, they gave us directions to their favorite place and directions to their american friends favorite place. We decided on the later. During our walk to the suggested place we happened upon the Chinatown restaurant. We were hesitant, it wasn't rated well on urban spoon but a couple coming out said they enjoyed it very much so we took their advice and went in. We decided to be a little daring and tried the dim sum sampler. It was really yummy.
Nothing to crazy but different than what we usually order.
We ate with our chopsticks, except rice, and did pretty good. As you can see we also got a little sun kissed on our bike tour
After a very yummy and feeling dinner we decided to walk back to our hotel instead of take the trolley or street car. Mark thought this wall painting was cool, I must agree it's pretty neat.
I have to be honest I was a bit hesitant about all the homeless people we had seen prior to this walk in the dark but it wasn't bad, the homeless never bothered us as we walked in the day or night. It was such a wonderful day, exhausting but wonderful. We fell into bed exhausted.
Stayed tuned for our final day on our trip
1 comment:
I'm excited to read the rest! Sounds like you had a blast.
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