We were saddened to leave San Francisco after such a wonderful time there. We loved the quirkiness of the place, the amazing undulating streets which Malc insisted we walk up and down constantly; Diana wanted to visit Lombard street which is supposedly the ‘crookedest’ street in San Francisco, so we would walk there from our hotel - quite a distance from there. To avoid going up and down so much we zigzagged our way across the city until we reached it and watched the tourists going down the hill in their cars through 8 bends between the beautiful hydrangea beds. ‘Why don’t they just go to the Dolomites’ cried Malc.
Afterwards we took a trip over the Golden Gate Bridge - it was a beautiful clear sunny day and the bridge looked spectacular. We got a shock going across as it was incredibly windy and ruined our hairstyles. Malc’s few hairs plopped easily back in place and Diana looked as though she had been pushed through a hedge backwards. We drove to Sausalito, a very posh and trendy town the other side of the bridge and then returned back to Fisherman’s Wharf where we ate a great lunch and people watched for ages. We decided to walk back towards the Ferry building when Diana announced she wanted to catch a cable car up as far as it went so we chose one that went past our hotel and to which we would walk back up hill to.
We sat sideways on the cable car and watched how the driver adjusted the cable in the road to set the car/bus going up the hill. We had to cling on tightly when it went up as Diana started to slide down the seat towards Malc. We had a good laugh and Diana decided to see whether she could photograph us on the cable car through a reflection in a shop window when it stopped. We were both partially successful at this and it was fun trying. The hill to our hotel is so steep and we breached the top by the hotel and then went down the other side to the terminus. Excellent fun. We walked all the way back up and returned to our hotel tired and very happy having spent such a great day and in the two days we were there having seen/done what we had on our bucket list.
It was difficult walking down the hill again to go to the restaurant we had chosen to eat and half way down we spotted another restaurant and decided to take a chance and eat there. Another great meal, and not so far to walk back this time! Diana’s false knee was put through its paces on this and many other days and held fast, thank goodness. Most people we heard were complaining about the impact on their knees going up and down such steep streets.
We were surprised having had two gloriously hot days [where Diana scorched her forehead quite badly; the wind blew her constantly revealing her forehead to the sun] to get up in the morning and find it very foggy and cold. We had to drag all our winter gear out before we set off to collect our cabriolet. We were however delighted when we eventually found the correct road to drive south down the coast on Highway 1. We stopped at lovely Half Moon Bay and had brunch and wandered around the interesting shops before driving further and stopping again at several of the many beaches to enjoy the coastal scenery and birdlife. The spring flowers beachside are a superb array of yellow and pink and cover the rocks like a carpet or blanket. We took some amazing photographs.
We are now in Monterey and Malc keeps singing ‘ it happened in Monterey’, problem is we can’t remember what was supposed to have happened because those are the only words he knows, thank goodness.
