Packed the car and we were off by 7am; about 4 hours to San Francisco. It was unfortunately very cloudy this morning and our plan to drive the coast was a bit of a bust. We followed it for about 40 minutes until we decided it was fruitless; we couldn’t see anything with the low fog and cloud cover.
We pushed inland to Paso Robles, home of one of our favorite wines. J. Lohr has a couple vineyards in California, this one is the largest. Although we didn’t do the tour, we picked up a bottle of 2013 Merlot; wine is best enjoyed when 200km don’t lie ahead of us. Well, for the driver anyway.
We enjoyed the quiet drive up highway 101, making just a couple stops for restrooms and gas. We arrived to Silicon Valley around 11am and took the tour of the Intel Museum. It was marginally interesting but at minimum a nice break from the highway.
San Francisco has one of the busiest airports in North America and we wanted to have lunch and watch the planes. We lucked out finding an excellent little park on the bay. We enjoyed chicken salad burritos and a beer. The duel intersecting runways seemed to running at capacity. Snapping pictures of Boeing 747s, 777 and a bunch of Airbus'; we enjoyed the clear skill and talent of the Tower Controller. At times he had 2 on final approach and 2 departing, all at the same time; quite impressive to watch!
We pressed on into San Fran proper; first stop was Twin Peaks. What an amazing view and we were happy the fog had lifted. Another tourist told us that the day before was a bust with limited views.
Another note, there was a crazy weird restroom at the lookout. I don’t normally take the time to describe toilets, but this one was completely automated, as in it only lets one person at a time, button accessed. It had floor censors everywhere and after you left it, it completely sprays down the entire room. Doesn't sound like much, but it was very strange.
From Twin peaks we headed to the Golden Gate Bridge. We were happy to find ample cheap parking, $1.20 and hour. We prepared a beverage and set out to task. We had no plan to cross the entire bridge (1.6 miles or about 2.5km); that would take more than an hour, especially with the shared foot and bike traffic. The bridge, being 80 years old is looking a bit dated.
We started a self guided tour of the area, making stops at the Walt Disney museum (closed Tuesdays; today) and at Presidio , and Coit Tower. There is way too much to describe but the most intense was the climb up the hill to the famous Lombard street down hill switch back; our car barely made it crawling up at about 10km an hour! Felt like the car was going to fall backward; so steep!
After driving around the city for about 2 hours, we crossed the Bay Bridge and found Fruitvale; where our hotel was located. The neighbourhood is quite rough and might be the most getto place we have stayed. After our check in we were delighted that our hotel room was completely renovated; wow, at least it was nice and they had a high fence with locked gate.
