Another lazy morning down in San Francisco - with pretty average weather too. After the longest waiting time for breakfast this morning, we walked across Union Square and into Maiden Lane to look at the Xanadu Gallery. Well not the Gallery itself, but the building it is in. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and Ben wanted to have a look. It was very similar... and we mean very.. to the Guggenheim, including a round ramp up to the second level. The building was beautiful, but the artefacts in it were way to expensive. One ancient Thai budda was $165,000. And no you did not read that wrong.
We left here, and shot the umbrellas up as it had started to rain, and made our way to the entrance of China Town with the China Town Gate. We walked up the up the hill, and found many shops selling weird and wonderful, and very tacky, home decor. From huge sculptures to over the top clothes and fans, we found ourselfs walking back out of China Town and pulling into a Starbucks for a hot chocolate.
We made our way home, unsure of what to do in the afternoon due to bad weather and more rain coming. Steph had a book on San Francisco the hotel gave us when we arrived, and came up with the idea we go for a city tour on a bus. Perfect. In a bus to keep dry from all the rain.
The Conciege at the hotel booked the tour for us, and the company were to pick us up from the hotel in a few hours time. We got organised, and before we knew it were being picked up by Gray Line cruises and taken to their tour bus down at Fisherman's Wharf.
The bus was pretty much empty, and we sat on the top deck to get good views of the places we were going. We cruised around neighbourhoods of San Francisco, and the tour guide told us about the city's rich history and information about the places we went.
We cruised through Down Town San Fran, and stopped at the Civic Centre to take photos of the City Hall and UN Buildings. We boarded back on the bus, and made our way up through the fancier parts of town, visiting awesome Victorian mansions such as "The Painted Ladies" on what they call "Postcard Row" (as it has an amazing backdrop to these houses) and the Four Seasons (four houses painted as one season each, complete with snow flakes, autum leaf and sun decals). After this, we made our way up to Twin Peaks.. one of the highest point in the city. The fog was starting to roll in off the bay, so the tour guide took us up there early. The view was stunning, and if there was no fog you would be able to see for miles. We could clearly see the city and the bay, and the Golden Gate Bridge with fog over the top of it.
After this, we cruised through other parts of the town, with more interesting houses, and down to Golden Gate Park. The park is beautiful, and is completely man made in such that is was built from scratch on what was originally sand dunes. Not a single plant there is native to San Francisco! It is huge, covering some ridiculous space of land, and is similar to Central Park in New York. We stopped at the music bowl, which was interesing, as a few people of the hippy movement were chilling out in the rain and relaxing. Just up ahead was the Japanese Tea Gardens, a small section of land that is landscaped in traditional Japenese way including little tea houses in the gardens. It was beautiful, and such a cute little part of the Golden Gate Park.
We travelled again, this time making our way through other historic parts of the city, and then onto the Golden Gate Bridge. It is huge, and the suspension cables (if all the wire in them was added together) would wrap around the equator 8 times. It felt awesome to be crusing across such a landmark, and once we arrived at the other side, we got out and were able to take pictures of were we had been. The bridge was built in an art deco style, with steeped art deco motifs along the tall towers of the bridge. It was getting dark, and we jumped back onto the bus and on the way home after seeing most of the city in one day!
For dinner, we booked at a lovel Italian restaurant near our hotel, and enjoyed their classic and fairly prices Italian food.
Tomorrow is our last day in San Francisco, and we are not sure what we are doing yet. Until then, goodnight from us!
Ben and Steph
