As the saying goes, let's haul ass so today was going to be the highlight of the trip. We had pleasant stroll from the hotel through Union Square to Stockton Street then got on the number 30 bus into Chinatown which is nothing like you see on TV, it's a dump but had to get off there to go to the cable car museum as it was on the way. The bus can't make it the hills around there so it was a bit of a walk up some very steep roads to get there but thankfully it wasn't too far.
This place is a working museum as in the fact this is where all the cables are run from that pull the cable cars up and down the for routes that they run, this stuff has been going since the 1800's or so and most of the machinery is original, you can see all the wheels that go round that are powering the cable cars across the city then go underground, only downside to being in there is that it's in incredibly noisy with all the stuff going around.
When we came out of there it was time to eat something and quick, we were both starving by then, lunchtime now. As luck would have there was a Chinese sandwich or maybe it was Korean shop just across the road so we dived in there for a bit to eat. This place wasn't in any of the books I'd looked at and not on any of the websites so I'm glad we give it a try. Jane ordered two egg and cheese sandwiches but neither of us was prepared for what we got. The eggs were poached with the cheese melted over them and the bread was toasted, what an amazingly tasty sandwich plus they were large as well, all for $10 for the lot with a drink. We walked back down some very steep roads back into Chinatown to catch the first of two buses that would that would take us to the Golden Gate Bridge.
In a city that is full of buses the number 28 is the least reliable one that we used, 20 minute wait for it to turn up but as they have very good real-time information at the stop I left the Jane and the big queue there and walked down to the Safeway's shop just down the road that I had gone in the other day to get some bottles of cold drinks. I got some strange looks when I got back to the stop and there still stood there dying of thrust on a warm day and I'm loaded down with ice cold drinks and some snacks. It takes about 30 minutes to get there on this bus but some of that is taken up by the bus struggling to get through the car park and into the bus lane. It was fairly busy up there but what a sight it is to see with a clear blue sky. A few facts about it are, total length of the Golden Gate Bridge from abutment to abutment is 8,981 feet (2,737m), clearance above high water averages 220 feet (67 m) while its towers, at 746 feet (227m) above the water, were the world's tallest on a suspension bridge until 1998 when bridges in Denmark and Japan were completed. Even from the car park, you get some fantastic views but when you walk round to the main viewing area is really a truly stunning sight to see. With a couple of reasonably priced coffees in hand we had a sit down in the in the plaza on the south side then walked up onto the bridge itself. I didn't fancy walking all the way across it because it's one and a half mile walk then the same back so opted just to walk to the first of the two towers were you get a real feel for just how big it is, along with the spectacular views across all of San Francisco. We spent most of the afternoon up there just sitting around taking in the views and relaxing until it started to go dark then it was time to head back to the bus stop and join the big queue to get on the bus. The funny thing was the bus goes in two directions from the same stop and a lot of people got on the wrong one so we ended up near the front of the queue fairly quickly. The second bus was almost empty plus it runs right past the hotel door in a one-way loop so it was only a matter of crossing the road when we got off it and straight into the door.
Time to nod off for a bit now so I could go out for a swift drink later on, so that's just what I did. You've got to keep trying different pubs in the quest to find one you really like, the one I thought was good was called the Chieftain Irish Bar and it was only a short walk from the hotel. It was literally only five minutes to get there. They did have a bar next to the hotel but I tried that once and didn’t really like in there, don’t know what it was about the place that I didn’t like it just seemed not very friendly plus the drinks weren’t that cheap either. So now I had had my evening beers it was just a short stroll back across the road for a well-earned sleep. Today had been a good day with some fine weather for walking and taking photographs.
