♫ Headin' up to San Francisco
For the Labor Day weekend show♫
-Come Monday, Jimmy Buffett
So this Labor Day we drove to San Fran Friday and Saturday, then on Sunday drove to
Pismo Beach and returned back home today.
We haven't taken a trip together since Christmas and wanted to get out of town for the long holiday. We went straight up I-5 and didn't run into much traffic so it took about 8 hours.
A friend who used to live in that area told us about
Twin Peaks (not the TV show). She said that it is not that widely known and researching places to go we never heard of it. So before we even checked into the Hotel we drove up to the top. Gorgeous views of the city and bay. The weather for our trip could not have been any better. From there we drove down
the "most crooked street" in the world, Lombard Street. Last stop before the hotel was the
"Painted Ladies".
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| View from Twin Peaks |
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| Panorama. Click to enlarge |
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| Lombard Street |
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| Lombard Street |
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| Painted Ladies |
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| Our Hotel |
Unfortunately we couldn't get tickets to
Alcatraz and we didn't want to drive across the Golden Gate because the BART bay rail tunnel was closed this weekend so the bridges were really busy.
We stayed at
The Rex Hotel near
Union Square. The Rex was built in 1907 just after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. We paid more by staying right down town but we could walk anywhere and by did we walk. Friday night we just walked to Union Square then went to dinner. Saturday we must have walked 10 miles total. Did I mention that San Fran has some of the steepest hills I have ever traveled for a city? First we drove near Fort Point to take some photos of the Golden Gate, then the walk from Hell began. First stop the
Ferry Landing Farmers Market. From there we went to
Chinatown where we got one of the cheapest lunches I can remember having. Since this place did not have any seating and there was none in the area at all we walked back to Union Square where we ate. I could not believe how many people there were in Chinatown. I have never been to China before but I think I have a good idea of what it is like. Don't think I will book a trip there anytime soon. It was very tiring dodging and moving through the crush of humanity. Incredibly we did not take a singe picture of Chinatown, probably because if we stopped we would have been ran over, it was like a river of people.
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| Union Square |
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| Golden Gate |
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| Cable Car |
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| Curved Escalators, never seen that before |
We still had time before dinner so off we trekked to
Japantown. Chinatown and Japantown could not have been any different. Where Chinatown was chaotic, dirty, and bustling; Japantown was quiet, clean and orderly. We walked down Post street to Japantown and part of that trip was through some sketchy neighborhood. We had to dodge vomit on the sidewalk and saw a black guy wearing a blond wig, wearing a midriff shirt and looking 9 months pregnant. Yes it was a guy!! So we decided to go back on Sutter street and what a world of difference one street can make.
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| Japantown |
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| Our walk |
We thought that after such an exhausting day we would sleep soundly the 2nd night and we did until 2:40am when a bunch of drunk young adults decided to take an after party to the room next to us. We tried to go back to sleep but it didn't work so we got up early and headed to Pismo Beach, our 2nd stop. On the positive side the hotel took off $115 from our bill due to the noise.
On the way to Pismo I wanted to take "A" down the
Pacific Coast Highway 1. Beautiful drive but also very demanding on the driver. By the time we reached the end, we had enough of the twisting turning road.
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| Along Highway 1 |
We stayed at
The Cliffs Resort and got a room upgrade to a full ocean view. Don't know what we did to deserve that but we were happy. So we went down to the "beach", funny thing about the central coast, their "beaches" are not really beaches. At least not to anyone from SoCal. Everything is rocky with a small part of smaller chunks of rock they must consider sand.
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| Our view at Pismo Beach Hotel |
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| Giant room at Pismo Beach |
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| The "beach" below our hotel |
For dinner we went back to a wonderful Sushi restaurant.
On the way home we see
"Herbie the Love Bug".
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| Herbie the love bug |
Overall it was a really fun trip that I am glad we took.
4 comments:
Great! wish we could have done that on our trip there a few years back. Bridget had a seminar at Stanford University so we planned a trip to arrive in SF at 0700. We purchased Alcatraz tickets of the 0930 tour and I had planned out a walking/cable car tour of the city that would have lasted the rest of the day (including walking up the steps to Coit tower). Unfortunately, United Airlines cancelled out flight out of Albuquerque for no stated reason and by the time we got re-booked on another airline and arrived in SF it was 1730. National Park Service wouldn't refund our Alcatraz tickets and we didn't even get to go into the city. We just went to Palo Alto and spent the night, B did her work thing the next day and we drove to Monterey after she finished that afternoon and spent 2 days there. We both love northern California. Thank you for getting the nice photos that we were unable to get!! Tank
For me, San Francisco was transit place, once.
The room of The Cliffs Resort looks so gorgeous!
Tank,
Too bad you didn't get a chance to enjoy it. We thought about going to Coit tower but just didn't have the time.
K,
The room at The Cliffs Resort was really nice and we wish we had more time to stay there.
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