San Francisco

Typed on 11th April 2009 at 8.53pm :-

At Golden Gate Bridge, the landmark of San Francisco. Bloody cold wind blowing I tell you! My fingers were completely frozen!

We took Southwest Airlines from LA to San Fran - a budget airline - the ticket costs us $70+$60 each for return flights. I was pleasantly surprised because they gave us free drinks (pretty decent selection) and honey roasted peanuts. Better than AirAsia.

And they had a very organized way of boarding the plane. When you check-in, it is written on your boarding pass you are the passenger number-what to be checking in. So boarding is according to those numbers printed on your boarding passes. They have properly marked out locations for you to be queuing up. How cool is that? Much better than AirAsia - again.

Anyway, we landed in San Francisco International Airport - very nice and modern and far better than LAX. And we took the BART (one of their train systems) straight into the heart of the city - cost us about $5. We were heading to Chinatown, where our hotel Astoria is.

After dumping our luggage at the hotel, we walked out to catch our first cable car ride. Luckily we had our 3-day travel pass ($18) which enabled us to hop on and off any bus, tram or cable car as much as we like. The cable car was packed - but the ride was awesome. It gave a fantastic feel of San Francisco - and whenever I think of San Fran (which coincidentally has the same initials as my name), I will remember the feeling of riding on the cable car.

The cable car is a typical San Francisco landmark.

We rode the cable car to Fisherman's Wharf.

This is called the "turn table". This is the end of the route for the cable car. It goes on it, then the drivers manually turn the cable car around so it can go back the other way.

Typed on 13th June 2009 at 10.37am :-

I'm too lazy to type so much. So I shall just caption the photos. I don't have many of San Francisco, because KF took most of the photos, and most are in RAW format, he hasn't had the time to process them yet. So these are what we have ...

Clam chowder - apparently a must-have when in Fisherman's Wharf. I think it's overrated, my Campbell's soup tastes similar. But when in SF, you have to do what every tourist is doing ...

The seals at Pier 39. They're wild seals that suddenly decided to make Pier 39 their home.

We accidentally arrived in the gay area of Castro, after getting on the wrong bus.

But we found what we were looking for - yummy hotdogs! I ABSOLUTELY recommend Rosamunde's Sausage Grill ... the hotdogs are authentically fabulous!

The menu is yummy-licious! Nope, I don't think that's Rosamunde.

Jellyfish at the California Academy of Science - the most fascinating museum I've ever been to. The most captivating thing I saw was a huge octopus, its tentacles hypnotizingly suctioning and unsuctioning along the glass enclosure. And the planetarium was awesome!

We spent our last full day in San Francisco roaming at "Land's End". The beautiful name of the place is what attracted me to put it on our itinerary. We spent half a day walking along the trail, which runs along the cliffside of San Francisco.

There was a small cave we went into along the trail.

The view from outside the cave at Land's End.

One of the lookout points at Land's End. At one corner you can see the Golden Gate Bridge (the little red tip of it). This is also where we saw a real life whale. It was pretty cool to be able to do some whale-watching - a first for me.

The wind-swept cypress trees along the Land's End trail.

Now, our "moments of timeless pleasure" - Ghirardelli Chocolate! This is really an absolute MUST-DO when in San Francisco ... expensive, and so decadently sinful chocolate ... I'd eat this everyday if I could. At one end of this ice-cream restaurant was a chocolate mill, with rich milky chocolate churning slowly, mesmerizing me into swoon-land.

One of the famous Ghirardelli sundaes. The best and most unforgettable is its chocolate peanut butter sundae - MUST EAT!!!

Ghirardelli's magnetic pull dragged us back there twice in the span of 3 days.

Now this is what I'm talking about - churning chocolate - slurp!

Taken at Alamo Square - don't the houses look familiar? It's from Full House! :) These houses are called the Painted Ladies.

So that's about it. San Francisco. A wonderful tourist-y town. I liked the Golden Gate Bridge (not golden at all), and Land's End, and the Science Academy, and Ghirardelli! And although I'm broke from the trip, but ... I'd rather be broke from travelling than from shopping ;)