USA Holiday, October 25 (Fake Tales Of San Francisco)

As mentioned, we're staying in San Bruno for the short time in San Francisco (three days) which is about 15-20 kilometres south of downtown. Thankfully the SF area has not one, not two but two and a half! train systems - the Caltrain which is more of a regional train (like V-Line in Melbourne I guess), the BART which has more services, is for the metro area and across the bay, and also has a great name! and the San Francisco MUNI (although the logo looks more like MINI) which is a neat kind of light rail that can run on the streets (like a tram) and also on a dedicated track (sometimes underground).

Before that though, it's free breakfast time! Surprising that you get a free breakfast in a fairly cheap hotel, but it turns out to be a selection of bagels/toast, cereal (only Fruit Loops and some Bran junk), muffins, fruit and juice. Pretty standard stuff but it's so convenient when you don't have to worry about finding somewhere to get breakfast every day.

The Caltrain is closer so we went with that for today. It wasn't due for a while so there was time to visit the closest 7-Eleven! These stores are much better than in Australia for the following reasons as least:

• They have a great pastries sections, with (fairly) fresh donuts and stuff
• They have a much wider range of drinks (lots of cherry and grape!)
• They have a much wider range of confectionery, with great names like 3 Musketeers, 5th Avenue, 100 Grand Bar, Jujyfruits, Mr. Goodbar, PayDay, Watchamacallit - although the range is larger, some Australia greats don't have obvious equivalents, like Cherry Ripe and Chokito

They have just insanely large containers for the fountain drink machines (fountain is what they call the self serve soft drink machines) and slurpee machines.

For some reason the electronic displays at the Caltrain don't say anything useful, it simply says the current date and time, not when the next train is coming! Also the only place where it states which platform is going in which direction is at the gates at each end of the platform, just before you cross the tracks. This seemed very strange indeed. The train seemed a little old and clunky at first, but it was clean, a smooth ride and it has two levels! so it was fine.

I know what the time is, now tell me when the train is coming!

The train goes much further south, all the way past San Jose.

Hollywood doesn't have exclusivity on these signs.

The first stop of the day was a tour of the San Francisco Giants baseball stadium, which is conveniently located in downtown and not far from the last Caltrain station. The Giants stadium was built less than 10 years ago so it's very modern and clean, as you might imagine. The best thing about it though is that it overlooks the bay. The tour guide was good and actually made the tour fairly interesting, we got to see a bunch of areas of the stadium as shown in the photos below. Unfortunately we weren't able to step out onto the field or attempt to hit some dingers (home runs). Also the field had been converted to host a UFL (American Football) game a few days before, since the baseball season was over for the SF Giants (just missed the playoffs).

Willie Mays gate, the greatest player in Giants' history.

Good tickets get you places like this.

...but you need to make it to The Bigs if you want to be here (the players dugout).

The main scoreboard, with the famous Coca-Cola bottle and glove to the left.

The opposition players change rooms, with a door signed by all players at an old SF game
(or something like that, since it seems like a lot of names).

The view from the press box.

A view from the top.

An old mascot, what it's supposed to be I don't know, certainly not a Giant.

From one corner of the stadium you can see the Bay Bridge heading towards Oakland.

...and elsewhere you get a view of downtown SF.

There was a couple of park / monument type areas close by, so the plan was to pass by these while finding somewhere quick for lunch, then keep moving. Yerba Buena Gardens (first photo) looked nice but was small, it would be a good place to have your lunch if you worked in the surrounding buildings I suppose. Union Square was mostly a cement square, the area around Union Square represents one of the major shopping areas of the city - it even had a Nike Town! Lunch was a quick stop off at the USA (the original) version of Subway. The main differences were they have a great flatbread option for your bread and the veggie patty looks and tastes different to the Australia version.

I think the other side of this water structure becomes a small waterfall.

Don't know what's supposed to be on the top of that pole. Seems I don't know a lot of things in these photos already...

Just starting to get a feel for downtown SF and one thing is obvious: hills, and lots of them.

The next stop for the day was Transamerica Pyramid. Nothing to actually do here as it's just a normal office building, just not quite your usual office building...

The Transamerica Pyramid was on the way from Union Square to Coit Tower. The Coit Tower area basically overlooks the city, but it's a fair walk to get there from where we started the day. In addition to this, we ended up going the (very) long way around because we went too far north, and reached the cliffs below the tower, meaning we had to go another few blocks to get around these damn cliffs that just kept on going. The reason I didn't just turn back right away is because I didn't realise how much these cliffs interrupt the streets - on the street map it basically seemed to indicate the streets did not reach any dead ends at all.

The houses and apartments of SF are one of the unique things about the city.

No, it's not Lombard Street, but it does seem to be the pedestrian equivalent.

Another view of Transamerica.

Hills as far as the eye can see!

To the right is the island in the middle of the Bay Bridge. To the left is Treasure Island.

The stupid cliffs.

Finally made it up to the base of Coit Tower. As mentioned, you get a good view of the city from here. The only downside is I didn't always know what I was looking at. At least I was able to find the Bay & Golden Gate bridges, Alcatraz Island, Yerba Buena & Treasure Islands. Upon buying a small item from the souvenir shop it finally hit me that:

• Dealing with US currency is going to be annoying - 1 dollar notes and 1 cent coins - didn't we get rid of these things in the early 90's? Note that I did encounter some 1 dollar coins! during my travels, but it was rare and not all machines accept them I think. And they actually have a lobby group to keep 1 dollar notes, hilarious - Save The Greenback
• Dealing with US currency is going to be annoying - all of the notes are green, haven't we always had coloured notes - how is this possibly a bad thing?
• Dealing with not knowing the price of things I'm about to buy - since every city can and will apply a different sales tax. I don't care that sales tax exists on everything, but why put price tags on things that don't include the sales tax. What's the point of that?
• Dealing with loose change - something is marked as $2.99? great, I'll get $7.01 change and I can just decline or throw away that cent. Wrong! You'll be paying like $3.27 or something stupid, and end up with a handful of change! What a great system...

The west side of the city. Less buildings, more houses.

The west side of the city. Less buildings, more houses.

The Island Of The Pelicans!

The Golden Gate Bridge.

Downtown. Must have used a lot of zoom on this photo, as it wasn't quite as close as it seems.

Next was even more walking over to Lombard Street. In particular the "crooked street" section of Lombard Street, since the entire street runs almost the length of the city (east to west) just like many others. If you look closely in the second photo above this section you can see it - the right of the two streets that look like they're "blocked" by trees near the horizon.

Lombard Street was a tourist spectacle of course, but it was funny how many come by to just see a street (myself included). Must be a little annoying, but not unexpected, for the people that live in the area. Even more funny, but not completely captured in these photos, is the amount of cars that want to drive (really slowly) down the street. I think about 75% of the cars that went down the hill were 4WD's, but I'm not exactly sure why that is.

Four vehicles, Four Four Wheel Drives!

Sadly we didn't see someone miss that Do Not Enter sign. I'm not sure how you would attempt to turn around.

Lombard Street as it heads towards the bay to the east. And there's Coit Tower in the distance too.

The famous Cable Cars (the ones where people hang from the outside - sadly I don't think I've got any photos of them) go right past this section of Lombard Street, but they did not seem to be making stops along the way, just going from one end (near the marina) to the other (downtown). The marina end was closest so we went there to check out the line. It was significant. With all of this walking - basically all around downtown SF from south to north, and from east to the middle - my foot was in a terrible amount of pain. Such pain that I couldn't see a scenario where I could stand in line long enough to get on a cable car. The alternative was only about 5% better as it turned out - walk back towards downtown through China Town to find somewhere for dinner and head home for the night.

After dinner I stopped by a 7-Eleven to try one of their Double Gulps (the biggest size available). It was then determined we may be running late for the train, so I had to try to run, in pain, carrying this massive drink container all the way to the station. Not a fun end to the day.