A cruisy day in San Francisco

Today has been an up-and-down sort of day; kind of appropriate for San Francisco perhaps!  We caught the BART into town again; it worked well yesterday.  We only had one thing properly planned, which was a bay cruise to see the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island.  These cruises go at regular times through the day so our plan was to get into town, find somewhere for brunch then wander to the pier for the cruise.  Brunch places proved hard to find; we didn’t want to go to a chain-type place.  We finally ended up in a diner where brunch was adequate, the coffee so-so and the service terrible.  We really don’t like the tipping thing here; as far as we are concerned, if the service is good we want to tip, if it’s bad we don’t.  Sadly the expectation is that even bad service gets a 10% tip, while good service gets 18% to 20%.  That’s about the cost of another main course in a restaurant!  Ah well, not much to be done about it.  I haven’t been brave enough to not give a tip at all when the service is poor although I have been tempted!!

It has been beautiful weather today, so we enjoyed a fairly long walk through Chinatown from the diner to the pier.  We didn’t enjoy finding we had been given the wrong coupon on Friday when we booked the cruise, as fixing this involved trying to get quickly along the very crowded wharf streets to the booking office, then back again to the boat.  Luckily we made it for the cruise time we wanted.

The cruise itself was ok.  The scenery was truly beautiful as was the San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge, and although it was very windy we had planned properly with our warm coats and beanies.  There were some kite-surfers and wind-surfers out on the water that seemed to have a death-wish; they often came perilously close to the boat or so it seemed to us!  

On the down side, the voice-over started about 15 minutes late so it was always covering sights we had long since passed; also, they said nothing interesting about Alcatraz.  We had been unable to get a tour of the island and prison (it was booked out for days in advance) so had hoped for at least a little information as we circled the island.  All they said was that it got its name from the Spanish for pelican (los alcatraces) and was originally built as an army fort.  If you are going to visit San Francisco, book your Alcatraz tour well in advance – and don’t bother with the Blue and Gold Fleet bay cruise.  If you shop around you’ll get something better.

The result of sticking to a strict grid on a steep site!

After a quick pick-me-up at the famous Boulin Bakery, we got back on to the Hop on/Hop off bus.  We went straight upstairs today, and saw some of the sights we had missed while downstairs yesterday.  Today’s tour guide wasn’t quite the entertainer we had yesterday, but I did love his comment when we could see the Trans-America pyramid next to the former headquarters of Bank of America, “there’s San Francisco’s tallest building, and the box it came in”.  We got off the tour at Little Italy and stopped at the Rogue Ales Public House (another of the boutique breweries that Gant has tried at home).  We had decided that since we were in Little Italy, it would be Italian for dinner and turned once more to Trip Advisor.  The best-rated place it gave us was a bit of a walk away (six blocks west, five south) from us but that didn’t seem too bad.  Of course we found that all six of the westward blocks were uphill – and that’s saying something in this city!!  We felt we had earned our dinner.

The restaurant, called Seven Hills, was superb.  The owners and chef follow the buy local and fresh philosophy and it was most certainly worth the walk.  The food was delicious, the service was fantastic (no quibbling over a 20% tip here) and the owner came over to strike up a conversation so we felt very welcome.  Go there if you are ever in this city (although you might want to catch the Hyde Street cable car or a bus to get to it).  We felt this had been a very lucky choice for our last night in San Francisco.

Getting home nearly ruined the good feeling – we walked for over half an hour to our BART station and then tried desperately to find a restroom that was in a useable state.  We couldn’t even find a McDonalds!  But all’s well that ends well, and we did get home safely if a bit later than we planned.

Tomorrow we begin our journey to Portland – two days of over six hours driving each day.  There may not be much to post.

We would love to have some feedback from those of you reading about our adventures – while we are having a wonderful time and really enjoying each other’s company, we do miss our friends and love to hear from you.  Please do comment J