San Francisco Day 3 and 4 and home

We spent our last full day of our trip away doing a lot of walking;  it seems like we have walked around America. After our excellent complimentary breakfast at the hotel we walked through the city to the Ferry Building where they have a farmers market three times a week.  The market had lots of really nice food with most of it organic, even the flowers. The good Blue Bottle coffee shop also has a busy stand at the market.

Height shop front

After wandering the market, we walked up to the bus stop to catch a bus to the other side of town , so we could go to the California Academy of Sciences. We waited for a while for our bus but then got on another one that the driver said would go near the park. However, he did not tell us we needed to change buses. This proved easy, but it was a wild suburb where we changed, so we were glad the trolley bus came quickly. We got off our second bus in Height, a famous area for the 60’s Hippy movement. We walked up and down the main street and had lunch. It is unfortunate that a number of the hippy descendants are still living on the streets with their pig dogs.  We then walked through Golden Gate Park to the Science Museum. Golden Gate Park is larger than Central Park in New York but not nearly as nice and the homeless and their dogs seem to have taken up residence.

The Academy of Sciences is excellent  and we walked the whole place.  By the time we got to sit in the very comfortable seats in the Planetarium , we were nearly asleep, but the show was exceptional.

We walked back to the bus stop and caught a bus to the Castro and walked down past Harvey Milk’s shop to the streetcar that took us back into the centre of town.

It is baseball mad here at the moment, as San Francisco is playing in the “play offs” with Philadelphia.  The play-offs are a best of seven games that they play over ten days, the winner going into the World Championship with the winner of the other league.  The SF Giants have won three games and  they needed one more win to move into the final. So along with all the locals we decided to “catch the game” in a bar. The game goes on for hours with a million ads.  The SF Gaints lost, so now there are two more games in Philadelphia.

Today is our last day, so we have spent the morning getting organised/packed to go home. This afternoon we are just going to have lunch and have a look at city centre before going to the airport for our long trip home.

It has been a wonderful trip but we will be glad to get back to our little quiet cottage.

San Francisco Day 2

Our second day in San Francisco was a physical one but very enjoyable. We did not leave the hotel too early as there was think fog. At about 10 am we walked around the corner to catch the cable car to the harbour area to hire our bikes. Riding the cable cars is fun but not speedy, the streets are so steep it is like riding a roller coaster in slow motion. The cable cars can not stop quickly, so they rely on the cars to keep out of there way, so there is a lot of bell ringing. However, they do need to stop at the traffic lights, but they stop in the middle of the intersections where it is flat.

We hired the bikes from Blazing Saddles and they were excellent mountain bikes. We then headed off to Sausalito about 12 kilometers away over the Golden Gate Bridge. The ride is mainly on flat going or down hill and mostly off the road.

Sausalito is a cute little town and we had lunch there, then caught the ferry back to the Ferry Building, passing the famous island of Alcatraz. We then had a 15 minute ride along the very popular  habour area back to the bike shop. The sun came out in the afternoon and it was a perfect day for bike riding.

Once we were back on two feet, we walked up the VERY steep hill to Lombard Street and watched a number of cars slowly zig zag there way down the most winding street in the world. We then caught a cable car back to the hotel.

We finished the day having dinner with friends at a very nice restaurant called Le Colonial.

Alcatraz

Anna riding over the Golden Gate Bridge.

The Golden Gate Bridge.

Our cable car heading up the hill.

A number of professional dog walkers were along the beach.

The view back to the city from the bridge.

A hilly street.

Lombard street.

Our lunch place in Sausalito.

San Francisco Day 1

In New York you cannot really book a taxi, as there are 13,237 working cabs it is expected you can normally find one. However, in Harlem at 5.30 am we were not going to chance it, so we needed to book a hire car service. With a recommendation of one reliable company, we booked the car online and were very pleased to see it sitting outside the Flophouse at 5.20am.

We had an 8am flight to San Francisco , but in America they recommend you arrive at the airport two hours before your flight, to make sure you get through security in plenty of time. The flight to San Francisco takes six hours and you gain three hours in time.  After being in New York with a population of about 8.5 million people, San Francisco seems a bit of a ghost town with only 850,000 people but it is very nice.

Coffee

After a busy time in New York we just had a quiet afternoon today. We found plenty of nice food in New York and the coffee was an improvement on Kentucky. San Francisco really has embraced the slow food movement, with lots of organic produce and good espresso coffee. The Blue Bottle Coffee Company is making a good cup of coffee look like science, but they can make coffee. So after lunch we sought out the “Blue Bottle” and had our first good cup of coffee since we have been in the USA. We then just walked up through the shops to China Town.

The Cable car

All the hills in San Francisco are a bit unexpected, after being in so many flat American towns. However, if you do not want to walk, the Trolleybuses (a cross between a tram and a bus) and Cable Cars can easily take you up and down the hills. While walking back to our very nice little hotel in the centre of town, The Inn At Union Square ,the famous San Francisco fog started to shroud the top of the buildings and move into the streets and the temperature quickly dropped.  Tomorrow we plan to hire some bikes and ride over the Golden Gate Bridge.

New York Day 5

 

The Apollo

 

By day five we are starting to become locals in Harlem. We had breakfast at Kitchenette again and the service was excellent and people like to hear you are from Australia. We then went to the famous Apollo Theater which is just around the corner from where we are staying. We joined the 11am tour, which was a very funny experience plus a wonderful tour. The weekly Amateur Night at the Apollo has been going for over 75 years. Many famous people like Michael Jackson at nine years old, have made their first appearance here.  Our tour guide, Billy Mitchell has seen most of them working at the Apollo for nearly 50 years. On our tour was an eclectic mix of people. Part of the tour was to do your own/group act on the stage (we did not know this was part of the deal), as if you were at the Amateur night.  Our group had a dancing group of school children from South Africa who were very good, we had an old man who tapped danced, also very good. As Anna and I were the only Australians, one of us had to do something, so I played air guitar for a Canadian man who sang a Bob Dylan song; he was good. There were a number of other funny acts, all surprisingly good.

 

The Museum

 

After the tour and we had said goodbye to a number of our new best friends, we headed to a recommended place for lunch but it was closed, so we returned to E.A.T. and had another good lunch. We then went to the Guggenheim museum . This building is wonderful to see and be in, as it is round and you walk round and round and spiral up looking at the art on the way.

Following a bit of culture, we walked across Central Park to catch the subway to B and H Photographic , the biggest photo/video shop in the World. The shop is on three levels and is just huge, so big they have a conveyor belt to send things up/down and around the store.  You can buy anything to with photos and video. We did not buy anything but it was good to see. We finished our New York city experience with another trip to Times Square, followed by catching the subway back to Harlem. We finished the day with dinner at the famous historic Lennox Lounge . We were hoping for some jazz but that did not start until 9.45pm and we had a plane to catch early in the morning for San Francisco.

New York Photos

View of where the world trade towers once stood.

E.A.T. an excellent lunch place. Like everyone here they are getting ready for Halloween.

One of the many external fire escapes.

Halloween decorations.

The High Line

Ice Scatting at the Rockefeller Centre.

The wonderful Statue of Liberty

A view of Central Park.

One of the wonderful shop displays in 5th Ave. With guards on the doors many of these shops are just for window shoppers.

Another good shop in 5th Ave.

The madness of Time Square.

One of the views from the Rockefeller center.

Listen to a small part of our Harlem Church Service

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New York Day 4

Staying in New York you get to realise the city has the best and worst of things to experience.  However, with an open mind your possibilities are endless. On day four of our New York stay, we started with a return visit to the Kitchenette for breakfast, which was excellent again. We then headed to the First Corinthian Baptist Church for their Sunday service. This was an exhilarating experience and a highlight of our trip. One of the few white people in the packed congregation of several hundred, we were made to feel welcome and as if we belonged. There was a real sense of community and inspiration, which came together through the wonderful gospel singing.

On leaving the church, on a perfect autumn day we headed to Central Park . The top of Central Park is just a short walk from Harlem. However the wonderful park is massive, so we cheated a bit and caught a bus down the side on 5^th Ave to a place called E.A.T , which has wonderful things people can buy and take as a picnic to the park or you can eat there, as we did. We then went back to the park and followed it through to the City. The park is amazing especially on the weekends when the roads are closed, there are 1000′s of people just enjoying all the sights and sounds of the park but as it is so huge it is not crowded. There are buskers, people walking dogs, playing ball games, reading, eating, playing musical instruments, riding a bike, taking a horse drawn carriage ride, and one girl had set up a tight rope and was practicing tight robe walking; it has a great atmosphere and is beautiful.

Once we arrived in the city we walked along side the exclusive shops on 5^th Ave all the way down to 41^st st. Many of the shops do not shut until 7 or 8 pm even on a Sunday. We then went to the Regal Premium Experience movie theater just off Times Square, to see the new film Red . The film is not the greatest ever made but it is fun and all the people are great. Then it was time to catch the subway back. We have the subway fairly well worked out now and it is a cheap and easy way to get about.