Honeymoon Trip: Day 4

Wednesday! Our first full day in the Bay Area.  We got ourselves up, grabbed some breakfast and geared up for a day in San Francisco.  Without any other serious plans, we thought we'd shoot for the Embarcadero to try to get some Alcatraz tickets in person, just in case some people had cancelled or something.

We had our second dismaying moment of the trip (#1 being no Alcatraz tickets/no printer at the hotel) when we hit heavy traffic at the Bay Bridge toll plaza at 9:50 a.m.  Isn't rush hour supposed to be over??  Apparently not.  We also did not know that there was a toll!  We were chagrined to find out that the toll goes down from $6 to $4 after 10 a.m., too, and we were missing it by mere minutes.  Rats!  Once we got through the toll booth snarl, traffic wasn't too bad, though certainly busy, on the bridge itself.  Here is a glimpse of us crossing bridge, from the passenger seat:

Once across the bridge and back on solid ground, we parked the car in an all-day lot for $20 and started walking up the Embarcadero toward Pier 33, where the Alcatraz Tours office is.  

Alas, there were still no tickets that we could obtain to get us out onto Alcatraz island itself.  Just harbor cruises, which wasn't what we wanted.  The best we would do would be getting a shot of the island at sunset while on our Segway tour the next day.

Our next item of business was to walk to a Walgreens to buy some MUNI/BART passes in order to get around the city!

Mission Accomplished!  Here we are on a streetcar.

We hopped on board a street car in the Wharf and headed to the Embarcadero MUNI station, where we could catch a train out to Golden Gate Park.  Time to get down to business!  I had high hopes for Golden Gate Park, since I had heard such wonderful things online.  Bison paddock! Equestrian Center!  Japanese Tea Garden!  California Academy of Sciences!

I don't know what I was expecting... you can read my Yelp review here, but suffice it to say that the park was WAY bigger than I'd anticipated, even looking at my map.  We didn't see the half of it before having to head back to catch a rush-hour MUNI train to get back to our car by the 5:00 parking expiration.  It was beautiful though!  I'd love to go back and do it justice.

For good measure, here is Nick sitting near the polo/soccer field just after arriving at GG Park.

When we got back to the station, we had a little time to kill before we had to be back at the car, so we took a moment to ride a cable car up and down California Street, which was an adventure!  We saw some neat buildings, as well.

Afterwards, we made our way back to the car on foot, stopping to mess around the plaza in front of the Ferry Building. We saw one of their toilet booth things, as well as a seagull enthusiastically consuming the carcass of a dead pigeon.  We also learned about the Embarcadero highway which was a complete disaster.  New information!

Back at our car and partially demoralized from hoofing it around the city, we formulated a game plan for the rest of the evening.  Super Husband used his powers of telephonic communication to book us a Segway tour for the next evening, and then we set course for a parking garage in the Wharf that we had seen earlier, advertising "2 hours free parking after 6 p.m. with validation from restaurants at Pier 39!"  We parked and walked across to the Pier to select a place at which to dine.  On the way, a nice middle-aged couple asked us to take their picture, and they returned the favor for us!

We looked around Pier 39 and decided to dine at Swiss Louis.  We enjoyed ourselves, and we had a lovely view of the sunset and some sea lions being lazy on the docks. We each ordered a shrimp dish.

After dinner we headed back to our hotel in Emeryville, then decided to relax by catching a movie at the nearby AMC theater, since we are Stubs card members.  We saw "The Campaign" and had a nice time!  Then it was time for sleep.

Next post: Thursday, when we smartly leave the car in Oakland and take in a Giants Game and a Segway Tour!