San Francisco - Day 2

The next day was Monday, but it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day so Kristina and I both had off. Apparently so did the entire Bay Area, because there was absolutely no rush hour to speak of. We took the BART into the city, and then walked along the Embarcadero. It was a pretty street, it's a good thing the elevated freeway that once was there was torn down. We got off the BART right near the Ferry Terminal:
San Francisco Ferry Terminal

You can see in the foreground a street car. San Francisco bought and restored street cars from all the major US cities and uses them along this road; each has a little sign on it saying what city it is from. Sadly I didn't see a Baltimore one.

Also along the way was a strange concrete fountain:
Concrete Fountain

It was still foggy, but we were used to it by now. We walked until we got to Fisherman's Wharf on Pier 39. There we saw the (quite noisy) sea lions.
Sea Lions

Fisherman's Wharf was nice and had a lot of neat shops. One would take a 3-d image of your face and embed it in a crystal! I am usually not one for shopping, but it was a nice area.

You could see Alcatraz from the shore:
Alcatraz

We walked among the ships of the San Francisco National Historic Park. There were crazy people swimming in the bay despite the rather chilly weather. Kristina and I then walked up to see Lombard St, the so-called most crooked street in the world!
Lombard Street

We then walked down and bought some sourdough bread which San Francisco is apparently famous for. For lunch we got clam chowder served in a hollowed out piece of said bread, which was quite good.

We rode the famous cable cars (though not the one pictured):
Cable Car

The cable car was climbing this hill:
Cable Car Hill

Kristina and I had climbed this hill ourselves; Lombard Street is at the top. So then we caught the cable car, and rode it the whole way to the end of the line near Union Square.

We then caught yet another form of public transportation, the MUNI. This particular one was half subway, half street car and it switched between the two. It ran on tracks and got its power from overhead cables. And believe it or not despite all the mass-transit we took, there is still other forms in the San Francisco area we did not take!

So once we figured out how to pay for the MUNI we headed back to Golden Gate Park, but this time to the Eastern edge. There we went to the famous Conservatory, and saw the interesting plants inside.
San Francisco Conservatory

After that we walked around the park a bit, then we figured out how to catch the MUNI back downtown. We then visited the Cable Car Museum. That was a fascinating place; you could watch the giant motors work that were turning the cables for all the cable car lines in the city. Remarkable feats of 19th century engineering. I took a picture but it didn't turn out.

Our final stop was Chinatown. We walked around a bit, as Kristina was looking for replacement tea cups for her family. We dodged some over-aggressive restaurant promoters, and at the end of the day caught the BART back to Pleasanton and then returned to Livermore.

Kristina left early on Tuesday, but we managed to figure out Air-BART and get her to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Her flight back to Maryland was uneventful.
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