A weekend in San Francisco - Part 1

Because I needed to recharge my Delta miles before the end of December to retain my accumulated miles), we decided a month or so ago to use Delta for a weekend in San Francisco. I could have paid $50 and purchased a thousand miles, and that would have done it; but we thought it would be more fun to spend a little more money and have some pleasure from it.

We flew prop jet from SAN to LAX, and then from LAX to SFO, arriving Friday afternoon to a most beautiful San Francisco day. We've been there only by car years and years ago or as we were just flying through from one place to another. This was a ton of fun, and we would surely take another trip like this.

It was only the second time we've relied on public transportation to get us around, and because San Francisco's public transportation is amazingly complete, we were so glad we didn't bother to rent a car!

On Friday afternoon, we walked for a few hours while waiting for our room to be ready.


We weren't too many blocks from Grace Cathedral, with a lovely park across the street from it, but those few blocks were up and down hills and we welcomed a place to stop and let our leg muscles catch up with us. (We really gave our legs a workout this weekend! Although Lauren walks as a regular part of his daily life, I don't. I need to keep this up so I stay strong and ready to travel again.)

We enjoy visiting churches when we travel, and this one was open inviting us inside. Like all cathedrals, Grace Cathedral is huge. The stained glass windows are beautiful, but we got so caught up in looking at them and reading the inscriptions, I forgot to take pictures. We decided we would return for the 11:00 services on Sunday morning, and we were glad we did. More about that later.

Mel's Drive In (which really isn't a drive in) was attached to our hotel, The Opal, so we stopped there on our way back to check it out. We ended up having supper there on Friday evening. Mel's is made up like the old soda fountain restaurants which were popular during our high school years, and it was cute. The original Mel's, featured in the movie American Graffiti, is down near the water, and we passed it on one of our trips around town. We found another old-style diner, too, called Lori's, and we had lunch there one day. We thought the food at Lori's was better, but on our last day in town, we had hot apple pie at Mel's, and changed our minds! Yum, yum, delicious!

On Saturday, after studying the maps and asking questions about how to get around the city, we walked a few blocks over to California Street and caught a cable car to the downtown area. We'd never ridden a cable car before, so this was a first for us, and it was a lot of fun. We even had to transfer from one car to another to make the journey from our hotel to downtown.



Cable cars have no engines - they are totally dependent on cables that pull them along the tracks, and it was amazing how they could be pulled up some of those hills. They are steep!

At the end of the line, the cars either have to go backwards the way they came (if they are equipped to do so), or they have to be pushed and pulled to a round turn table so they can be turned around. It was fun to watch the turn-around operation.

We found that there were so many people out enjoying the good weather that the wait was sometimes 45 minutes to an hour. As we were riding up and down the hills during the day, cars passed people who were waiting because there was just no room for another person - not even one who was standing on the running boards holding the post. Lauren and I actually rode standing up on the outside once - I didn't think I'd ever be doing that, but I did, and I didn't fall off!


We are somewhat timid souls, trying new things in small steps. But after our successful trip down town to the shopping district (where we didn't shop), we decided that we were ready to take the cable car to the other end of the line, and we rode to the Hyde Street Pier at Fisherman's Wharf.

We were delighted to find that we could see the Golden Gate Bridge from there while we toured some historic old boats in the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. Our Golden Age cards, which we both remembered to bring, got us into the Park with no charge.


The Historical Park is really impressive. These boats are practically right out of Pirates of the Carribean! We spent a while being fully satisfied American taxpayers!


The Park has a number of (volunteer?) docents who enthusiastically explained how things worked and to give people a hands on experience of tying knots and other tasks they might be required to take care of had they been part of the crew.

To be continued....