Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Larkspur Ferry to San Francisco

Today was the perfect day to do a little sightseeing in San Francisco, so we hopped the Larkspur Ferry over to the city...much easier than driving in and finding a parking space! It was a great ride and brought us right into the Embarcado. From there, we walked a couple of blocks and hopped on a cable car to Chinatown...my first ride on a cable car! When we got to Chinatown we window shopped all the way to the Fisherman's Wharf, where we took a detour through the Hyde State Pier, which had various fishing boats, tugboats and schooners tied to the piers.
After our little detour, we headed to Ghiradelli Square, where Ed had promised me a hot fudge sundae...mmmmmmmmm!!!! It was delicious! With that finished, we headed back to a cable car which took us to the top of Lombard Street, which is the crookedest street in the world. It has about 15 hairpin curves down a steep hill...the curves were designed to prevent cars from going straight down the hill and crashing! It's an amazing street, and what's more amazing is that there are houses and condos lining both sides of the street with little driveways and garages that look impossible to pull into from the street! We walked down the length of Lombard Street and hopped on another cable car to California Street, where we found the Mark Hopkins hotel, which is famous for the Top of The Mark restaurant. This restaurant is at the top of the hotel and boasts amazing views of the city below. And it's also where my parents stayed almost 58 years ago...these pics are for you, mom!


From there, we hopped on yet another cable car and took it to the end of it's route, just because we could! We stayed on it as it headed back down to Chinatown, where we got off again and found the Chinatown Restaurant for lunch...very good food and we were able to sit at an outside table located on a very skinny balcony behind a fire escape! Unique to say the least!

When we finished lunch, we headed back to the pier to catch the Larkspur Ferry back to Larkspur and the 14 mile ride back to Novato. It was the end of a really nice trip into the city...and now Ed's watching the UConn woman battle for their 78th straight win and the Championship...it's a tough fight!

Tomorrow is a local day in Novato, then Thursday we'll take the wine train for lunch and visit a winery in Sonoma...great!

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