15D13N USA West Coast - San Francisco: Aug 2007

San Francisco (SFO)

My flight to SFO from Honolulu was delayed for 2 hours and caused me to arrive around 11pm at night. I almost missed the last subway to the city. By the time I reached downtown it was almost 12am and I was wandering on the street of SFO at midnight looking for my hostel with the map in my hand. It was scary, no joke! The city was empty and quiet and there was no one around for me to ask for direction. I was lucky to find the hostel about 20 minutes after.

The next morning, I had an easy day around the city. I just want to relax from my tiring trip the previous night. I walked around the city and also hanged around the Union Square. My hostel was one block behind the Union Square. I had signed up for a 3D2N tour out of SFO to Yosemite, Grand Canyon and Las Vegas the next day, afterwhich upon my return I will be in SFO for another 2 days. This will be a combined itinerary of my 2 full days in SFO. The last day was my departure.

These are among the first few photos that I snapped in the city of SFO. The left picture was a street nearby my hostel at Mason Street and Union Square. The right picture is to show the uphill and downhill streets in the city of SFO.

That's me walking in the street of SFO. Behind me is the Union Square and the right picture is Union Square.

See this cable car? This is the famous cable car in SFO. It is written that one must experience the cable car when in SFO but I didn't opt for it. Looking at it is enough, moreover there is nothing extraordinary and I wanted a slow walk in the city. I think it costs about US$2.50 per trip during my time there.

After some walking, I thought I might as well hop into the city's hop on hop off bus to have an overview of the city. It was a worthwhile trip. The city is beautiful and we passed by many of the city's attractions. The ticket costs about US$18 for a day pass.

I got down at Lombard Street. This is SFO's crookedest street (is there such a word?).

Continued my trip with the next bus to Hyde Pier. Nothing much here. I then decided to walk to Pier 39 before I took another slow walk back to my hostel in the late evening.

Upon my return from the 3D2N trip, I decided to walk from my hostel to Pier 39 again. It took me about 55 minutes to reach Pier 39 from Mason Street downtown. I passed by many places along the way. First it was Chinatown.

Did you see the building in the last picture? Initially I thought it was a buddhist temple but on a closer look, it is actually a bank! Cool!

Next, I also passed by the Financial District but I was not too keen to walk around the area. After all, it was only some tall buildings.

Finally I reached the bay area. Pier 39 is a little further up. I decided to take a breather here and enjoy the scenery before heading to the crowded and bustling Pier 39. The bridge behind me is the Bay Bridge while the tall buildings behind me in the 3rd picture is the financial district mentioned above.

The first sight that greeted me when I reached Pier 39 is the sight and sound of the sea lions. They were cute but smelly....haha...

This is Pier 39. It's always packed with people, especially the tourists on a weekend. There are many restaurants here, an underwater world, some booths with tour/cruise packages etc..

Decided to take a close up picture with the stationary cable car at Pier 39.

Since I have nothing much to do there, I decided to buy a cruise ticket that cost about US$25 to visit the Golden Gate Bridge. It is supposed to be one of the world's most beautiful bridge.

We also passed by the Alcatraz. I didn't want to pay a visit to the Alcatraz prison as I thought it was quite an eerie place to visit.

After coming back from the cruise, I hanged around for a while, bought myself a drink and proceed to the next stop.

This is my next stop, the Fisherman Wharf. It has many souvenir shops here and some of the shops are also selling Levis jeans. I wonder if it is real Levis but the price is a bargain, as low as US$16.

I took a slow walk at Fisherman Wharf and slowly head back to downtown again. This is one of the streets that I passed by coming back from Fisherman Wharf.

That's so much that I know about SFO in my two full days there. Coming up is the intinerary on my 3D2N tour to Yosemite, Las Vegas and Grand Canyon.