25 September: San Francisco

We were up and out to drop the car off by 9am. Awe. If the parking in San Francisco weren't so expensive, I'd be more sad to see the car go, but we had a great time and certainly made the most of it yesterday at least :)

I'd already booked us tickets on the 10:30am cruise to Alcatraz, so we caught the F-line down to Pier 33 and had a quick breakfast before we got on the boat (mode of transport: sea *check*).

Funny how I'm fascinated by Alcatraz, but I've never been to Robben Island. I really should go sometime.

The boat rides there and back were nice. We did the Audio tour in the cell block when we got to the island. It's very well done. Even tho I don't know much about all their "famous" prisoners ...

I guess the fascination is with the escapes and because of all the movies and TV shows.

I thoroughly enjoyed the visit. It was also interesting to learn about the Indian Occupation, which I knew nothing about.



When we got back we headed down to Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf. I had been planning on having Clam Chowder in San Fran, apparently it's a thing. And Boudin's Bakery was the place. So we stopped for lunch as soon as we saw one. Clam Chowder in a sour dough bowl!

The Trucker just watched, horrified. The boy can't stand seafood. So after I'd eaten, we continued in search of some lunch for him. The chowder was quite nice actually (generally I'd avoid clams). And the sour dough bowl was quite fun. But I dunno how you eat the actual bowl-part ... the lid-part was perfect for dunking. Yum yum. Guess I need more practice with bunnies - haha.

We stopped to see the Pier 39 sea-lions. No idea what or if there is a difference between a sea-lion and a seal ... they look the same to me! After looking online, it seems there IS a difference ... who knew?



Naturally, The Trucker gravitated straight to the nearest In n Out ... hahaha! We got take-out and walked a bit further to sit at the beach at the San Francisco Maritime National Park.

After his lunch, we stopped for some Ben and Jerry's and headed to The Exploratorium for the rest of the afternoon.

We got kicked out when it closed, an hour and a half later. We didn't get to do everything there, but played like absolute kids while we were there :) Absolutely loved it! Highly recommend this place to everyone, with or without kids.



And then we took a wander around The America's Cup Pavillion. Apparently USA won the cup 9-8 against New Zealand today in the final race. We were headed to the Concert area, to wait for The Lumineers.

OMG. It's really hard to get used to paying 10 USD for a drink. I got some short-rib tacos for dinner which were pretty yummy. They seem to have a select bunch of stalls which are repeated every so often around the place, hopefully, I assume, alleviating the queues. Which only worked in our favour because we were there so early, the queues got crazy as it got later and more people arrived.

Before going into the concert area, we got super nervous because I'd bought 2 little taster bottles of California wine at Pier 39. And yup, you guessed it, since we hadn't been home, we had them in our bag. And they didn't even bat an eyelid at them when they searched our bag on entry ... and they definitely saw them, they took them out to search the bag thoroughly. Amaze-balls.

And let me tell you, with the R100 beer, those two bottles came in super handy when we drank them there later ;)

There were 2 supporting acts, Nathaniel Rateliff and Dr Dog. Neither of which impressed us very much ... even tho we'd tried listening to some of their music before we'd even left for the trip.

It was absolutely freezing up on the bleachers waiting for The Lumineers. Luckily Ghirardelli was selling hot chocolate :)

And then The Lumineers came on stage. And they were *amazing*. I liked their music beforehand, but I dunno that I would've gone to the concert if The Trucker wasn't such a fan. But now I think they are fantastic!

They were so great on stage, such fun. And they even stepped off the stage and came and played a song or two right in the middle of the crowd. Brilliant. And that female cellist / vocalist of theirs (Neyla Pekarek) ... un-be-lievable.

Getting home left us completely drained after that high tho. The public transport here is nothing like New York. And the queue was jam-packed after the concert. I, personally, find their variety of busses, trams and cable-cars and their combination of routes and times tricky to plot a route without the help of Google. And my phone battery had died :(

So we caught a cab home instead. Cheaper than 2 tickets on the cable-car Google suggested before dying o_0

Yawn. Shattered. Another long day, filled to the brim!