San Fran, So Far

Part 1: Getting there

Arrived at the airport, greeted Ange, checked in our luggage and made our way through customs. Waited for plane, boarded and sat at the back of a fairly squished cattle-class 737. Cloud set in shortly after Chch so there wasn’t much to see. Arrived in Auckland, took a fairly brisk walk along the blue line to International Terminal and checked in for remainder of flight. Got bomb sniffed, then boarded our plane, a 737. Much fancier and roomier than the 737, bit slower down the run way though. Then we were off on our way!

Slept off and on, ear plugs made a welcome difference to the constant roar. Watched the sun rise, but was on wrong side of plane to see the actual sun.

Clouds at dawn / Sunrise

11 hours, 30 minutes later we touched down in San Francisco! Another hour later we had finished taxing over the tarmac; big airport. What a relief to get off the plane! Joined a very long queue at Customs and took a good 30 minutes to get through, but the actual questions were easy; we even had a bit of a laugh with the customs official. And there was no“No jokes allowed” sign; there goes that theory.

Next we collected our checked luggage; a lot of suitcases looked identical to mine. Lucky I had 3 name tags on mine because the biggest one had ripped off. After this you proceed through a checkpoint where an official decides whether you’re suspicious and need to empty your suitcase or not. He waved us on and then we were out of customs and into the United States.

Went looking for rental car quotes; wow! You’d never believe they landed a man on the moon! Apparently they can’t book a car for more than 30 days at a time; they actually need to book it as two different contracts. The number of keys the lady whacked to bring up a quote were scary. That was National. Then we tried Hertz; the lady there said they flat out couldn’t book a car 3 days in the future, they only did here and now. She quietly suggested we’d have better luck on their website, and that it’d be cheaper too!

So back on the AirTrain… oh yes the AirTrain. A little rubber-wheeled, electric train-in-the-sky thing, linking all the different parts of the airport (they have 2 international terminals, a complete different rental-caar building… it goes on), complete with robotic “DOORS CLOsing, SET LUGGage BRAKES TO ON” voice. Seems they forgot to include a driver too!

Highways abound around San Fran airport / Inside of the AirTrain

Now it was time to get to San Fran itself. BART seemed the obvious way. Which stop though? No prob, I’ll check my maps… rats, left me good street maps at home :-( Eventually we decided on a station and joined the queue. Ended up chatting with a nice Texan behind us (“Texas is pretty small, only 8-10 million each in Dallas/Fort Worth”) who was off to Burning Man. He actually knew where NZ was.

Caught our train, dragged our luggage up a small mountain and arrived at the Hotel des Arts.

The elevator here is one of those really old fashioned ones with a normal style door you open to get to the life shaft, and another metal gate you slide open to enter the lift. Really needs an instruction manual! After about 10 minutes we arrived at the front desk and checked in. Got a cool little room, very nicely done complete with floor to ceiling murals of skeleton cowboys and angels catching stars. Different!

Explored Chinatown and ate a ginormous, but tasty pizza.

San Fran skyline

Slept very well.

Day 2; Pier 39

Woke up, ate, hopped on a street car (aka tram). Whizzed off along Market St to Pier 39. What a contrast to Chinatown! Chinatown was full of Asian flea markets, tea bars, and bamboo back scratchers. Pier 39 was flash, tidy, and very touristy. But we loved it! Main attraction of course was the aquarium. What an amazing place!

The jelly fish were AMAZING. They had two giant tanks of them and I spent ages just watching as they drifted up and down the tanks. The colours were amazing, beautiful translucent electric blues for the smaller jellies, and white/yellow/brown for the big ones.

Next exhibits were the walk-through tunnel tanks, filled with amazing critters. Lots of starfish and anemones, but also some very strange critters like the 7 foot long, 250 kilo, 100 year old Giant Bass, and the stripy leopard sharks. There was also a school of fish that would whizz by every so often.

Giant Bass… very friendly looking.

 
Jellyfish again / shark swims over Ange / Shark again

 
Starfish and school of fish / Weird fish & school of fish

I wanted to see an octopus, but apparently they’re very shy and spend all their time hiding :-( The touch-pool made up for it though; they had a shallow pool with some rays, a skate, and a leopard shark, all happy to be touched. The rays were a laugh though, they kept on jumping up and almost doggy-paddling around with their head out taking a good look about. Then they’d swim around slapping their wings on the water and splashing everyone. One even did backstroke for a bit. Apparently they’re 2-3 years old and very curious at this age; they certainly liked the attention!

We explored the pier some more, ate a big mexican lunch at La Salsa (I was addressed as senor) and walked some more. Saw Alcatraz across the water, lots of seals and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Everything ‘Cisco in one photo! Golden Gate Bridge at left, seals in middle, Alcatraz at right.

Watched some break dancers, they were very slick, great fun to watch and very entertaining. The tallest guy there got a lot of attention from the ladies when he removed his top! Apparently he’s been working out, according to Angela. He was mobbed at the end for photos lol.

 
Flip over two grown men / Mr Muscles poses with the rest of his crew and some very happy looking females!

Did some walking, saw a herd of Segways, sat on the grass, endured a singer, climbed a hill, walked down a hill, saw a drinking fountain with a special drinking-bowl for dogs, returned back to Pier 39 and had a massive pizza again.

 
Herd of Segways / Sitting on the grass / Steep Street

Caught the street car back home and collapsed onto the bed. This holiday thing is exhausting!

(Note: click on any photo to enlarge it)