Day 17 Santa Cruz to San Francisco

  San Francisco, California, United States
Sunday, June 1, 2008

 
We were up at 8am after a good nights sleep, possibly the first time this holiday I have slept all night. We had coffee in the room and headed out towards San Francisco, stopping off to top up with petrol/gas. A tip for non-USA travelers, don't bother trying to use Chevron service station self service. When you swipe your credit card it asks for your ZIP code which we obviously don't have.
 
We drove up Highway 17, 880, 101. We stopped in San Jose at McD's for breakfast. As we entered San Francisco you could see the fog rolling over the hills to the NW! As we entered the city it obviously got much busier. Now the TomTom is good, but sometimes its location lags a bit behind where you are which means when you approach turn offs it sometimes tells you a little bit late.
 
Well, that's my excuse for ending up on the  80 and heading over the Bay Bridge! "Bad luck, toll road" says Johanna from the TomTom. Bad luck? You were navigating dear! Luckily we got off at the turn off to Treasure Island and pulled a flipflop back into the City.
 
We were in a bit of a rush as the hire car had to be back in 15 minutes time. "You have reached your destination, Darling" says TomTom. Great. I pulled into the hotel, dropped off Catriona and the cases and took off for Hertz. Hang on, isn't that Union Square ahead? Oh dear, what hotel have I just dropped Catriona off at then?
 
I got to Hertz on O'Farrell street and dropped the car off with 10 mins to go and walked back to the hotel. I I can't remember what hotel I had dropped her off at, its one block down from the Westin (so 2 blocks from the Chancellor). Catriona had luckily made her way up to the Chancellor with the 2 suitcases and bags - isn't it lucky she's from Highland stock :)
 
It was midday and way too early to check in (check in's 3 pm), but we left our bags and went for a walk round Union Square and surrounding streets. We went for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory on the top floor of Macy's. The wait was only about 10 mins. We had a lunch BBQ Ranch Chicken salad and Mini Crabcakes with a small French salad. There was nothing small or lunch about the salads, they were both huge!
 
We had to have our Cheesecakes to go, ADAM'S PEANUT BUTTER CUP FUDGE RIPPLE (Creamy Cheesecake Swirled with Caramel, Peanut Butter, Butterfingers and Reeses Peanut Butter Cups) and DUTCH APPLE CARAMEL STREUSEL  (Original Cheesecake, Baked Apples, Caramel and Brown Sugar Cinnamon Walnut Streusel). With a couple of drinks and tip, total was $60.
 
We sat out in the blazing sunshine of Union Square (not a bit of fog in sight!) and watched a troup performing some acrobatics to music on what looked like a climbing frame and climbing wall. Just after 2pm we went back to the Chancellor to see if our room was ready yet.. Still wasn't quite ready so we waited in Reception. About 2.30 pm our room was ready, they told us we had been upgraded to a Suite as it was our 25th Anniversary! We were elated.
 

Chancellor Hotel

The room is a living room and bedroom with a 4 poster iron bed. Each room as its own bathroom. There were a jar of sweets/candies, box of chocolates and a bottle of wine waiting. Each bathroom comes with its own Chancellor Rubber Duck :)
 

View from Chancellor Hotel

We started sorting out our luggage. We have 5 bags we need to convert to 2 suitcases and keep each case down to a max of 20kg for our flight back from London to Inverness. We had already thrown out some magazines, left books at the Wayfarer. After that, Catriona luxuriated in her first bath in 2 weeks with a Lush bath bomb while I packed stuff up, wrote up the blog uploaded photos and watched Pirates of The Caribbean . I appear to have left my 2GB SD card from my camera on the bed at the Ocean Pacific and who knows what's happened to my carrying case for the TomTom (ah,no found that in a side pocket later on). Ah well, we still have our passports!
 

St. Frances Drake with Harry Dentons at top

This evening we went to Harry Denton's Starlight Room (which we meant to go to last time but we have no excuse now as it is directly across the road), It's up on the 21sr floor. It was quite quiet when we went in at 7pm but it got busier earlier. We sampled Cable Car cocktails (Captain Morgans spiced rum, lemon juice, and orange curacao served on the stem with a cinnamon sugar rim) - a few of them! $10 a shot. We got chatting with another couple from Canada and then met a couple from Fife in Scotland who had just arrived the night before. Small world :)
 

Cable Car Cocktails, chin chin!

We wobbled out about 9.30 pm and didn't feel like going to a restaurant, just as well as it was too late for most of them anyway. Why do Americans eat so early? All the restaurants always shut usually by 10pm.
 
We decided just to have a pizza at Uncle Vito's again as it was just one block up. We had a Mountain (The house combo - with salami, pepperoni, onion, bell pepper, mushrooms and sausage.) and a Greek (The distinctive flavor of feta cheese makes this one so popular with salami, pepperoni, bell pepper and black olives.) washed down with a couple of Anchor Steams.
 
Another tasty pizza later we came back to the Chancellor for a coffee and some Ghirardelli chocolate. No rush to get up in the morning but I'm sure we will still hear the ting ting of the Cable cars and police/fire sirens in the morning despite being on the top floor. The wonderful sounds of living in a city I guess! Last night in San Francisco :(