San Francisco

  San Francisco, California, United States
Friday, July 4, 2008

July 4, San Francisco
 
Morning cloudy 19°C/66°F, later more sun 23°C/73°F
 
Our bodies are victims of the time difference and the busy traffic outside our hotel as well as to the fog as a result of which the boats use their fog horn. As from 04.00 we are thus regularly awake therefore as soon as it can will we got to look in the hotel if the complementary breakfast is something for us. Very sweet, but that is not what we consider a breakfast, therefore we take a cup of coffee and we will search for breakfast somewhere else later.
2 blocks further, on Chesnut we take the bus, line 30 and that one takes us to Fishermans Warf.

It is still terrible quiet at 09.00 and we window-shopped until we encountered our 1st Starbucks. During window-shopping we came along a window of an art gallery where we saw a beautiful painting of the Golden Gate Bridge, we liked it immediately so much that we put it on video. This painting-story will return later. At Starbucks they sell coffee named White Chocolate Mocha and some hot wraps and rolls, therefore we take our breakfast here.



There is a cold wind this morning and we had not entirely taken this into account. Because we will take the boat to an island, we go and buy a sweater for Frans. I am always very terrified of cold so I already had put on a sweater this morning. Dressed in this warm outfit we went for pier 33 from where the boats to Alcatraz (Spanish for Pelican) take off. We had already ordered the tickets in the Netherlands by Internet and we were very glad we did! There is a considerable line of people waiting for the pay-desk where the last-minute tickets were sold and full is full. We stand in pre-paid line which was short and fast and at 10.30 we checked in for the boat from 11.00. We know Alcatraz of the films like The rock and Escape from Alcatraz, so we thought that we had an idea how it would be, but it turns out we didn't. The feeling and the sight of the really small cells were much more impressive than we expected. The large colonies sea gulls did very well lately so there were a lot of little birds. 

young seagull

The tour came with an audio tour as well, and with headsets on we walked on streets named Broadway, C&D Block, library etc. 

cell at alcatraz

A number of cells are decorated as like they were back in the days of the time that is was still a prison, so you get a good idea how it must have been there. Mainly small! 

cell blok at alcatraz

We hang around for over 2 hours here and at 13.30 we take the boat back. We are craving for lunch and we want do that at Pier 39. Pier 39 is a sociable nice place with many shops and restaurants. It is also very busy there, more people are hungry for lunch.


We find ourselves a nice seafood restaurant, Pier Market. Here it is full too, but we get a buzzer and the expectation is that we can eat within approximately 15 minutes. Armed with the buzzer we kill the waiting time shopping and we walked in by a jeweler that is across the restaurant. Well, not entirely accidentally, I have still a late birthday gift coming and this jeweler sells it! A splendid whitegold neckless. I find the associated pendant less interesting, therefore we do not take that. We will find something beautiful in time. In the meantime the 15 minutes waiting time for the restaurant had gone by and while I was still busy with the chain, the buzzer hysterically buzzed! So we payed quickly and rapidly went to the restaurant.
We had a nice table on the terrace and it is deliciously here to have lunch.

After the lunch we walked to the art-gallery where we've seen the painting in the window this morning. They are now opened, of course but unfortunately the painting had been sold yesterday. It is a 6 piece part and if we really like it we can order it by e-mail. We get e-mail address of B& J company (this appears to stand for Basia and Yuriy). When we are in the Netherlands, we can send a mail with the description of the painting and the colors we would want it painted in. Yuriy then will mail us some photos of available paintings and this way can we nevertheless get the painting we want. That seems like a good plan to us.

Because we want to see the fireworks tonight, we want to freshen up a little in our hotel, so we go to the bus stop at Columbus and we wait, and wait and wait, until someone told us that there were no buses driving at that moment! That remained for the next hour and a half still this way because that was exactly the time we needed to walk the route of the bus to the bus stop for our hotel on Chesnut. When we arrived at that point 3 buses line 30 drove in a line and passed us!

At 18.00 we were at our room for a little rest and some freshening up. An hour later we took a taxi to Fishermans Warf to celebrate the 4th of July. We knew that it was the 4th of July, because for this reason we were here on that date, but we had not taken into account the fact that it was the 4th of July! If we are ever in America again on this date, we will make reservations on time for a restaurant! All restaurants were full. At some you could still get a table but there were waiting times for a minimum of 1 hour. We didn't want that of course, because we wanted to see the fireworks. We found an somehow odd diner on this first day in San Francisco. It existed from icecream. But very good tasting icecream and very large icecream!. My icecream was larger than my stomach but happily the stomach of Frans was bigger, so he has been sacrificing himself and besides his own icecream, he also took care of a large part of mine. With the ice cream we walked to the Pier to look at fireworks.

It was busy and sociable there with live music and lots of people. It was only half an hour, from half past nine till 10 o'clock but it was one of the most beautiful fireworks I have ever seen. In spite of that it even was a little foggy what gave the colors a mysterious look, it was really beautiful. We had not yet seen fireworks in the form of a smiley before. After the fireworks we wanted to return to the hotel but, as it was already difficult in the afternoon, now nothing happened with public transportations and there were no taxis to get, at least not for us, because they were all occupied. So we walked again. We were a little bit closer to our hotel then in the afternoon so now it took us only an hour to get there! At 23.00 we were back on our room. We took a glass of wine as night cap and afterwards we fell exhausted asleep.