The Golden Gate Bridge is probably the most famous tourist attraction in San Francisco and I went to see it twice. The first time was on Saturday when we drove up near the bridge and hung around the lookout points to take pictures of the bridge. Fortunately for us, we started off at the worst (comparatively) location to take pictures so as we walked closer and closer to the main tourist area; our picture opportunities got better and better. Sadly, there was cloud/fog cover over the top of the bridge so we decided not to do our cruise on Saturday.

So on Sunday, with a lot of promise we headed off to Pier 39/Fisherman’s Wharf to take the cruise. We actually found a deal from this wholesale booth and got like $4 discounts on the tickets? I didn’t have time to research all the deals so I think we got a discount 😉 Anyways, we ended up wasting like an hour and a bit waiting around because we wanted to get good seats for the cruise, and boy let me tell ya; it was worth it.

We were the first in line so we got to stand at the nose of the boat and spent the hour long cruise with the most unobstructed view of the area. We saw boats, waveboarders, and even a couple of seals swimming in the bay. Looking back, I took way to many pictures of the bridge from a distance but of course, the bridge was again covered in clouds/fog.

After going under the bridge and seeing it up close, the cruise went around Alcatraz and we got to see the ruined buildings. I didn’t know too much of the history of Alcatraz so I didn’t get to much out of it, but well at least I can say I saw it and have pictures of it. There’s also a four hour tape tour where you can go on the island, maybe I’ll do that the next time I’m in the city.

On Saturday we also went to Golden Gate Park, which is the big park in the city. There was a bunch of stuff there: Conservatory of Flowers, bisons, Dutch windmill and probably more stuff that we didn’t see. Of the three I think the Dutch windmill was the coolest; from afar, the building seemed like it was made of interesting material which I guess was actually brick. The best part of this visit was that down the street from the windmill was the Pacific coast! So we walked a block and stood around on the beach while the tide came in. Alas, the sun was again not out (OMG we brought the Seattle weather with us) but it was still fun to walk around on the beach.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: bayarea, diary, travelling