Week commencing Sunday 21st May 2000
Sunday 21st May
We are having a 'Day at Leisure'
in sunny downtown SF today.
This
is the chandelier on the mezzanine floor of the hotel.
Wells
Fargo banks are all over the place here.
We tried to find the stagecoach, but no joy 8-)
One
of the lesser slopes in San Francisco !
This place has got some serious hills.
If we carry on at this rate, we'll be seven stone weaklings when we get back
!
Monday
22nd May
OK, back to the pre-booked tours.
Today is 'San Francisco City Tour and Alcatraz'
This
is the view of San Francisco from Twin Peaks.
On the left is Haight Ashbury, home of the beautiful people in the sixties.
We'll be checking it out later on, Dave 8-)
On the right is Castro, stonghold of the San Francisco homosexual community.
We haven't seen much evidence of these guys. They don't seem to be as 'in your
face' as in Sydney.
The
calm water in the centre of the picture is a swimming pool designed and built
by some German dude way back. Cool location !
This
is the famous Golden Gate Bridge taken from the Sausalito side. It doesn't look
very much from this distance, but it's very impressive when you're driving over
it.
Part
two of our tour was to the island of Alcatraz.Here's a picture of the infamous
Rock from the boat.
Let's
take a closer look at the landing area. This was where the convicts arrived
on the island. It's a very drab and dreary place (probably intentionally).
Here's
the 'Welcome' sign. The words in red were daubed there by people who took over
the island to protest against the mis-treatment of native americans.
It started off as a peaceful protest, but eventually turned violent and caused
a good deal of destruction to the buildings on the island.
These
are the rows of cells (complete with hoards of tourists 8-)
Here's
an individual cell with bunk bed, sink and toilet.
The cell door does not have any locks, but is controlled remotely by an armed
guard.
We found Alcatraz quite depressing 8-(
Tuesday
23rd May
We have a break from touring today,
so decided to have a wander...
These
are the escalators in the San Francisco Centre - the main mall on Market Street.
As you can see, some of them are curved ! We're still trying to work out how
they operate 8-)
We're
managing to learn the language now.
This tram is called a 'Cable Car' 8-)
Some more examples of two countries seperated by a common language:
A handbag is called a 'purse';
A homosexual is called a 'fag';
A fag (cigarette) is called a 'butt' (so is a rear-end);
The bill is called the 'Check';
Crisps are called 'Chips';
Chips are called 'Fries';
and Goodbye is called 'Have a nice day' 8-)
The picture is the cable car at the Market Street terminus being manually turned
around on a wooden turntable by the driver and guard.
We
decided to check out the 'Oldest Italian Restaurant in San Francisco'.
Unfortunately they have a strange idea of what constitutes 'Spaghetti Bolognese'
- they use linguini (yuk). However their ice cream (pictured) more than made
up for it !
Here's the entrance to our hotel.
Wednesday
24th May
Back to touring again. Today is our
visit to the Napa Valley wine growing region...
...mmm, Wine !
Peter's
un-erring nose found a sweetie shop, but unfortunately they only had 'small'
size buckets left, so he had to make do with that 8-)
This
is where the wine is stored in oak barrels. Red wine is generally stored longer
than white.
Since grape juice is colourless, the skins are not removed until late in the
process for red wine.
These
vats are where the wine is fermented. The small vats in the foreground are for
red wine and the large vat at the rear is for white wine. The skins and pips
float on the top so when the juice is pumped round from the bottom it takes
several hours to perculate through the thick layer.
This
is the press used to get the remaining concentrate out of the skins and pips,
which is then mixed back in.
And
on to the best bit of the tour - the wine tasting !
The technique is to place a small amount of vino into a glass, swirl to get
the air into it, get your nose in and SNIFF !
Next grab a mouthful, sloosh and swallow. Then the most important bit is to
breathe in through the mouth and out through the nose, giving you another shot
at the bouquet. Great fun !
The
myriad of small light green plants are actually grape vines.
They are all in very neat rows with walkways between, presumably to facilitate
picking !
Thursday 25th May
No tours again today, so we decided
to check out the 'Embarcadero' by the Ferry Building...
This
mess is actually a fully working fountain.
If you look closely you can see water pouring out of the open ends. Cool !
The
Ferry Building is surrounded by palm trees making it look very tropical, man
!
Macy's
seems to be the only department store in San Francisco, so we decided to try
and get a cup of tea. Eventually, we chose the 'small' size cup 8-)
This
is Union square. As well as Macy's there are a number of over-priced clothing
shops, and more palm trees (they must have bought a job lot 8-)
Couldn't
resist snapping this Texan ass-kicker !
After much searching, we found a reasonable looking Indian restaurant. The food here is pretty good, so we'll be able to get our regular fix of spicy food !
Friday 26th May
Last tour of the week is to Yosemite
national park.
The tour brochure says: 'Yosemite in a day by train !', so here's the train:
It's
a double decker job like the ones in Sydney. The lower deck is for disabled
people and the toilets. The upper deck has seating like a normal train. The
carriages are numbered and when the train stops at a station, they only open
certain doors which seem to be chosen at random !
After
two and a half hours of travelling, we finally arrived at Modesto Amtrak station.
This is where we are supposed to get the coach to take us to Yosemite valley.
It took us a while to find the coach, and they weren't offering any information
- they seem to expect us to use our magical mind-reading powers 8-)
Another
two and a half hours and we finally reached Yosemite valley !
This
is the Merced river, which is very fast flowing.
In some parts it is so swift that they don't even allow white water rafting
!
(The red lettering on the right is actually on the coach window.
It reads 'Don't forget to point your cameras away from this sign' ! 8-)
Yosemite has some really impressive
waterfalls !
Apparently,
this is what's known as a 'Tree Rat' 8-)
They are so tame that I was able to get to within a foot or so to take the picture
!
This
guy is called Cliff !
We
continued on via an open air tram tour with a Yosemite Park Ranger.
Here's some more views of Cliff !
And more waterfalls. The first one is called 'Bridalveil falls' - the only name we can remember !
The
tram stopped so we could check out the Merced river, and it was so hot that
Irene dipped her feet - the water was really cold !
This
one is in three parts, and is supposed to be the longest total drop of any waterfall
in the USA !
The
cliff here is supposed to show a map of America if you look 'real careful like'
! We reckon it looks more like one of the Banana Splits 8-)
Here's
Cliff again !
Although Yosemite is an incredibly impressive place with breathtaking scenery,
the five and a half hours each way to get to the park detracted greatly from
our enjoyment of the day. Also, the return trip was not helped by an extra one
and a half hour delay at Merced waiting for the Amtrak train to take us back
8-(
Saturday 27th May
Time to check out another part of
San Francisco - Union Street...
We
walked a long way up and down some very steep hills to get to this boring place,
but we decided to share the experience, out of the goodness of our hearts 8-)
Check out the architecture !
It's mainly shacks here, but occasionally you see something a bit special.
To
round off the evening, since our hotel is right next to Chinatown, we decided
to try out a Chinese restaurant.
After a feeble attempt to get to grips with the chopsticks, we chickened out
and asked for a couple of forks 8-)
This
is a view of Chinatown from the 22nd floor of the Holiday Inn.
The blue lights are a market which is held every Saturday, and goes on until
late evening.