Sunday 14 July
This has always been one of my favourite cities outside of Sydney, and I have told the kids for years I would one day bring them here. I have only ever been here in winter though. It is now mid-summer, and it is SO cold! Maximum in the high fifties today. Brr!
We enjoyed a buffet breakfast in the hotel, well perhaps it should be called brunch after the long sleep in everyone had. We have noticed every restaurant we have looked at or been to here is more expensive than we are used to – it compares with staying in New York more than elsewhere.
We then left the hotel and wandered through Fisherman’s Wharf to a visitors centre to buy tickets for a bus tour of the city, stopping to browse in souvenir shops along the way. I had seen on-line last night that tickets to Alcatraz sell out two weeks in advance, but hoped the bus tour companies that offer combination tickets would mean we could get to Alcatraz. Unfortunately they were all sold out! We moved on to Pier 39 to explore all the shops there, ending with the younger kids riding the two-storey carousel.
Ross then took them at his slow pace in search of lunch, while I went to Pier 33 to Alcatraz Landing to see if there was any chance of getting cancellation tickets down there. No luck. The earliest I could get tickets to Alcatraz was 12th August! The strangest thing about my walk down and back between the Piers was that I was all alone – no one accompanied me, and I realised it is the first time I have been alone in two months! We bought crab and shrimp rolls for lunch from a stall out the front of Alioto’s and headed back to the hotel for Ross and Belle to rest.
During the siesta, Abi worked out how many more friends she needed to buy a souvenir for, so we left the others in the room, got some laundry underway, and went shopping again. We also stopped at Luggage World on the opposite corner from our hotel and bought another suitcase. This had been our plan before we left home as we purchased things, it is not the result of too much shopping! The travel agent had told us the internal flights would charge us $25 for every bag we checked in, so we only brought five, intending to purchase another one before we headed home. Interestingly, the internal flights she booked for us with JetBlue did not charge us, only Virgin America – the only flight we booked ourselves because the travel agent couldn’t price match – did.
Once we returned, the others were ready to go again, so we went through Anchorage Square and The Cannery areas, towards Ghiradelli Square. We intended to catch a cable car from there up to Union Square, but – perhaps because it was a Sunday afternoon? – the lines of people waiting for cable cars was so long, it reminded us of theme park lines! Instead we consoled ourselves with samples at Ghiradelli, and introduced the kids to chocolate there.
We then returned to our hotel for dinner at Denny’s in the lobby area. We met there an Australian couple at the next table, and he was a recently retired firefighter from Queensland. I have heard more Australian accents here than anywhere else we have been – maybe they are acclimatising us to get us ready to go home, but they do sound a little strange after being here so long. Ross and Abi weren’t hungry, so while the rest of us ate a small meal, they went shopping AGAIN. We had bought Jarrod a waterproof jacket this morning that Ross liked, so he wanted one for himself. The rest of us returned to the room where I began repacking using our new suitcase. By 9pm I was starting to feel like Belle, so went to bed before anyone else in the hope I could sleep it off. We have enough sick and injured here without me going out in sympathy with them!