That's exactly what happened today.
We woke up late, and went for a tour of the wineries; we visited two, Blackstone and Kenwood, but to my greatest disappointment, none of them offered any guided tour of the property.
I decided today NOT to drink, and be the designated driver, so I let the co-pilot have some fun with the grapes, and I just browsed around waiting for him to finish his sampling.
In a little more than 90 minutes we were done with wine tasting and Napa Valley, and I know exactly what some of you are already thinking: "Oh my God, they are in Napa Valley and they only visit two wineries?!?! Well, if we would spend anyplace the amount of time we would really like to spend, well, it would probably take a few years instead of a 100 days for completing this trip!
I then plugged all the necessary information on the GPS to drive us to the north entrance of San Francisco, through the Golden Gate Bridge.
As I said before, we haven't been that lucky with the weather, it's been particularly windy and cold (but then I realize out there is almost always that kind of weather); but hey, at least we could see the bridge, fact that is absolutely something people cannot take for granted!
We took pictures of the Golden Gate from any possible angle, the first one being the picture I put up on top of this post which has been taken from down below.
From up the top of a hill:
From up the top another hill (closer, when we finally found a parking spot!):
We then made up our mind, and decided it was time to get back in the car and finally, after 27 years I've been waiting for this moment, drive through another beautiful American landmark and icon.
As soon as we got close to downtown, our next planned stop of the day was Steiner Street, where some outdoor shooting of the movie "Mrs. Doubtfire" with Robin Williams have taken place several years ago.
From there we went back to Lombard Street, to drive on the "Crookedest Street" in the whole Universe!!!
This is how the GPS show it on the mapl I thought it was cool, and I had to take a picture! LOL
We both drove down through Lombard St. inside the car the first time, then I dropped Hap at the base of the hill, and went back up for another ride, so that he could also take some pictures of the car descending the crooked road!
Here's the result (he's improving his photographic skills as you can see):
We then headed to Chinatown, and North Beach (San Francisco's Little Italy), where we stopped at "Victoria's Pastry Co". Sorry to disappoint friends in the West Coast, but some average pastry shops in Boston are way better than this! Next time you get to New England I'll take you to my favourite spot in Quincy, MA! ;-)
Chinatown on the other hand was a fun experience. Again as it happened in New York City more than a month ago, at times it felt like being in Asia, and not the United States Of America.
There was hardly any sign in English, and certainly not that many Caucasian walking up and down the streets of Chinatown here in San Francisco. I absolutely loved it, and wished this to be a good sign for any future trip to Asia in the years to come!
I also had the time to take a picture of one of the famous San Francisco Cable Cars:
Then, while we were walking around North Beach, guess what I've found?
Well, to the majority of you, this next picture won't mean anything, it would just be a table with a table cloth that instead of being of a uniform color, it has a map on it.
That map is part of Italy, and that part of Italy is where I come from! Yes, it's a map of Sardinia, and if you look on the left (the West Coast), you'll see the name of the city where I was born: Oristano.
It is a quite weird feeling to see the name of the town where I was born here in San Francisco, not quite exactly around the corner!
Something that I also had to really capture with my camera is the "Transamerica Pyramid" who is in my opinion together with the Golden Gate Bridge, a symbol of the city of San Francisco.
Here is one of the many shots I have taken, I think this is the best one:
This is a closer shot taken from the car while driving right beside the building:
We then went to Pier 33 to check on the Alcatraz Cruises.
I read online that the cruises in the summer sell very quickly, and when I tried to book tickets for two on the official website, the next available day was July 29th! Well, we went to the Pier to see if maybe walk-ins were welcome, and if they reserved some tickets for people who show up at the Embarcadero, but no need to say we were out of luck!
As a consolation, I took some shot of the island from the pier, to me it only means that there's another excuse to come back to San Francisco!
We're now spending the night in Martinez, CA, with Doug a friend of ours I met in Massachusetts two years ago.
We had dinner at a very good and tasty Thai restaurant. I had my usual Chicken Panaang, out of this world.
I'm now ready to call it a day, tomorrow we have many other things to do, among them, try to get a hair cut, I almost look like Tom Hanks in Cast Away!
Good night folks,
Nico
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