9th August 2010 – Tour of San Francisco and Meeting the Great Escapes Team

It's the big day. At some point today they will tell us where we are off to. Lils is so excited because it is cold. She has decked out in all her warm weather gear beanie and all. We took a brisk walk down to a small cute café called Tart and Tart and shared a variety of things for breakfast.

From there we headed off walking to China Town. China Town gates are a 6 minute walk from the hotel. Mum ( Granny) met us there and we walked through China town

and then took the Hop On Hop Off City Bus tour. This is on a red double decker English bus. We sat upstairs the wind was cold but the sun was hot so it was lovely.

Our first stop was Fisherman's Wharf where we could see the island of Alcatraz,which use to be a prison until the 1960's now it is used as a place for filming movies etc.

We walked along the pier and saw the sea lions that were honking very noisily. We were lucky and managed to get down and really close to 4 of them who had climbed up on a pier where people dock their boats. This is behind a locked gate but one of the owners allowed us brief access so we could see them up front and personally. There are not as many as they se to be and the town folk say that they arrived in the droves after the 1989 earthquake and some surmise that they are leaving because they know another big earthquake is coming. Only time will tell.

Granddad we could see the Golden Gate bridge in the distant but we took a drive over the bridge and back. The gates are not gold in colour but as they call it a "burnt orange". The view is very spectacular and we took a photo of Lily placing her finger on top of the uprights. It really is unique.

We drove by the windiest street which s Lambard and took a photo of the trolley on the hill in the exact location where the ad for Rice A Roni was filmed. San Francisco really was delightful. We saw quite q lot of it before we had check in with Bill and Pamela for them to tell us the do’s and don’ts expected of us.
We then had 2 hours to get ready for dinner at an Italian restaurant called LuLu’s. The food was delicious we started with mussels and pizza, moved onto Steak and Salmon accompanied by roasted vegetables, salad, fries and risotto rice. Then there was an assortment of deserts. The food was delicious, thanks Bill and Pamela. At the close of dinner Bill got up and announced we were off to Hong Kong. We all clapped and cheered and we very excited some hustled back to the hotel, frantically packed our belongings and headed for the airport. Hong Kong here we come.