Day 7

We took a city tour of San Francisco today, and learned that the city is 7 by 7 miles, hence the name 49ers. The tour lasted 3½ hours and took us all around the city. We started at Fisherman’s Wharf, passed by Pier 39 (which has a bunch of restaurants and stores on the bay). We then went to Pacific Heights, a luxurious neighborhood with multi-million-dollar houses. After that, we went to the Golden Gate Bridge and stopped there for pictures; fabulous view, really breathtaking, even though it was a bit foggy. The tour also included Presidio (a former military base) and Haight Ashbury (hippy side of town with colorful Victorian homes—and we saw the house in the show Full House). We couldn’t go to the twin peaks for the great view because it was foggy, but we drove through Castro, San Francisco’s gay neighborhood. On our way back to Fisherman’s Wharf, we passed by Civic Center (government and museums), Union Square (shopping and theatres), China Town, the Financial District, and Little Italy (North Beach).

After the tour we went to Ghirardelli’s, a chocolate factory (http://www.ghirardelli.com/), where we had great ice cream (with amazing chocolate brownies). After returning briefly to our hotel room (the very luxurious Holiday Inn Civic Center), we walked to Union Square, up and down the hill all the way to Little Italy (and when I say up the hill I mean really up hill). We had dinner at a local Italian chain called Pasta Pomodoro, really good food; I loved the Rigatoni with grilled chicken. After dinner we had some gelato from little store a block away and walked to Pier 39. We walked around Pier 39 and saw the sea lions at the K-dock, very noisy and veery lazy. We continued to walk on Jefferson Ave. and took a cab back to our hotel (there was no way we were going up the hill again after the dinner and gelato).