Got up really early in the morning on our last day in SF. We wanted to get an early start and get to Reno with lots of time to spare. We took a slight detour to Lombard Street, yes again. We walked up and down the crooked street but we (actually I) just gotta have the kick of DRIVING down Lombard St. For a change there were hardly anybody there … no hoards of tourists, no line up of cars waiting to driving down this famous street.

You know, for that few days in SF we had never seen the Golden Gate Bridge. I know now what they mean when people say that SF is always foggy. It had been foggy everyday we were there and it’s the Golden Gate Bridge had always been shrouded in fog.

Anyway, you gotta pay toll to use the bridge but only for city bound. It’s free for outbound traffic.

It was my last chance to take a picture of the bridge and I thought that this would be the best shot I would get.

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Well … I thought I share a bit more about the minor sights we visited in San Francisco. I guess it warrants mentioning because it is so … San Francisco.

If there is a Main St in San Francisco, it is Market Street. This is the main transportation corridor of the city and is akin to what Champs Elysees is to Paris. We had taken the cable car, street cars, trolleybuses from here. Right underneath the street is where the BART runs through.

The Caltrain station is quite close to the San Francisco Giants home ground … the AT&T Park. Actually, I don’t care much about baseball nor do I understand the game at all. The only reason we are here is because of Barry Bonds — and at that time, at the threshold of breaking the all-time home run record.

I have seen on the TV of some spectacular home-run hits in this stadium. You see, just outside the stadium is the bay and if someone hits the ball far enough out of the stadium it will fall into the water outside. That is called a “splash run”. Must have been pretty fun. I was told that people actually park their boats during game day hoping to get one of those balls.

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Alcatraz, also known as The Rock, had over the years been a lighthouse, a military outpost, a prison and now part of a national park. It is perhaps the times…

What’s a trip to San Francisco without a stop at Fishermans Wharf right? It’s simply unheard of. Well, I thought that Fishermans Wharf is just a short stretch but it is not, especially when we started off at the Ghirardelli Square and cover all the way to Pier 33 (??) where we took the ferry to Alcatraz.

The centre piece of Fishermans Wharf is undoubtedly Pier 39. To us, it’s nothing more than a place with lots of unique shops which we have no plans for shopping. It’s basically a touristy area. I was wondering if many locals actually come here to shop and eat.

There are endless things to see here. We did not get as much time to enjoy all these performances as we liked.

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Parking in San Francisco is not only expensive but it is notoriously difficult to find. Before I started on this vacation, I asked friends about parking and almost everyone advised me to just use their transit system. One told me that he once went to a dinner in downtown, circled around the place for one hour, couldn’t find a lot and then went home. And then there was when I booked for a hotel in San Francisco and found out that they charge $20 extra for parking! So, I decided that we’ll use transit as much as we can.

We stayed in a hotel near SFO (not LAX! Thanks Chubbypanda) because for some reason the hotels the week we were in San Francisco were expensive. We could get good places the week before or the week after for around $100. However, the cheapest we could get for the week we wanted was almost $200 for a crummy bed and breakfast. Some big event must be happening in town. So we decided to stay in a really nice place a bit further out and travel into the city everyday via transit.

We tried BART first and found it expensive. So, we decided to try a cheaper alternative — Caltrain. The only problem is that they run on a very fixed schedule — something like only 1 or 2 runs per hour. That means that we had to time our journey well, especially on the late return trip during which time they only run once an hour.

The Caltrain cars are huge and is double decker. And man, they do travel really fast … you are better off staying way clear of the tracks.

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