Golden Gate Bridge and other firsts

This morning,  breakfast in the hotel was a delicious omelette.  A good start. Then I went to a nearby Walgreen - seems to be the supermarket of choice around here - to but some almonds. The price was 7.00 or 4.00 if you had a loyalty card.  The checkout lady seemed surprised that I didnot have one. She asked was I a visitor and I said yes, so she gave me the cheaper price. Did I look like I needed financial help? I am sure she was just being friendly.

My rough plan was to get public transport to the southern end  of the GG bridge, walk over it ( about 4 km including the approaches) and on to Sausilito (about 3 km to the edge of the town and another km to the ferry wharf)  and then catch a ferry back to SF.  However I had not planned what  mode of transport or anything , just had a rough idea of which direction. I had looked up the ferry times and seen they ran about every 60 to 90 mins  and thought that will be ok.  For me, very unprepared.

 There is a cable car stop about 10 m away from the hotel front door. Soon a full ish one came up the hill going in the right direction for me.  There's room for 1 more, the brake man called out to me, so I squashed onto the running board and held on and kept my elbows in because there is little room sometimes between the people standing on the outside and adjacent cars.  Normally if I go somewhere I like to take photos and watch a map as we go - my way of remembering where I have been and what I have taken a photo of. Neither possible this morning so I just enjoyed myself and the wind in my hair. Over a fairly short distance we went up quite a few hills and down the other side. It is really obvious -smaller houses at the bottom of the hills and larger houses at the tops.

At the end of the line I walked a few m to a nearby biggish road that had busses running down it. I asked the first one that came along was he going where I wanted to go.  He told me no and told me what number bus and where along the street to catch it. Normally I would be embarrassed to do this because I know that I can look up timetables myself, For some reason today I didnot care. Must be something in the air, or part of the 50th celebration of 1967, the start of the hippy era.

So, I walked over the bridge. 6 lanes of traffic made it a bit noisy. About 6 groups of about 20 cyclists went past. There were not many walkers. At one point crossing the bridge I wondered about what particular mathematical function created the curve of the supporting cables.  Luckily I am not (anymore!)  my mother , dismissed the thought and the need to find out, and went back to enjoying the wind in my hair.

When I got to the end of the bridge and started following the signs to Sausilito I could have been in bush anywhere miles away from civilisation.  I didnot see anyone else on the path. I followed the path through a military base, through a magnificent stand of what looked to me like Syney Red Gums, through more bush to Sausilito.  Walking through the town I thought a cup of calm chowder would be nice for lunch.  I chose a place at random , went in , was shown to a nice table on their deck overlooking the water to S F.  It was a lovely fine sunny clear, no fog, day.   A waiter who was good at up selling convinced me to have a bowl of soup and a glass of Gruner Veltliner, which I didnot know. I needed very little persuading.   It took me a long time to savour every morsel of my delicious clam chowder. At some point, I remembered that I had bought myself a powerbank.  If I use my phone to take photos (lots today) and to navigate ( less than normal today) it almost runs out of charge before the end of the day.  I had remembered to leave it in my bag this morning but not, as I discovered at lunch, the connecting cable. In the past I would have been annoyed at myself. Today I just laughed.

The views of the GG bridge coming back on the ferry where made different by the sun near the bridge. It was 2pm, but the sun seemed lower than 2pm here and the brightness changed the colour. I have yet to sort my photos. I enjoyed watching the shapes and colours of SF as we approached it. The wind in my hair was good too.

The ferry stopped at Fisherman's Wharf - a tourist collection of shops and I have to admit that I looked up on my just-still-charged phone where to get which bus from.

I discovered this afternoon that over the road from my hotel the little cafe serves nice proper espresso coffee.

For dinner I went to a cafe and ordered a spinach salad which had lots of veggie stuff in it. The waiter asked if I wanted some chicken as well. More up selling,  but it was an excellent idea . He charged me an extra $2 for quite a large piece of grilled chicken.

A great day.