Well, as much as we like Singapore airlines, we disliked United !!! Hint - Avoid this airline if you possibly can… the seats are ridiculously squashed together, the staff are rude and unhelpful and the food crap…. we had a 12 hour flight…. we were fed a small lunch about an hour after takeoff…then until about an hour before landing, all we had was a bowl of 2 min noodles..no drink, no snack….Dad was starving and needed food with his meds, so I went to them to see what i could find…they were too busy chatting together to help, so I helped myself to some sandwiches I found in the galley.
Anyway, we arrived in San Fran and yes, we could see 100 metres ahead for a change…we had a hotel in South SF and we found the shuttle pick up and went to the hotel - the Good Nite Inn - but we were too early to check in, so left our bags and went back to the airport on the shuttle, then managed to sort out their BART system adn went into town - the machines were very confusing and we both got a bit frustrated with it. Bart stands for Bay Area Rail Transit..it cost US 5.15 each to go into town - so that became an expensive part of our stay in SF but we saved on our hotel…which aslo included free brekky adn internet.
We had to check out the Gap stores and after much consultaion bought some lovely baby things for “Pebbles” (dad has nicknamed the baby as he feels it is a girl - Bam Bam will be next!!) it was fun to choose soem things for it and some tops for Shells. We tried to find a place that dad had heard about where you could see the previous city buildings (before last earthquake) but couldn’t. I noticed that my feet and legs were feeling funny and when I took a look at them, was shocked how swollen they were… like an litle elephant’s foopies they were… so we decided to head back to the hotel and get them up. We had an early night as we had been awake for days. We stayed in on Sat as well, it was raining adn we decided to have a rest day. We walked our dirty washing into the small town nearby and used a laundromat - what was strange was that no one spoke english - they all spoke spanish !! and all the signs etc were in Spanish. We ate at a little cafe and then headed back again. We found the area pretty dirty as far as litter goes but in town, it was all very tidy and maintained. We bought a MUNI pass for the trams, buses and cable cars which we used extensively. We just rode them up adn down for fun !!! We walked across the Golden Gate Bridge one day and got a tad sunburnt - it is a good 6km walk, went over to Alcatraz one afternoon and did the night tour, saw the crooked Lombard Street, Wells Fargo Museum, Macys’, Union Square, Fisherman’s wharf and the very amusing and entertaining sea lions, shops, Italian & Thai restaurants (we really don’t like the tipping - especially when they add it in adn you don’t think they deserve it !!)….heaps of funstuff. We have had lots of chats with other tourists adn locals which is always interesting - where people are from etc…we ate a couple of nights at the local fast food places - they are so cheap..we had a full diner at Maccas for $6 one night - we had 2 chicken wraps, 1 chicken burger, 2 apple pies, 2 sundaes and a large refillable drink !!!) We saw some funny things, some very interesting places and odd people but overall, we really enjoyed SF. We would ahev liked to get to see Muir Woods adn soem redwood trees but no car…maybe next time ? !
