San Francisco: Day Two

Our second day in San Francisco began with continental breakfast at The Opal.  They served fruit, yogurt, cereal, and pastries…a lot like most continental breakfasts…except that the fruit that they served was EXCELLENT!   My husband and I both commented about how fresh and “different” from what we buy from the stores or have tasted in other places.  We are not sure if it was home-grown or what…but it was definitely worth going back for seconds!  After breakfast, we packed our bags because we were leaving that afternoon.  After that, we decided to check out Chinatown!

We loved Chinatown.  There were little old Chinese ladies stopped us to try to ask us how old our children were and to tell us how “beautiful” they were.  They were touching the children’s hair and patting their backs as they tried to communicate with us.  They were so excited about our children that it really was amusing to watch!  As we were walking through the streets, someone handed us a coupon for a Chinese restaurant called, “Chinatown Restaurant.”  We decided to go there for lunch.  It was more delicious than I can even begin to describe.  Chinese food is my favorite anyway, and having some in Chinatown was amazingly yummy! 

 

 

We left Chinatown and headed toward Pier 39 which was where our bus boarded that evening to take us to the train for our next segment of the trip.  We decided to get there a little early to see what all was there.  It didn’t take long for us to find the sea lions that live there! 

 

They were very loud!  We walked around there for a while, watching the sea lions.  As soon as we walk away from the sea lions, we see Alcatraz…a better view here than we had when we were at the Golden Gate Bridge. 

 

The tours left from there, but they were all booked.  If you are going to San Francisco and want to tour Alcatraz, book your tour well in advance!  We walked around some of the shops at Pier 39…we found a shop called, “Lefty’s.”  This is a store made especially for left-handed people.  My oldest son is left-handed…and my middle son is somewhat ambidextrous…he writes with his left hand, but does other things (like throwing a ball or holding a bat) with his right hand.  You never think about how many things a left-handed person has to deal with until you go into that store.  The one that particularly interested me was a left-handed notebook.  The “spiral” was on the opposite side, making it easier for left-handed writers to write. 

After a lot of walking, we were tired…we rested on a bench to wait for our bus to arrive.  As we sat down, sea gulls came over in front of us.  I am guessing that they are fed from there a lot.  The sea gulls were the BIGGEST sea gulls that I had ever seen…and my husband, who spent half of his childhood living on the east coast, said that they were the biggest that he’d ever seen as well.  The sea gulls that we have here in Myrtle Beach must be of a different breed or something…because it would take at least two of them to be as big as the ones that we saw in California!  One of the poor birds didn’t have a foot.  It looked like a “peg leg,” so we began calling him the pirate sea gull! 

Our bus finally arrived, and we left San Francisco. 

We were taken to the train that would bring us to our next stop, Merced, California.  (Merced is the town nearest to Yosemite National Park.)