Day 2 in San Francisco

Today, Friday, was our first full day in San Fran and we thought we would be highly productive and set out and do a tour on the first day. This turned out to be good and bad. Firstly, many people had warned us about San Fran fog, but we didn't quite understand the nature of this warning until today.

The view from Lombard Street. You can just see the top of Coit Tower on the right.

Our tour started with our guide Elie picking us up and driving us through the different areas of the city. We then went to see Lombard Street which is known as 'The Crookedest Street in the World'. Fun fact, SF actually as another street even worse but this one is prettier! It has a grade of 16% and there are 8 turns in the space of 412 feet. We also had to walk up a few blocks to get to the main part of the street which was a killer introduction to SF hills!

Lombard Street

Now generally there would be a whole heap of other photo stops and little bits I could tell you from the tour but a massive amount of it was disrupted by the fog. Elie said the fog was some of the worst he had seen in the 20 years he has lived in SF and that usually by the afternoon, it clears up, well today it didn't. In fact, it seemed to get thicker. We couldn't see things that were 50ft in front of us. Christie and I didn't even realise we were on the Golden Gate Bridge until Elie told us we were driving over it. Nothing was visible today; Coit tower, the Transamerica building, Alcatraz, the views over the bay, or the Golden Gate Bridge.

This is the view directly out of my bus window on the way to Muir Woods

We were however, able to continue on our tour into Muir Woods to see the Redwood Trees. This was beautiful and while the drive there was covered in fog, once in Muir woods we had clear visibility. Muir woods was beautiful, so peaceful and calming and the trees were massive. our photos can't do it justice. We even got to see a deer!

Can you see me? I'm a bit camouflaged!

A deer!

The next area we were able to see/visit was The Castro, which is San Fran's massive gay community area. There are rainbow flags everywhere and apparently 15% of the SF population is gay. The whole area was so vibrant and cheerful :D

See all the rainbow flags hanging from each building

We then made a quick stop at Haight-Ashbury which is the hippy area and was the centre for 'The Summer of Love' in 1967. Christie and I will go back here later in the week to check out the shops and soak up some of the atmosphere.

The main corner of Haight-Ashbury and the shop on the corner is Ben and Jerry's proudly pronouncing 'Peace, Love and Ice Cream'

Our last notable stop was Alamo Square which is where the 'Painted ladies' can be found. These are a row of seven Victorian homes that can usually be found on postcards and are also well known from Full House. The area itself wasn't all the special and we found far prettier Victorians elsewhere. i guess these are special as they are all in a row but up close, some of them are a little run down (kind of reminded me of the Mona Lisa - not that great up close!)

Alamo Square

The gorgeous Victorian house I found

There were quite a few other areas around SF that we drove through and it was a real pity about the fog. Elie was amazing with his knowledge of all things SF and, had there been no fog, we would have done /seen everything we wanted to in SF. Unfortunately, the weather here is extremely unpredictable so we are going to have to keep trying with some locations. Elie's tour, "Green Dream Tours," I would definitely recommend and it was one of the best I have done during all my travelling over the last few years.