For Christmas, Vin and I went roving again…this year we flew to San Francisco, and stayed in Northern California for 8 days.
Part I will cover the first few days we were there – these are the days we spent in San Francisco proper (we arrived in San Fran Tuesday morning December 20th, and stayed until Thursday December 22nd early afternoon). The rest of the time was spent driving up and down the Northern California Coast.
Here’s Vin sitting and reading outside – picture taken from our room three floors above. Doesn’t he just look so engrossed in his book? I can’t remember now what he was reading on the trip..
[[image:cal1.jpg:Back of Vin’s Head:center:0]]
[[image:cal2.jpg:He looks up after I psssted him:center:0]]
Here we are on the streets of San Francisco:
[[image:cal3.jpg:Vin with I-forget-the-name-of-the-Tower in the background:center:0]]
[[image:cal4.jpg:Me with same tower in the background:center:0]]
See the big umbrella? The Hilton at Fisherman’s Wharf was nice enough to lend it to us. It rained all the days we were there – but we had the umbrella, hooded windbreakers, and sturdy shoes, so we ventured out some. We walked the few blocks down to Pier 39 et al, but it rained so hard we didn’t really take any pictures down by the Fisherman’s Wharf.
We did walk down to Chinatown and on the way there, look what we spotted? A pomen (mechanic/garage) especially devoted to Alfa Romeos!! OK for those who say, why the hell did Sila take a picture of a random garage? The reason being, these are our Abah’s favorite cars – he’s driven an Alfa Romeo of some sort or other our entire lives.
So this one’s for you, Abah!
[[image:cal5.jpg:See all the Alfas? And the Logo?:center:0]]
In Chinatown, here I am eating fresh whole fish Hunan style (deep fried with yummy sauce and veggies…mmmmm). I can’t even look up from the food to take a picture.
[[image:cal6.jpg:Fish on the left, me and my rice bowl all happy:center:0]]
We picked up our rental car and headed north (in some kind of torrential downpour at times) on Highway 101 out of San Francisco. First we see the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance:
[[image:cal7.jpg:Golden Gate Bridge far off, foggy, and rainy:center:0]]
In case you were wondering, we will have to cross the Golden Gate Bridge to head north on Highway 101:
[[image:cal8.jpg:Signboard in the rain:center:0]]
It’s getting closer!
[[image:cal9.jpg:Approaching the Golden Gate Bridge:center:0]]
Here we are, driving over the bridge in the rain:
[[image:cal10.jpg:Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge:center:0]]
It’s getting darker now. To our surprise, it got dark pretty early (by 5:00 PM) so we didn’t see too much of the road. We stopped to eat a late lunch in Sausalito before driving up the north coast, then we hit traffic. So it got dark long before we arrived at our destination. We resolved that when we hit the road southwards, that we would try to leave early enough to enjoy the view.
[[image:cal11.jpg:Groovy Highway 101 at dusk:center:0]]
Where did we end up? Tune in next time for more California Dreaming…
