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Struggling with U.S. daylight-saving time we just had time for breakfast before touring the Maritime Museum at the other end of Fishermen’s Wharf, before across to The Cannery for a lunch of some Mexican-flavoured barbecued beef.
Then we took the cable car ride to Market Street and an hour or two in a large bookshop/newsagents before taking the cable car back to the hotel for tea at Johnny Rockets
We forgot the clocks had gone forward on U.S. daylight-saving time and could not understand why breakfast was nearly over at "Oh la La's!" by the time we got down there. The start to a fine, sunny morning spoilt by the girls arguing over the possession of yesterday's tram tickets which they each wanted to stick in their scrap books! We set off for the main Maritime Museum at the other end of Fisherman's Wharf, arriving just before one of the rangers was going to do a tour of a flat-bottomed, square-ended sailing barge. We had to scramble across a gap but enjoyed his guided tour with some other British people who joined the party. It seems that British visitors feature quite a lot at the maritime museum, proving that our sea heritage is second to none.
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A trip to see Golden Gate Park on a fine and sunny day, where we hired bicycles to ride along the cycleway. Truly a city of marvellous sights and experiences but depressing because of the beggars under-class and the ever-present threat of earthquakes.
Breakfast at "Oh la La!" and then off by public transport to Golden Gate Park where we hired bicycles from "Lincoln Cyclery", a shop on the corner of Lincoln and Stanyon which was run by a Scandinavian or Eastern European family. The main machines we hired were "mountain bikes" these days - all knobbly tyres and thick frames - but Della was given an old small "Raleigh three-speed" fixed wheel bicycle with only a fixed wheel brake. The old man kindly took her out to get used to it before we all set off along the Golden Gate Cycleway. We passed the San Franciscans enjoying the recreation of jogging, cycling, roller-skating, walking and sailing their radio-controlled boats in the lake.
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Thinking about the problems of San Francisco with its noise and vagrancy issues spoiling the place. Then off over to Pier 41 and off to Alcatraz for boat trip and the tour and back for other experiences as a pair of nesting turtle doves caught our eye.
San Francisco is, like the rest of the United States, a noisy city but at least the lack of need for air-conditioning means nights in a hotel are quieter. The Americans will need to tackle the noise problem in a big way, along with their wasteful use of fuel as petrol or "gas" cannot be a sustainable resource when squandered at $1.20 a gallon. These problems are more soluble than that of the inequality, poverty and lawlessness where violence is often the result of desperation. A nice nature cameo greeted me this morning, however. A pair of turtle or collared doves started building a nest on the inside window sill of a facing hotel room as the occupants had left the window slightly open over night.
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Our visit to the San Francisco Zoo and Muni bus cars where the Gorrilla enclosure was the highlight and then back to Fishermen’s’ Wharf where I bought a clam chouder soup in a sourdough bread bowl and a seafood cocktail.
We tried a different routine for breakfast and enjoyed the change. We dropped off at "Oh La La's", a continental breakfast buffet besides "Johnny Rocket's" in the hotel courtyard. For $5 (adults, children half-price) you could have cereal, muffins, fruit and juice, coffee etc in any combination or quantity and this suited the children in particular. We then took the cable car down to the end of the line in Market Street and took the "Muni" municipal railway for the journey to San Francisco Zoo. The Muni is a cross between an underground "tube" or "metro" on the one hand but then changes into a surface train or tram driving down the centre of suburban roads and taking power from overhead wires which made for a different trip to usual. For the $15 cable car weekly pass, you also get onto Muni and any other municipal buses free as against $3 for each adult cable car rise.
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