Day 20 - Mon 03 Nov 2008

Wow, Day 20 already! Time goes very quickly when exploring new places.

At present, I'm sitting at the Crissy Field Center in San Francisco having had a breakfast of a chocolate croissant, two bananas, a hard-boiled egg and a purity.organic "Strawberry Paradise" juice drink.

Many of you may think..."yeah that's nothing special" as such. However, look out of the window where you're sat - can you see the Golden Gate Bridge from where you are? :-) Like most structures it doesn't sing nor does it dance, but it doesn't "need" to - it just soars majestically in to the sky, spanning the Bay in one swoop, standing tall in its International Orange colouring.

I woke at 8.30am this morning and turned on the television for a quick update on the weather but instead got immersed in the elections that will be concluded by the end of Tuesday I think it is. Across the entire country, 13 million votes have already been cast in advance of the day - an astonishingly high number given the number of voters that vote in TOTAL in the UK general elections. However, it wasn't so much the election itself that was of interest, it was the related Propositions within the San Francisco area that residents vote on that were intriguing.

In the ad breaks, of which there are a considerable number each hour, there were advertising campaigns for each of the major Propositions being voted upon - by a "Yes" or "No" vote - which also have cost implications for the San Francisco area.

The detailed list of the Propositions being voted upon I have not yet seen, but they include the following:

Prop 2: This is with respect to the state that animals (in particular those for human consumption) are kept;

Prop 8: A very controversial topic...the Proposition proposes the banning of same-sex unions. In San Francisco at the moment, same-sex marriages / unions are legal; however the main supporters of this bill are apparently churchgoers, although there are significant debates on both sides.

It'll be interesting to see what happens to all of these propositions come voting time; one "minor" proposition suggests the renaming of a sewage plant in the area to that of the present president, George Bush!

It looks as if Obama is ahead in the exit polls so far though there is a long time left yet before the new President-Elect can claim victory.

My plan for today is to continue my walk that I started from the hotel on Lombard Street up to the marina then west alongside the Bay front towards the Golden Gate Bridge along Crissy Fields for a while before turning back and walking through Fisherman's Wharf (including food in a restaurant there) before getting to Pier 39 where the Aquarium of the Bay is based, along with the Bay cruisers and Alcatraz tour boats.
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I am now sat in the restaurant at Castagnola's on Pier 47, having just eaten yet more food; the stop necessary partly to break up my day and partly because its absolutely heaving down with rain outside.

Earlier, my walk further west took me past the Crissy Fields Center and to the Sports Basement where I stocked up on a few items I will require later on in my travels. After thinking about it for a while, I decided not to get any sandals at this point in time but settled on a pair of shorts suitable for swimming, a pair of decent walking socks, yet another Lonely Planet journal to help me write up my travels and some sunscreen. Based on the rate that I'm getting through my present journal, this new one will be in use very shortly, an essential I need without having to revert to writing up my travels on receipts and other bits of paper I have in my possession.

For lunch I've just had a Pacific Red Snapper with rice and vegetables of the day; very delicious at $16.22 (tax included). The Pier itself is actually in the middle of a marina, so its as if one is on a boat in the middle of all the others, though given the amount its rained recently I'm more than happy to be inside than out on the deck of a boat.

Given the nasty weather there seems little point in going on a boat tour on either a Blue & Yellow Cruise boat or one to Alcatraz today; as its turned 4pm a leisurely walk down the many Piers seems like the best idea.
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I am now sat in the Coventry Motor Inn where Anthony and I stayed last night and where we've stashed our bags whilst I went out for the day and Anthony went on an organised trip to Monterey and Carmel. My day overall was quite good though the weather was absolutely appalling and did put a bit of a damper on things. After lunch I walked further east, keeping on the seafront where possible, unfortunately the weather continued to stay bad all afternoon and didn't really ease off at all, subsequently making those wooden piers - such as part of the famous Pier 39 - treacherously slippery.

On Pier 45 I came across quite a surprise find - a WWII submarine - the USS Pampanito - a National Historic landmark. Of six war patrols it went on it sunk 6 enemy ships and also rescued 73 allied POWs; quite a significant achievement it appears!

The submarine service represented only 2% of the US Naval personnel but incredibly enough accounted for the sinking of 55% of the Japanese ships sunk during the war.

A short walk in the rain - thankfully, the North Face shoes and waterproof I'd purchased in New York were doing a sterling job of keeping me dry - took me to Pier 39 which - as well as giving good views of Alcatraz and, way across the Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge - is the home to some of San Francisco's sealions which gather in their hundreds on floating rafts where they huddle for warmth as well as being where they take a sleep, clamber over each other and have "play-fights" as well as being ever so noisy with their almost-continuous barking.

Strangely enough, scientists believe that the sealions come to rest in the Bay as opposed to anywhere else because the water in the Bay is too saline for the sealions' main predator - the great white shark - to swim whilst the rafts ensure there is a low yet solid surface for the sealions to be able to "haul" themselves up on. They definitely seemed at ease with their surrounding environment.

Given it had reached 5.30pm by then and the light was rapidly fading, I walked back to the hotel and waited for Anthony to return back from Carmel after which we got a taxi across town to the Stratford Hotel on Powell Street, which is very close to Union Square as well as have a cable car track on it too.

It was useful to have got a taxi as San Francisco is built on hills and it would have been a tiring task carrying bags across town. Once checked in at the hotel, we went to Cafe Mason, a diner on Mason Street where I had salmon with potato whilst Anthony had Linguine Gamberi. However it wasn't the best food I'd had although the bottle of local Anchor Steam helped the food go down. Overall it didn't appear the most professional outfit either with apparently nine staff doing a variety of jobs (which appeared to involve a degree of duplication) bar the one front-of-house lady who's sole role was to welcome in customers and then show them to their table. Furthermore, despite the fact that the dinner sitting was still very much in full swing, the tables - including ours whilst we were eating! - were being prepared for the breakfast sitting the next morning; suffice to say, a "reasonable" tip (which in San Francisco they recommend as 15%+) was not forthcoming from us.