Good Morning!
Woo! Sunday was a long, yet exciting and quick day. As you may have guessed by the title (or just already knew where I was), I spent the majority of Sunday afternoon/evening visiting San Francisco!
The day started off later than I planned between the time change and the jet lag and the excitement of finally being on this vacation, my body was plum tuckered out! I was planning to start the day off by 9am, but nope. I ended up sleeping until at least 10 and didn’t leave my Oakland hotel to head to San Fran until about 11.
So my plan for the day was to find someplace I could buy a jacket or a sweatshirt, cause it was WAYYY more chilly than it expected it to be here in the Bay Area. So I headed out the hotel towards this shop I found through Yelp that was supposed to be in walking distance from my hotel. I was all set to maybe spend close to $30 on a garment! but low and behold! a block up from my hotel what did I find? A goodwill store, my mama’s FAVORITE place to shop…LOL (I’m serious, the woman had an addiction even before Macklemore had that song. It’s a running joke in our fam how much my mamma loves thrift shops.).
So rather than paying $30 for some sweatshirt, I ended buying a heavy long-sleeved shirt to wear over my jacket and stuff and I didn’t bring a purse, so I looked through the pile and found this gem, big enough to fit my stuff, long enough strap to go across my chest, and small enough not to be bulky on the train and as I walked throughout the day.
So next I head to BART to ride into San Francisco. the train was standing room only, but I guess that’s to be expected since everyone probably works or plays in San Francisco. So I knew the train from Oakland to SF travels underneath the bay, but no one warned me about your ear popping due to the sea pressure, so that was uncomfortable for a bit. But that wasn’t as bad as when in the middle of the ride, this woman excuses her way through the train holding this teenage girl’s hand and proceeds to say in the loudest voice ever “Excuse me everyone. I’m sorry to do this at this time, but this me and my daughter are homeless and we have been for 40 months and we just need $400 (or maybe she said $4000, IDK) to give….if you could see it in your hearts to donate….”. She proceeded to continue along the train and I guess she repeated this speech in each train? So, um yeah.
Anyway, finally made it to San Francisco, Embarcadero station at about noon. It was about 2 blocks from Port of San Francisco ferry building. It’s both a place for food and shops. From this building you can see both the bay bridge and the bay itself. So I woke up later than I planned (thank you jet lag) I didn’t eat anything before I left Oakland for San Francisco, and the port was at least a 30 min walk to the beginning point of my hop on hop off tour bus, so my stomach was twisted in knots telling me “feed me” like the plant in Little Shop Of Horrors, so I picked me up something to drink. There was ALOT of choices, but I wasn’t in San Fran to spend much money, so I settled on a deli sandwich a brownie and a Coke. It was delicious and my stomach stopped howling!
Ok, so I had a decision to make, the walk to my tour bus would take a nominally fit person (i.e not some schlep like me) about 30min. Now I’d like to think I know my body’s big ass limitations and I had/have a goal this vacation to NOT die or pass out from exerting too much “physicalness” on my out of shape body…but, thanks to some motivation from my sisters and my brother/cousin Dede, I figured hey, I might as well just walk and take in the sites.
Alright, now let’s be clear, this meant I had to walk from essentially “pier 1” to pier 39 and you best believe that I felt everyone last step I took, but thanks to being on my own, I didn’t feel rushed to get to my destination (meh, I had all day and no plans for anything afterwards). So what took most maybe 30min, probably took me more like an hour, not just because of being out of shape (you best believe I stopped ALOT), but also because I was taking pictures and texting my fam the whole way. It was awesome.
I made it to my tour bus, loaded the bus and was on my way. This I mention that this was a narrated tour? Ok, well did I mention that it was an audio narration? Ok, then did I mention that I did NOT bring my headphones? Ugh. so yeah, I took the tour but other than the map I had no idea of any history or any such mess…LOL. Still it was a break from walking, it was COLD as hell and I saw some pretty darn cool sites, including the Golden Gate Bridge which not only was cold as hell, but WINDY as hell and sitting atop that bus made it more so. You can check out this cool video I took riding across bridge:
I ended my day in San Francisco after the tour ended and made my way back to Oakland to get ready for the next day flight to Honolulu when my bay Kay would really begin.
Some more pics I took in San Fran and these aren’t even all of them! Next up, my flight to Hawaii and my first full day in Honolulu.
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