Our destination today is San Francisco.  Join us on a tour of the city and a bay cruise with GrayLine.

GrayLine is a national tour operator which, either directly or through various alliances, operates tours in major cities including San Francisco, New York, Boston, DC, and Hollywood .

Their San Francisco tour begins with a drive through the city.  We drive past Moscone Center, the enormous convention center where MacWorld is held each January.  It comprises two enormous buildings, and they’re building a third.  Then the tour takes us by City Hall, the Civic Center, the old library, San Francisco Opera House, and Symphony Hall, where Luciano Pavarotti refuses to sing because he doesn’t like the acoustics.  What they don’t point out in the area is United Nations Plaza, where the United Nations was founded, although it’s no longer active as a UN branch.

Our first stop is Mission Dolores, the northernmost in the system of 21 missions, each situated a day’s travel apart (back in the days of horses and walking on foot—I can reach 4 within 1-2 hours now), founded by Father Junipero Serra, a Spanish Catholic priest, to convert the Indians to Catholicism.  The main, original part of the mission is not much bigger than my apartment.  I’m sure there were outlying buildings that were destroyed; I don’t know if the main part used to be bigger.  Then there’s the basilica, or church, still in use, which is quite large, with gorgeous stained glass and marvelous Christmas decorations.  They have 2 lovely nativity scenes, one on each side of the altar (or one nativity in two parts), that are lit in a red/gold/white color scheme.  The mission also has a lovely graveyard/garden, with some very old graves, and some newer ones.  Even though it is December, a lot of the plants are in bloom, so it is very nice.

Next we drive through the city and up Twin Peaks, past Mt. Davidson, the highest hill in the city at a bit over 1,000 feet.  At the top of Twin Peaks we stop for a panoramic view of the city, including the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, the TransAmerica Pyramid in the Finanical District, which is the tallest building in San Francisco, and a few blocks from it the Bank of America building, where I used to work and which would be the tallest building in San Francisco if you lopped off the top of the Pyramid.

Next we stop in Golden Gate Park, where you can pay an admission fee and stroll through the Japanese tea garden, or stroll for free through the botanical garden, which features exotics plants from all over, including Australia, or you can get hot dogs at the snack stand and have lunch in the band shell, where many famous musicians have given free concerts over the years.  Golden Gate Park is also home to the Academy of the Sciences, Steinhart Aquarium, and the excellent art museum the DeYoung, which includes the famous American Gothic painting (the farmer and his wife with the pitchfork).  Unfortunately, the DeYoung closed New Year’s Eve for renovation (apparently they’re tearing it down and completely rebuilding it), and will reopen again in 5 years.

Next we stop at Cliff House, a famous hotel and restaurant that has been built 3 times after being destroyed twice in various catastrophes.  It is adjacent to the Sutro Baths, where my mom used to ice skate as a child.  It also looks out over Seal Rock, which was the home of a colony of sea lions until the Loma Priada earthquake in 1989 (that was the one during the World Series), when the sea lions moved to Pier 39 (more about them later).

Cliff House has a mechanical museum, free to the public, which includes everything from video games, to miniature mechanical models, to air hockey and soccer games, to carnival fortune tellers and “love machines”.  They had some truly amazing scenes—a baseball park, a carnival, a race track, just about everything you could imagine.

Next we drive through an area that skirted both Japantown (I knew Chinatown existed, but I hadn’t realized there was a Japantown, too) and the Russian area, so it is interesting to see buildings with Cyrillic writing neck and neck with buildings with Japanese writing!  There is also a very pretty Russian Orthodox Church with a classic Onion Dome, painted in gold.

This drive takes us near Sea Cliff, a very upscale housing area, now a gated community due to erosion, where Robin Williams grew up.  I actually spent a night in Sea Cliff a very long time ago, at one of my mom’s relatives' house.  It was there that I heard foghorns for the first time.  This drive also takes us near the house in Robin Williams’ movie Mrs. Doubtfire, but not close enough to see, unfortunately.

Next we drive past the Presidio, originally a Spanish fort to guard from invasion from the bay, and later a famous army base.  Now the base is closed, and there are numerous plans regarding what to do with the land, one of the more popular being to turn the base housing into low income housing.

We also drive past the Palace of Fine Arts, a magnificent building originally built for one of the World’s Fairs hosted by San Francisco shortly after the Great Fire and Earthquake of 1906 which destroyed much of the city (part of the fire is also know as the Ham and Eggs fire because it was allegedly started by someone cooking ham and eggs during the earthquake).  The Palace of Fine Arts and other buildings of the exhibition showed that San Francisco had fully recovered and was as great as ever.

From there we drive over the Golden Gate Bridge towards the Marin Headlands.  The Golden Gate is the second or third longest suspension bridge in the world (the longest is in Japan), and was the longest at the time it was built.  From the other side of the bridge, we get another panoramic view of the city before returning across the bridge.

Finally, we end our tour at Pier 39 and board one of the Blue and Gold Fleet for a bay cruise.  The cruise begins by sailing past the colony of sea lions on a float at the end of Pier 39.  As noted above, these sea lions formerly lived at Seal Rock by Cliff House, but moved after the Loma Priada quake to appear at Pier 39 in the winter of 1990.  They migrate during the summer to breed, but return to winter at Pier 39.  The colony consists of several hundred California Sea Lions, whose adult males weigh 5-700 pounds.  Occasionally you can also glimpse smaller, maned Stellar Sea Lions  who have migrated down from Alaska for the winter, although there are not any there today.

We sail out into the bay, past Fisherman’s Wharf, past Fort Mason, another former military facility which is now used as warehouses and by artisans to sell and display their wares, and under the Golden Gate, affording another view of the Palace of Fine Arts and the Presidio as well as Fort Point across the bay.  This is the point where the San Francisco Bay meets the Pacific Ocean, and it was dubbed the Golden Gate by the Spanish explorer who first discovered the region.

Then we sail back into the bay and towards Angel Island, once used as an immigrant processing, holding, and deportation facility.  Today there are whales by Angel Island, although we don’t see them.  Next to Angel Island is Alcatraz, and the narration provides an in-depth description of the facilities, what it was like to live there, and the difficulties of escape.  There are no known escapes.  Several people tried, but there’s no beach, only short, jagged cliffs and freezing water, with the nearest land several miles away.  Many of the potential escapees died of exposure in the water, and many others were captured before they got very far.

Next we have a view of the Bay Bridge, which is actually two bridges separated by Treasure Island (another defunct military base) and Yerba Buena Island.  The section from San Francisco to the islands is a cantilever bridge, and the section from the islands to Oakland is a suspension bridge.  Yerba Buena is a natural island, and Treasure Island is manmade, annexed onto Yerba Buena for the World’s Fair.

From there, we return to Pier 39, past the Sea Lions again, still basking in the winter sun, and go to the Underwater World Aquarium .  Like the Monterey Bay aquarium, Underwater World is completely populated by life indigenous to the San Francisco Bay.  There are three main areas currently:  Under the Pier, Under the Golden Gate, and the petting area.  Under the Pier and Under the Golden Gate are tubes through which you either walk or take a moving sidewalk (I recommend the moving sidewalk—it’s easier to gawk), and it really doesn’t feel like there’s anything separating you from the fish, especially when they swim overhead.

Under the Pier contains smaller fish, including anchovies, some salmon, leopard sharks, smaller rays, star fish, sea pens (which are absolutely fascinating—they look like big orange feathers), anemones, crabs, octopi, flounder, smaller rockfish, and the like.  Under the Golden Gate contains much larger fish, including sturgeon, large salmon, rockfish, large species of shark including dog shark and seven gill shark, and so forth.  The only big complaint I had was that the two tubes weren’t labeled except on the map, so while the aquarium is set up so that you automatically move through Under the Pier and then Under the Golden Gate, it would still be nice if it were labeled in person.

Finally, we come to the petting pools.  They have three petting pools:  rays, leopard sharks, and a tide pool.  All are quite small, but interesting.  The ray pool is similar to Monterey, but with smaller rays.  The shark pool is like nothing I’d seen before, and nifty.  Along with the normal star fish and urchins, the tide pool had cucumbers (which I’ve seen but less frequently) and limpets, which are kind of like a sea snail and are surprisingly unsquishy.

The only other criticism I had of the aquarium was that it’s not all on one level.  The ticket booth is on street level, and then you enter on the upper pier level, take the elevator to the lower level, walk through the exhibits, and take the elevator back up to the petting pools on the third floor.

Now it’s dinner time.  First stop is a restaurant called Neptune’s Palace, which looks yummy, but is very heavy on fish and light on shellfish, and I’m not a big seafood person, and particularly not a big fish person.  Mom recommends a place called Swiss Louie’s, but we come in, the restaurant is half empty, it takes them 5 minutes to decide okay, they can seat us, the hostess has to check the door where they post credit cards accepted to see if the take Master Card, and the women’s restroom is flooded and they can’t figure out what to do about it.  About that time, another group comes out complaining about the service and says “consider yourself warned”, so we leave.

Across the way is a place called Dante’s, largely specializing in seafood, but with a broad selection of other dishes.  Dad has an assortment of fish, crab, and shrimp cakes, Mom has steak and seafood, and I seriously consider shrimp, but can’t resist the six onion soup and the bruschetta, which are both quite nice.  Good choice.

By then, we’ve had a long day, so we browse a few shops and go home.