Torres Go West: Touring San Francisco CA, Morning Session

Hey Everyone,

Well, we just realized that three weeks from tomorrow, Saturday, September 24^th, we will be taking the RV back to Rome GA! So in other words, we only have less than three weeks left on the road; the time has gone by so fast, I mean, it seemed like just yesterday we were telling ya'll good-bye and packing up!! Anyway, aside from that, we toured San Francisco CA yesterday, Thursday, September 22. We got up around 6:00 AM, had a quick breakfast, and headed to the ferry. Josh, Ben and Dad rode their bikes the two and a half miles to the ferry while Mom, myself, Daniel and Anna drove our bikes over in the van. We took the 7:45 ferry across the San Francisco bay from the Vallejo terminal to the San Francisco ferry terminal, right near pier 1. We got our bikes on the ferry, by the time we had gotten them on the bike racks, there weren’t any seats left for 7 people all together. Commuters sit down in one seat, set their newspaper, briefcase or other junk on the seat next to them and when asked if someone is sitting there, they say yes, it’s quite annoying. Also, they don’t sit right near each other too, there’s a seat or three between their stuff and someone else’s. We were finally able to find 7 seats together, on; you guessed it, the deck. We sat there freezing for about 30 minutes until we finally got smart and headed in and sat on the floor, hey, a least it was warm! We got to the terminal, headed off the ferry and tried to decide what to do and see first. On Pier 39, our first stop, we saw sea lions just sitting and sunning themselves on the docks. Some slid off the docks into the water to swim a little, then got back on land. After Pier 39 we headed to Fisherman’s Wharf, a few blocks down. At Fisherman’s wharf we saw street venders and even went to a museum where there are arcade games from a hundred years ago. At the museum we saw mechanical farms, player pianos (not like we haven’t seen one of those before!), Laughing Sal (a mechanical lady that laughs really creepily!), we saw 3D photos of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire and many other games! After the museum we went to see a WWII submarine. I had never toured a sub before, and found it quite interesting! After the sub we went to Boudin Sourdough Bakery, bought a loaf of bread and, feeling a little 11 o’clockish, had a snack. After we had a nice snack we went for something we all wanted to do: Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory. Ghirardelli was really interesting; we biked up the road, and smelled the Chocolate in the air. We got to see the old process of chocolate making. We even got to try their new for this fall season: Pumpkin Pie Spice! It was so amazing!! That's about the first half of our day, I'll do the other half in another post!