Day 2 – San Francisco: Union Square, Fisherman’s wharf

There was no AC in the room and Rohan’s baby monitor had the temperature at 29C!  There was a fan but it kept turning on the main room light every hour or randomly speeding up.  We were all struggling to sleep and that made us all wake up.  Thankfully we managed to get enough sleep to not be zombies!  Rohan woke limp and drenched in sweat.  He downed a water bottle of water and 2x200ml of cold milk and thankfully perked up heaps.  Julian woke up looking reasonably normal and was spritely too.  YAY!

So we headed up the street for breakfast and thankfully found someone nice.  Julian and Rohan inhaled pancakes.  I wasn’t too keen on the pancakes and Steve thought the vegetarian omelette was ok too.  

Brushing teeth in the hotel bathroom

 We went back to the hotel and changed into warmer clothes (it was now only 28C in our room!) before heading to Macy’s to buy Julian some new shoes.  That didn’t happen as they didn’t have what we liked in his size, so we walked around. 

No shoes for Julian at Macys

We walked past Britax Fabrics and down Market st. 

We saw another Walgreens selling watermelon, so the boys had that for morning tea (and it was tasty watermelon – we are doing that again!).  Then we went to Westfield San Francisco (those places are everywhere!) and went into Nordstroms and finally found some shoes for Julian (for more than we would have liked to pay but anyway…).  

Trolley car - photo by Julian

 

Hercules fly-by!

I had promised Julian a milkshake and I had planned to go to a famous chocolate shop but this particular one only sold chocolates.  So back to Macy’s we went as when we were in the lift earlier, we noticed that they had a Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream shop in their basement.  

It turns out that they also had a Boudin Bakery down there too.  This place is famous in San Francisco for being one of the first sourdough bakeries.  I ordered a Chicken salad sandwich and a Ham and Cheese grilled sandwich (both came with packets of potato chips).  I also bought the promised chocolate milkshake from Ben & Jerrys.   Julian could not be coerced to eat anything other than a few Goldfish crackers and his milkshake.  Rohan wasn’t interested in being in a highchair yet again, but Steve did manage to get some Ham and Cheese sandwich into him.  Rohan is also off the squeezy food pouches too :(.  Our sandwiches were actually quite nice but we really didn’t have the serenity to enjoy them.  

We headed back to our stifling room to “freshen up” and then I decided perhaps we should walk up Powell St and have a look at Union Square.  This is a much nicer Union Square than the one in New York and there was actually grass there that you could walk on!  But we didn’t because the Blue Angels started to fly overhead!  It was fantastically loud and it was difficult to pick the direction they were coming from due to the noise reflecting off the buildings.  After a bit of plane spotting, we decided to walk up Powell st.

Union Square

Blue Angels above Macy's

Powell street has a cable car on it as it is too steep for normal trams.  So like I said, we walked up it.  We had spectacular views of the Blue Angels doing their bit over the harbour and they did a few low flybys.  The flyby at the top of Russian Hill was especially low and loud!  

We continued our walk down the other side towards the harbour.  Lombard Street (the curviest street in San Francisco) was on the way, so we had a brief look before we continued walking to Fisherman’s Wharf.

Fisherman’s Wharf was bumper to bumper traffic and a mass of people, all who had been down by the bay to watch the Angels.  We walked some more.

Alcatraz from Fisherman's Wharf

Pier 39 is the site that the San Francisco city decided to rehome a lot of sea lions.  They obviously like it there as there were quite a few.  Julian had a great time and did not want to leave them.  He also said that wouldn’t it be great to see a whale in the harbour!  Maybe we will be lucky.

It was now getting late and cooling off, so we started the walk around the foreshore to find some transport home.  Unfortunately every tram and bus was packed and we had no cash to allow us to use them anyway.  So we walked some more.

Finally we got to the Farmer’s market at Pier 1, got some cash and bought some apples.  Them’s good apples! So we bought some more.

We walked to the Embarchero train station and caught the local train (MUNI) to Powell street and then back to the hotel.  We were all exhausted but we had to eat.  I had planned on eating at the Chipotle around the corner but that was full, so we walked some more (!!) and found an American Restaurant.  There were fights over having to actually eat dinner but we managed to get a bit of burger bun into Julian and Rohan ate chips/fries.  Steve and I ate very average tasting burgers.

Thankfully both boys crashed after their bath.  Actually we all crashed!