Day 5: San Francisco to Napa

I think we are getting used to the heat in the hotel as everyone other than Steve slept well (he had slept ok the other nights).  We all woke around 7:30am, ready for breakfast.  An hour later, after I had found a toilet plunger and had unblocked the toilet, we headed off to our breakfast place via the laundry (to shove the wet clothes in the dryer).

We had the tried and true pancakes and fruit for breakfast.  I think Rohan ate the same as me – he must be on a growth spurt.  Julian had his on the plane, as his shins were hurting then and after that his trousers are too short.  

This unseasonably hot weather continues, with high 80s to mid 90s expected today.  My fizzy hair tells me that it is high humidity too!

After breakfast, we picked up the dry clothes and headed up to our room (6^th floor) to pack.  The room has two windows, only 1 opens.  We have had this open at night time and during the day we have to be careful because it is very low and Rohan could easily tumble out.  To help entertain the boys, and to keep Rohan away from the window, I turned on the TV and found PBS.  There was a show called Daniels Neighborhood (I haven’t watched it at home) which was about parents always coming back (after a date or going to work).  We had finished packing by then so we all settled onto the bed for some relaxing.  There was a double episode of dinosaur train which kept everyone happy.
 

View from our window

This is how low the window was - Rohan could easily have fallen out!

The wonderful hotel room - Julian slept on the roll away mattress under the window.

A Powell street cable car - we didn't manage to get on one as the queues where crazy long.

Checkout was 11am, so we put our bags in the luggage storage and headed to Britax fabrics. 

OMG this place was fantastic!  Not cheap but it had a great selection of colours, prints and fabric compositions.  The ground floor had woollens and silks which were of stunning quality.  As I looked the women in the store discovered Julian’s love of whales and found a silk panel with huge whales and dolphins on it.  This fabric was my trip souvenir, so I went for 1.3yards of a 4ply silk at $45/yard.  The guy that served me cut the fabric amongst the other bolts of fabric using a yard stick.  He measured a very generous 1.3yards (1.5) and then checked for squareness of the cut!  I said that I thought that was fantastic (can you imagine anyone doing this at Spotlight or even The Fabric Store?).  He also said that I was a good shopper as these 4ply silks usually retail for $95/yard.  I told Steve this – I got a bargain!  I did look at the cottons but they were all around $30/yard for the ones I liked, so the silk was a much better deal.

We then went to Walgreens (to buy the usual watermelon, sandwiches and apples) before picking up the luggage at the hotel.  

We loaded up the pram with the trunki (I had the stroller bag full of other stuff on my back) and poor Steve - he had his backpack on his front, the soft black bag on his back and he hauled both large suitcases. We had too much luggage!  Tell me again why we bought sleeping bags with us?

Thankfully the hotel was superbly located for a BART station, so we only had to walk across 1 block and down 1 block before we got to the BART elevator.  We bought tickets which were a ridiculously cheap $5.95 to travel approx. 35miles to Fremont (which is on the way to San Jose – sing it!).  It was a great train ride during which the boys shared the watermelon and Rohan ate half an egg sandwich except for the 1 bite Julian ate of it (!!).  We grabbed a large taxi from the station to Cruise America where we picked up our excessively huge motorhome.

Cruise America was a parking lot full of brand new motorhomes of varying length.  The cost of all these fully fitted out rigs must be astronomical.  I am so happy to rent one.  They gave us a new one and it is sweet.  My favourite part is the curtains – they are block out and they are everywhere, so there is no light in here!  In the hotel we used our usual trick of taping black rubbish bags to the windows (that kept the heat down to 29C!).  In the motorhome I have just used them to make the curtain into the bedroom a bit wider and to block out the light bleed at the top through the curtain rings.  Absolutely fantastic!

Now that we had our RV, and Steve figured out that the parking brake which is activated by foot was released by pulling a lever with your hand, we were on our way…to Walmart.  We needed car seats, pillows and food. No Wal-martians in Fremont today.  They did have fabric there and I could have bought either a silver or white KitchenAid mixer for $249.  Yep, I nearly cried.

Finally we headed out onto the highway.  The GPS worked (which from now on will be known as Jane) and we trucked along through some ridiculous amounts of traffic.  Rohan had had enough after about 5mins and passed the next hour sleeping very actively.  Julian went through periods of whingy and then very lovely.  We discovered San Francisco’s Car Pool lanes for when you have more than 3 people in your car and it was fantastic.  It seriously was like driving in the emergency vehicle lane in a traffic jam.  I think we would still have been out there for another2 hours if this lane didn’t exist.  

The drive took between 1.5-2hours (we have no idea really) to get us to Napa.  I hadn’t booked a site and the first place we went to was full.  Thankfully the second park, Skyline County Park, had room and it was better than the first.  It is up a country lane and there are vineyards at the gate.  Nice.

We scrubbed plans to eat in Napa as it was already 6:30pm, so we “hooked up” and started dinner – spaghetti with a tin of Italian tomatoes.  EVERYONE inhaled dinner – it tasted SO good!

The hot water hadn’t heated up, so there we didn’t try the shower.  The boys were in bed at 8:15pm and Julian fell asleep very quickly oblivious to Rohan playing around in the cot next to him.  Rohan finally relaxed at just before 9pm.  Fingers crossed Julian doesn’t wake him too early in the morning.