San Francisco, CA

No tours today, so we started with an delicious home-cooked breakfast at the ‘Inn’, and met some of the other folks staying there. It’s funny, all the Americans couldn’t quite fathom the idea of taking a 14 hour flight anywhere, some of them didn’t much enjoy their two hour flight to San Francisco. Guess we won’t be seeing them in Sydney any time soon! We jumped on the “F-Line” streetcar again and took it all the way to the waterfront. There was lot going on at Pier 39 – lots of shops, lots of tour boats taking off, and lots and lots of sea lions! They were playing in the water and sunning themselves on pontoons set up near the pier. We could’ve spent hours watching them fighting over the pontoons, barking and hissing and trying to push each other in to the water. Size matters in sea lion land – when one of the really big ones would surface on to a pontoon, all the others would scatter lest they get slapped out of the way. This was despite the fact that almost half the pontoons were completely empty. Eventually we moved on, checking out the shops at pier 39, and walking by all the other piers, and a series of market stalls, before getting stuck in THE tourist activity for San Francisco – riding a cable car. Of course, every other tourist in town had the exact same idea – so we were in for a bit of a wait. An hour later, on we get and off it goes. It’s noisy, rough, but after about 130 years of service, entirely forgivable. Considering the hills it has to climb (equal too if not exceeding the best streets Engadine could throw at us), it does an amazing job, gripping on to the under-road cable for dear life and processing along at a stately constant 9.5 miles per hour no matter what the terrain. Glad we weren’t among the ‘hangers-on’ riding on the running boards though. When two cable cars pass each other, boy do they pass close! No wonder the gripman (driver) calls out to everyone when they are about to pass a cable car coming the other way. At the other end of the trip (near Fishermans Wharf) we stepped off the cable car, and joined the queue to get on for the return journey. I guess the trouble with century-old infrastructure is that it does have to be babied a bit. To limit the strain on the cable itself and the motors that drive it, only a certain number of cars can be in service at any one time. So when the road traffic builds up, it can take a while for each new car to be deployed… To cut a long story short we waited nearly 90 minutes to get back on. But the luck of he draw (or the queue) worked in our favour as we were near the head of the queue when it came time to board, so we were lucky enough to get the prime seats at the front, facing outward, for a good view on the trip back. After (finally) returning home, we headed out for dinner – there are dozens of restaurants in the Castro so we’re spoiled for choice. We settled on Japanese. As for dessert – well, what city would be complete without its own roving Creme brûlée food truck? Yep, like a posh Mr Whippy but not, all it serves is mase-to-order Creme brûlée in various flavours and variations. I had a standard vanilla, and Perry opted for s’mores. That’s a chocolate Creme brûlée, with mini marshmallows on top, which are them blow-torched, and topped with crumbled cookie pieces. When I say made-to-order, the custard component is already made, but the sugar-and-blowtorch part is done right there in the truck, ensuring the top has that proper ‘crack’ when you dig the spoon in. Lovely. We have a bit of an early start tomorrow for a tour – goodnight!