On the way to San Francisco

After packing up our stuff (it’s amazing how your suitcases explode when you are in one place for more than a day), we took a detour to Emerald Bay, supposedly one of the prettiest places at Lake Tahoe. There were a lot of trees around, which made it hard to get a good view, so I actually think that the place we went to the day before was a better viewpoint. It was just a brief stop there, and then on towards the wine regions and north of San Francisco.

Andrew has been driving most of the time since Nic left, but I have driven a few times. I get tired of Andrew screaming every time I drive off the road to the right hand side though, so I prefer him to drive. I’m fine with driving on the right side of the road, but keep creeping over to the right even more so that I end up off-roading sometimes. It all adds to the experience, right?

We stopped at two lots of factory outlets on the way, then drove through Napa and Sonoma wine regions, and stayed the night in Petaluma, about an hour north of San Francisco. That night we had probably the best meal of the trip so far, and it was at a cheap and cheerful place that was a bargain! Stoked.

The next day we had to drop the car off in San Francisco by 3.30, so we took off and stopped at a town to get petrol, and came across a classic car show in the main street. I’m not really a car buff, but these were very cool – old classic American cars, really nicely looked after and done up. We wandered through them and then it was time to hit the Golden Gate Bridge.

It’s a great way to arrive in San Francisco, over one of the main symbols of the city, the orange bridge. It’s not called the Golden Gate because of the colour, the Golden Gate is actually the body of water that the bridge spans. Then we had to navigate through the streets to find the hotel to drop me and the bags off, and then Andrew was on his own to drop the car off. Considering it was just around the corner, I was a bit concerned when, an hour and a half later, he hadn’t returned.

Turns out he wasn’t lost (of course not), but had been given the run around by the rental company to drop it off at another location. With all the one way streets in SF, going up one street and back a block can mean almost doing a figure eight, so it had been quite an experience for him, but he managed it well and we are now carless.

We’re staying right in Union Square, in the centre of town, and found this amazing Thai restaurant around the corner from the hotel, which we had dinner at, and then retired to watch Discovery and Animal Planet.