Benjamin and Sherry's West Coast Odyssey Diary: Part 4

Day Five (Saturday, June 17th)- San Francisco!

San Francisco has some extremely nice people. The hotel manager, a former San Francisco tour guide, checked us in the first night and made several suggestions as to what we should see in our short stay in the beautiful city.

Suggested by the friendly hotel manager, we set out to get to the top of the mountain very close to the Golden Gate Bridge for a fantastic view of San Francisco from the sky. We later learned that where we took this picture from was not the "mountain" we were supposed to go to, but oh well.... Ben and I got to chase around a couple of really cute lizards, and I saw a jack rabbit leaping into the woods.

Ben and I ventured onto the buses to get around San Francisco. Our first stop was the Exploratorium. The outside was really, really beautiful, and the inside was filled with all sorts of displays to explore different aspects of science, complete with screaming kids of all ages.

It was back onto public transportation and to the heart of the city- Golden Gate Park. We walked about a half mile to the Japanese Tea Garden, following a really cute couple who seemed to know where they were going- and they did.

We stopped at the De Young Museum briefly to get something to eat and view some modern and African art. A little advice.. don't ever eat at a museum! It's horribly expensive (Ben and I shelled out almost $25.00 for two small, disgusting sandwiches, a big cookie, and a Jones soda), and it doesn't taste good at all!

It was about 3:00 in the afternoon, and we wanted to try and make it to the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, which was about a ten-minute bus ride north. We walked around the park for a while and decided that it would be impossible to go to that museum that day, and besides, the ocean beach was a half-mile away. Let me tell you, it was well-worth going to the beach instead (I had never set foot in the ocean before!). Here are a few pictures of our fun on the beach...

At around 4:00, I decided we should go, since we had to make it to Fisherman's Wharf for our night tour to Alcatraz. We searched out the nearest bus station and waited for the bus to arrive(which only came every 20 minutes). A little worried we wouldn't make it in time for the tour, I asked a boy who was sitting at the bus stop how long he had been waiting. He indicated that we had just missed the bus, but there was a bus right around the corner that would take us to Fisherman's Wharf. We thanked him and ran around the corner where the bus was sitting (the driver was taking a short break). The boy followed us onto the bus and said he would show us where to get off and added that it would be a long bus ride. I again got that feeling of "Oh my god, we're not going to make it on time!". For the remainder of the long bus ride, I glanced at my watch every fifteen seconds, hoping that time would slow down for a while. The boy led us off of the bus and pointed us in the direction of the next bus that we were supposed to take. We thanked him again and ran to the bus stop, only to see another bus that went to about the same destination, but was there at that moment! So, we leapt onto the bus, only to see the correct bus stop right behind us not 10-seconds later. Ben and I waited anxiously to get off of the bus and to Fisherman's Wharf. We were finally there! We ran off of the bus and to the pier. We had made it in time!

The Alcatraz night tour was nothing short of completely awesome. What could be better than visiting an old, creepy, abandoned prison at dusk? We took an audio tour that led us step-by-step through the old prison. (on the left- Alcatraz, on the right- Al Capone's cell, on the bottom- me in solitary confinement)

Day Six (Sunday, June 18th)

Ben and I traveled down to Monterey Bay to take another whale-watching tour! Instead of seeing orcas, we were going to see the really big whales, like humpback and blue whales. We set out on our tiny boat onto the big, blue ocean.

The ocean was rough that day, and Ben and I watched the waves that were well over the top of the small vessel come toward us before the boat floated over the top of them. At first, it was really fun, like a rollercoaster ride. But then.... it got sickening- literally, sickening. The boat floated around the ocean for about an hour-and-a-half before they received word of some dolphins swimming nearby.

All of the passengers looked excitedly over the bow and watched the dolphins swim along with the boat. The only thought running through my mind at the time was "Don't puke, don't puke, don't puke." The captain and his first mate of the tiny boat overheard from surrounding boats that there were three humpback whales about a mile from where we were and went racing towards them. We finally reached them, and they were so majestic, only coming up for air every 5-7 minutes. Everyone was waiting for them to appear for the second time when it happened.... I lost it and tossed my cookies. People were giving me disgusted looks and moved away from me, while I apologized to them.

On the way back from whale-watching, I kept my eye on the land that was slowly approaching, while saying to myself, "Don't puke again, don't puke again." Guess what? I puked again. This time I sent a happy family of four sitting near the bow running when I decided to vomit into the wind, sending my partially digested food in their direction. What? It was either on the deck of the boat or trying to make it over the side of the boat. I apologized to these people when docking at the pier, and they were very empathetic.

Ben and I slowly made our way back to San Francisco after I purchased a couple of Dramamine pills. We hit up the Museum of Modern Art and then headed to Fisherman's Wharf to visit the Aquarium on the Bay. We were just in time to see a spectacular sunset behind the Golden Gate Bridge.



Next time on the Nobody's Fool Blog... drunken good times in Napa Valley and our search for Bigfoot.