Today we had a look through a historic fun parlour called Musee Mechanique and we also toured the submarine USS Pampanito. In 1943 Pampanito sank a Japanese ship which was carrying British and Australian POWs. 3 days later, she rescued 73 survivors.In the afternoon, we picked up the hire car (a Ford Escape SUV) and parked it at the hotel ready for an early start the next day. We had our last dinner in San Francisco at a little restaurant called Pompei's Gr...

On Monday July 9, still in San Francisco, we saw Lombard Street which is famous for being so steep that they have installed 9 hairpin bends and planted the spaces with gardens... predominantly Hydrangeas. We also caught a cable car into Union Square where I left the others to go shopping while I did some exploring including the cable car museum. Later, Mitch and I had a tour of the USS Jeremiah O' Brien which is a WWII liberty ship docked at Fisherman's...

We had a booking for Alcatraz at 1:45pm, so after breakfast at Denny's downstairs, we decided to fill the morning in on the Golden Gate bus trip for a second time hoping to get a clearer view. Betsy was driving again...we thought we put her off her commentary a bit because we already knew all her lines and she had nothing new to say! The foggy bridge was much the same... maybe it was just a little better. After that we took a ferry trip from Pier 33 to Alcat...

Today we walked a few blocks to Leavenworth Street, where we picked up tickets and took a bus tour to see the Golden Gate Bridge. Our driver was a bit of a character called Betsy who gave a lively commentary but she had a particularly raspy voice. Unfortunately, the bridge was shrouded by fog which is apparently the normal situation. San Francisco is noted for its fog. However the bridge still looked beautiful, even with the fog. On the other side of the bri...

We had to get up at 2am today to be ready for our 3am shuttle to Dulles Airport. The bag check-in at the airport seemed to be a bit of a rabble. When you check-in the bags, they give them back to you! We had to wheel the bags around the corner and an unofficial looking TSA guy finally took them off us. Must make sense to them I suppose. We flew across from Washington DC to San Francisco on United Airlines flight 567.Had the only real hiccup of the trip so f...