Tuesday 2nd October

We were supposed to get up early to get ourselves free breakfast that was provided by the hostel we stayed. Unfortunately for us, we missed it as for some reasons, my watch was one hour later than it should be. We forgotten to change it once we arrived to San Francisco!

So we had to find a quick snack before we searched for the Amtrak station to purchase the tickets for the next stop, San Diego for the next day. It was a long walk with alot of steep hills to climb! Once we sorted it out, we were hoping to visit the Alcatraz island as well as visiting the Golden Gate Bridge. Due to our clocks being wrong, we didn't have enough time to do both.

On our way along the pier, we thought to see if we can still visit the island which was famous for the isolated prisoners. Unfortunately for us, that day was sold out! So we planned to see it tomorrow as we still got a full day to use before catching a amtrak bus in the early evening.

Further up on the Pier, we stopped by to visit the famous sealions pier. There were alot of sealions on the floating docks as you can see in the photos. We can tell you that they are very smelly for sure, just like fishy smells!

As we couldn't visit the island, we were still hoping to visit the Golden Gate Bridge. Nearby the sealions pier, there was a bike rental station to hire as we knew it would be a very long walk to get onto the bridge. We had our lunch first to get the energy before hiring the bikes for a couple of hours to get to the bridge.

We enjoyed riding, though it was very windy as it was pushing us against it so it was very hard work! Definately alot of hills to ride up! It took us about a hour to get to the bridge and we managed to ride on and over the bridge to the other side. We could have ridden around on the different island which was on the other side of the bridge, but we didn't have enough time so we made our way back. We were pleased that we did hire the bikes cos it was so fun riding on the famous bridge and taking in all the breathtaking views and the skyline of San Francisco.

Unfortunately on the way back, Lisa's bike started to play up, it kept changing the gears by itself which was really annoying for her, especially when riding uphills. The bike decided to give her a difficult setting which was hell, forcing her to walk up instead!! Luckily, we just rode downhill most of the time which was so easy! In total, we have ridden 8 miles.

The weather started to turn really windy and cold which was unfortunate for us cos we still have to walk back to the hostel which can take 45 mins. Our legs were knackered and struggled to lift our legs to do the walking! Daniel kindly sent us to the street which had a huge steep road to climb up(!) It was a torture for our legs! Once we got to the top, we were so relieved to see the downhill for a change but boy, cos of our tired legs, we were struggling to slow down too!! But hey, it kept us warm and get to the hostel as quick as possible!

Arrived to the hostel, did bit of cooking before tiring ourselves to the laptop for uploading the photos again. It was our last evening. We did enjoy our room as we had another couple sharing with us, they were from Australia but living in UK at the moment. Lee, who was part of the couple mentioned that there was a deaf school near him, or that he went to school which had an unit for the deaf. He said that he used bit of sign language but only swear words! Doesn't everyone know that?! From our experience, everyone always asked us for sign language for those kinds!! Practically they were the first couple that we felt relaxed and at ease with.