USA – Road Trip – San Francisco – 12th October

We started our day with a trip to the Golden Gate Park by taking a bus to the part of the park that houses the Botanical Gardens. The gardens are a bit of paradise away from the busy streets of the city. We enjoyed exploring the succulent plants, flowers and plants from the Andes and the Ancient garden, although at different times of year other parts of the gardens will flourish more.

We communicated with Dave’s friends and planned to meet them in Cows Hollow as we knew there were some good places around there to eat. We took bus number 42 all the way there after a long walk from one end of the park and eventually arrived with them just after 1pm.

A little tip for those using public transport… the boys bought a travel pass for $21 each which permitted them to travel on all public transport methods for 3 days including the cable cars! Another little tip is if you’re not really planning on using the cable cars (which are $6 one way) then a bus pass is also valid on the Muni underground rail, and the street cars. One bus ticked costs $2 and lasts for 4 hours! Good stuff!

Anyway we met the boys at a nice bar called The Brixton and it was really good to see them. This is the first time we’ve had people come and join us for our trip so it’s just been great having the company and seeing such lovely familiar faces! (he he) We enjoyed a good catch up, drinks and food before making our way back up to Lombard street to the zig zag street. We were doing the touristy things again but it didn’t matter. We followed this with a trip to Coit Tower, although we decided to stay at the bottom and chill out whilst the boys enjoyed a little trip up to the top to take in the views. We took the cable car down to Powell Street as we hadn’t been on one yet, and we checked out their hotel before heading back to Mission to enjoy a lovely fish and seafood dinner with our hosts Heather and Jamie at The Anchor on Castro Street. This was our first introduction to the Gay district of San Fran.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f/2.0, Leica 90mm f/2.8, Zeiss 18mm f/4 ZM processed in Lightroom 3)

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