City by the bay

San Francisco is fairly cool town. Not sure I'd want to live there, but it's a hoot to visit. We spent the whole day in SF today, mostly walking around and taking in the view down along fisherman's wharf, looking out into the bay, etc. We hung around pier 39 and visited the Aquarium on the Bay, which was very neat. First, there are two tunnels you walk through (called "Under the Bay"), one with sea-life found in the bay, the other with sharks, both of which are very neat. Then there is a "Touch the Bay" area where you can touch sharks, rays, and star fish. The girls got a big ol' kick out of that.

We decided to walk all the way across the wharf to the cable car stop, so the girls could experience the original San Francisco treat. But there was an hour wait (minimum) when we got there. We went ahead and waited while six or seven cable cars filled up and moved out, until finally we were next. And we waited. And waited. And... waited. What gives(?) we asked the operator. He told us that there was apparently a major accident on the city streets and that all cable car operations were suspended temporarily. So we waited another 45 minutes or so until I made a command decision to go elsewhere.

It was disappointing for the girls to have missed that, though we did have them sit in a cable car for a photo op. However it was more frustrating that we burned all that daylight for nothing. And that's why I decided to throw in the towel. By that point the sun was on its way down, you could feel the cool breeze coming off the bay, and our jackets were on the other side of the wharf in the car trunk. I knew if we stayed and waited much longer that everyone would start getting cold.

So we walked back to the car for jackets and jeans and then went to eat. Parking would have cost $30, but if we got our parking validated at one of a few places, it would have saved us $12. So we went to the San Francisco Hard Rock Cafe for a nice, non-quiet dinner that also saved on parking. By the time we got out of there, we knew we needed to get out of town, because there was a ballgame about to end and we wanted to beat the game traffic. Well, we almost made it. The Giants got stomped, so many people left early, leaving us stuck in traffic quite a while. We probably could have stayed longer and waited for the traffic to die down, but then again it was a Saturday night in the bay area. Plus the girls were pretty beat by that point from all the walking (and they wonder why I made them wear sneakers instead of flip-flops).

Considering how long we waited in traffic, we contemplated splitting up the group, with half of us taking the post-game express train, just to see who would get back to Mountain View first.