San Francisco - day 1

April 21, 2019.

After a good nights sleep (I think we'd have slept through anything by then), I went down to the reception area of the hotel, where they served a buffet style breakfast selection, of fruits, pastries, breads and bagels.  Grab an IKEA tray from the stack (hey - we have two of these at home!!), and stack it up with as much as you can eat, grab a couple of coffees (or tea, hot chocolate, fruit juice, etc...), then take it back to your room to consume in privacy and comfort.

For our first day out in America, we drove back up CA-1 north, to a spot to the south west of the Golden Gate Bridge, called Lands End Lookout. We thought it was just a view point out across the Golden Gate, but found that it is also the start (or end - depending on your perspective) of a coastal walk that extends for a little over a mile eastwards towards the bridge, ending at a place called Eagle Point.  The end of the trail overlooks Baker Beach and Marshall's Beach, which lead your eye straight to the Golden Gate Bridge.  The walk gives excellent views across the Golden Gate to the Northern shore, Marin Headlands, Point Bonita, and towards the bridge at numerous points.  Along the way, there are some (steep) steps down to a rocky outcrop where (I am reliably informed by Karen - who made it all the way to the bottom), there is a Labyrinth created by an artist called Eduardo Aguilera.  I didn't make it all the way down, so if you visit it - let me know what it was like.  This little detour is optional, but if you want to make it all the way from Lands End Lookout to Eagle Point, then there are some steep steps up over a ridge that you will need to tackle.  The steps and path are all well formed, so are not at all dangerous, but on a hot day (as today was), you'll be grateful you took a bottle of water with you. 

After spending a couple of hours here, we drove across the bridge, and then up onto the Marin Headlands and the various viewpoints back from the North towards the bridge. They were disappointingly busy and with very limited opportunities for parking – especially the closer ones - but it was a Sunday morning on a holiday weekend so mid-week visitors might have an easier time parking... Eventually we found somewhere to stop and get some pictures. At the end of the road that serves all the viewpoints back to the bridge and city beyond, you can either turn around and go back the way you came, or you can follow the road onwards towards Point Bonita lighthouse. It’s a one way road with some really spectacular views. It is well worth the extra drive - but drive slowly and have your passenger ready with a camera - there are almost no places to pull over for a photo here.

From there, we drove through Sausalito, around Richardson Bay, to Tiburon, where we just missed the ferry across to Angel Island!  We found a place called Woodland Market, where we were able to buy ourselves some lunch and kill time till the next ferry, and then went across to Angel Island.  We only had a couple of hours available to us, before the last ferry of the day returned to Tiburon, so we prioritised and walked round to the remains of the old Immigration Centre. For most immigrants coming to San Francisco in 'the olden days', they would have to pass through this centre, spending a day or two here while their paperwork was validated.  However, there was a law prohibiting Chinese labourers, and to get around this, Chinese people with a 'legal' right to be here, would sell allocations for 'family' members to labourers back in China, and the incoming workers would then pretend to be those relatives.  They had to learn every detail of their supposed relationship and family history, as they would be kept at the Immigration Centre for many months or even years, while they were cross-examined and interrogated.  Many were sent back home again, or died while waiting to be assessed - their living conditions were quite brutal.

After catching the last ferry back to Tiburon, we drove the return journey pretty much by the same route as we had come this morning.  Back through Sausalito, to the Marin Headlands and Lands End to see the bridge with the sun on it (TIP - in the mornings, the sun shines on the inland side, and in the afternoons on the seaward side - you need to be on the side with the sun shining on it if you want your photos to have the distinctive orange colour).

We followed the coastal road south, past the end of the Golden Gate Park, and stopped at a restaurant called Beach Chalet, where we watched the sun go down over the sea, while we enjoyed a meal and home-brewed beers, before finally going back to Half Moon Bay and watching the start of the final season of Game Of Thrones ;-)

Need to get an early night now, as we have an early start tomorrow - we're going to prison on Alcatraz!