Summer Tales – San Francisco and the Bay

Today (7/8) we spent another beautiful day in San Francisco. We took BART into San Francisco again after breakfast and got off at Embarcardero station. We walked over to the water and walked out onto Pier 5, which offered a beautiful view of Treasure Island, the Bay Bridge and the “San Francisco Belle”, a big steam boat on the next pier over.

We walked along the Piers until we reached Pier 39, where we paid a visit to the  seals.

Then we got in line to purchase tickets for a Bay Cruise. I actually had gotten two tickets off Groupon (for a great price!) months ago and wanted to  surprise my parents with them. I had thought about things to do in San Francisco that we hadn’t done during previous visits and seeing the city and Golden Gate Bridge from the water was one of those things. It turned out to be a GREAT idea.

As you can tell from the photos, the weather was kind of overcast and I was a little bummed at first, but that was supposed to change pretty soon!

It was about 2 p.m. when we got on the boat and we expected it to be cold and windy on the upper deck (which it was!), but of course, we wanted to be up there for the view.

We actually managed to grab a few seats up there and the view of the city was absolutely beautiful. The amazing thing was: the closer we got to the Golden Gate Bridge, the more the sun came out and we had clear view of the bridge when we passed below it.

On our way back, we were able to take a closer look at Alcatraz as we circumnavigated the island.

We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the various shops on Pier 39, had some coffee to warm our cold fingers and then had dinner at the Hard Rock Café.

Another beautiful day came to its close when we hopped back on the BART to the East Bay.

… stay tuned.