Here we are for another travel blog series. Kicking off our October trip with a few days in San Francisco. We landed late Friday night and woke up to clear skies and city views. No rush, just ready to wander and let the weekend unfold.
What a nice surprise to wake up to some gorgeous views from our hotel room.
We walked to get breakfast at Caffe Central. Really popular spot, but for good reason. Fresh ingredients and made to order. Rob got the Lorraine Quiche (bacon, onions, cheddar, Swiss & provolone cheese) and I got the Fit My Soul (scrambled egg whites with sautéed spinach, diced tomatoes, mushroom, feta cheese & buttered artisan bread).
After that we took the cable car down to Fisherman’s Wharf with no real agenda for our morning. The smell of fish and sourdough drifted through the air, and the sidewalks were busy but not overwhelming. We watched the sea lions bark and flop around near Pier 39, peeked into a some shops, rode the cable car, and grabbed lunch that was way better than expected.
We happened upon this cool little spot, the Musée Mécanique (Mechanical Museum) is a free, interactive museum at Pier 45, featuring over 200 antique coin-operated machines. It’s one of the world’s largest privately owned collections of mechanical arcade games, music boxes, and animatronic curiosities. Just a really cool place to walk through.
Lunch at Chowder Hut Grill was Crab Chowder (Hut’s famous Dungeness crab chowder served in a Boudin sourdough bread bowl) and Fish n’ Chips (Anchor Steam beer battered fish with fries).
If you remember, we were in San Fran last summer and were so unlucky on the whale tour that we got to do it again for free on this trip! We headed out in the afternoon. We had packed our $10 San Fran sweatshirts we got last year, but something was telling Rob we were going to be so much colder since its now fall. We ended up purchasing some pretty nice lined jackets, which kept us nice and cozy.
As we cruised out past the pier, we watched the birds just going crazy behind the boat. The naturalist onboard was great, pointing out harbor porpoises and seals before we even got far from shore. After riding under the Golden Gate Bridge and entering into the Pacific Ocean, everyone’s eyes were peeled looking for the 3 “B’s”, birds, blowholes, and breach. After riding down near Pacifica, we finally spotted the humpback whale. We saw the blow first, then its back rising out of the water. Very cool experience finally spotting several whales.
I didn’t get any photos of the whales because sometimes you just need to soak in life and try not to photograph every thing. Also the whales were so far away it would be like “that black spot in the water is a whale” with just my iPhone camera…Here’s a list of all the species we saw.
After traversing back to the pier, Rob and I walked a couple blocks to our dinner reservation spot at Scoma’s. This was the hidden gem we discovered last summer when we were here.
At dinner we bounced around the idea of stopping at a store on the way back, but we ended up just taking the cable car back to our hotel. Look for my next post about Day 2 that we spent in Chinatown.
More photos from this day>>>Day 1
