As dinner had been so delicious the previous night, we went back to Don Giovanni's for dinner again! It had been a long day, and neither of us wanted to venture very far - not given our recent experiences in trying to find restaurants from the driving directions given in hotels! We weren't too late back - just enough time to download lots of photos to the blog before I hit the hay. Breakfast was "interesting"! They had Eggs Benedict on the menu (which I simply adore!), but it came with a merlot hollandaise which was, well, not very nice! It tasted quite winey (obviously!), and its not a taste I like at breakfast! Not sure that red wine and eggs goes together very well... I managed to scrape most of it off, so all was not lost!
After brekkers we packed (again!) and loaded up the car ready for the drive back to San Fran. We had planned some stopping off points, and the first of these was Muir Woods to see the giant coastal redwoods. It was a stunning drive down to the woods, clinging to a steep, twisting road which took you down the side of the valley. The view was spectacular. Muir Woods was fascinating. The trees were huge! The redwoods grow to around 360 feet tall, and are around 1000 years old. There was also information on the efforts to save the wood from deforestation in the early part of the 20th century, and the part that John Muir played in that. He was a conservationist who originally hailed from Dunbar in East Lothian and had moved to the US with his parents in the mid-1800's. When I was little we used to go to Muir Woods in Dunbar, so it was interesting to contrast and compare. The drive back up the twisty, clinging to the side of a hill, road was quite frankly nerve-wracking!!! It was a sheer drop in places, and we were oh-so-close to the edge. I shut my eyes in places and just hoped that Stephen wasn't doing the same as he was the one driving!!
We had planned on visiting Sausalito for a wander round and a spot of lunch. We had been years ago and remembered a busy, vibrant town and marina, full of shops, restaurants and people. I'm not really sure what happened, but it appeared to be closed! There were a few people wandering about, but it was cold and grey, so we pushed on to the next spot on the agenda which was the fortifications on the headland overlooking the Golden Gate bridge. You get an absolutely cracking view of the bridge from here, but my God, it was freezing!!! It was drizzling and windy, and you're in a really exposed position so we didn't hang around long. We walked up, took a photo or two, then practically sprinted back down to the car!!
Onwards, ever onwards, we headed across the bridge (and paid the exorbitant $5 toll), then headed across town to Lombard Street. Its the "Crookedest Street" and zig-zags down the hill. The drive up was something! It was a really steep climb to the top of the hill. We had a car with a ridiculously large engine, and it took all of its little horses to get us up to the top! My rollerskate would have given up about halfway I think! We stopped at the top for photos (not that you can really see how steep it is from them), and Stephen did his thing and took snaps of loads for people. Driving up and over the top in order to drive down the street was interesting. You could not see what was coming at the junction as the nose of the car was pointing too much into the air! Thankfully there were mirrors on the lamp posts to help on that score. It was a very slow descent down the street, but we twisted our way down and I jumped out (risking life and limb and being trampled under the crowds of other tourists!) to get a photo.
Do you remember that I said that the feeling of a city can change in a couple of blocks? Well would you like to guess where our hotel for our return visit was? Yup!! Nice hotel, crap location. Thank goodness it was only for one night! It was better in one direction than the other...one way was massage parlours and people asking for money every 10 yards. The other way was the Hilton and some art galleries. The upside was that we found a really good Indian restaurant really close to the hotel. Every cloud... Of course, it is a pisser that we have found a great Indian restaurant and it's in San Francisco, but hey... if we have one really great curry whilst we're over here in the US we should be thankful!!
We were up at the ungodly hour of 5AM in order to catch the 7:45 flight back to DC. We both slept really badly - probably because we knew we had to wake up in the middle of the night. Which may have been why getting to the airport turned into such a trauma!! It wasn't the most clearly signposted exit for the airport, or rental car return and Stephen took the wrong turning off the freeway - TWICE!!!! Thank heavens for SatNav! As it was I was grumpy, but I would have been totally incandescent if I had had to navigate us back with the crappy maps they give you! Another marital averted...
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