San Francisco in a day

Day 61 (Monday Nov 22nd)
"In your message please tell me one thing that you're grateful for"

The first thing I did when I woke up was to check online and see if there was any change in my travel options. My dad had spotted that train tickets were available again but for about $20 more. I quickly booked one and then checked my emails to find a couple of replies to my rideshare post. One asked me to reply with a bit more info about myself and the other one left a phone number which I called. It went to voicemail and she sounded like a very hippy woman so I left a message. I called Amtrak to check if could cancel my ticket with no charge and the woman said that would be okay up to a couple of hours before my train leaves so I left my options open. I stored my bag at the hostel and went down the road to a cafe for a veggie chili bowl. Then my plan of doing the whole of San Francisco in a day went into action!

Union Square was my first stop, there wasn't much going on there so that was simple enough. I walked through Chinatown, it was mostly Chinese people, I'm used to Chinatowns being full of tourists but this one was different. It was pretty cool and seemed to go on forever! I walked a bit west to get to Lombard Street and see the famous steep winding road. There were lots of tourists here just standing in the middle of the street, it was rather amusing. Next stop was Pier 39, I'd been told they have sea-lions and that it was a good location to see Alcatraz, both of these things were correct but also correct was that I'd been told they don't have as many sea-lions as they used to... damn humans. I had a pee and a poop on the pier (in the restroom) and then Nick called me about the rideshare, he seemed like a nice guy and the only condition was that I had to get over to Oakland which was about half an hour on the BART train. I called Amtrak and cancelled my ticket, it was all rather easy, Amtrak is good. I had a long pleasant walk along the waterfront to the Golden Gate Bridge and then walked about half way across it. I headed back the same way that I'd came and managed to snap a hawk that was perched in a very good photo op, I also got a comedy pervy video of a couple snogging. I'd decided to get a cable car back towards the hostel but the one near the waterfront had a massive line so I walked a bit further to the next one. It was still about a half hour wait but the ride was pretty fun, I rode hanging on the side of the car because I like living life on the edge..

I got back to the hostel at about 6pm and booked another night there. The room I was in the previous night was now full and I ended up getting a different room all to myself. I went to Golden Era Vegetarian which was a fairly cheap Vietnamese restaurant around the corner and I had Pho. It was a bit confusing because I had a bowl of stuff and a side dish with just bean sprouts and a lemon segment. I dumped some of the bean sprouts into the bowl and chowed down. It was a tasty and very filling meal. Nick called again at 9pm and we confirmed everything, he'd done the research on which train I'd be getting in the morning and how much it would be, very helpful indeed. I'd need to get to the pick up point for 8am so I went to bed quite early.