San Francisco: Yes, you can walk to the bridge from Union Square!

 March 13, 2015

Before we headed out on our adventure of the day we had a couple of errands to take care of. We needed a camera cord to get the pictures off our camera and on to our computer. Apparently, the camera company thought if it was wi-fi capable that was good enough. Unfortunately you don’t always have good wi-fi in hotels. We had attempted to get one at home where we bought the camera from with no luck, but easily picked one up at a camera store here. Go figure? Then we headed out to the 4 story shoe store to pick Steve up some better walking shoes. You would be proud of me… all those shoes and I didn’t buy even one pair! Errands completed we were ready to head out on our way.

The goal for today was to get to the Golden Gate Bridge and also take a cable car. We decided to do the cable car first so walked down to the end of the line at Powell and Market. On the way we ran into Ursula and her husband who we know from home.  It’s a bit crazy. We can walk around our town endlessly and don’t run into anyone we know, but there we are in a city in another country and we run into someone we know!

She gave us the important information that the cable car was not running for some reason. We walked down anyway to see what the end of the line looked like, if we could figure out why the cable cars were not running, and to find out when they would be running again. We didn’t really figure out why… there didn’t seem to be anyone giving out information. As a matter of fact, people were still standing in line waiting. We finally saw a worker sitting over to the side about half way up the street. He said it wouldn’t be running for at least 3 hours… it might have been nice for someone to go tell all those people standing in line… just saying.

So we rearranged our plan and decided to take the cable car at the end of the night instead. We walked down to Fisherman’s Wharf, which is where the cable car ends up. We decided to fill up with a little chowder at the Blue Mermaid again. When the chowder is that good you want to take another opportunity when you have it! This time we had the regular salad with our bread bowl of chowder. The regular salad is significantly better than the Caesar. So now you know exactly what to order when you go to the Blue Mermaid 😁

Lunch at the Blue Mermaid... again!

After lunch, we head out on our L-O-N-G walk to the bridge. My original thought was that we would walk to it and then walk out on it a bit. That turns out to be quite a bit farther than I imagined… possible… but not really necessary 😉Steve just wanted to get to the view of the bridge that you always see in the movies.

To get to the bridge we decided to walk down Chestnut Street.  As we were walking we saw what we thought was a car overheating. Then the smoke turned black and started coming out the windows. Hmmmm, that’s not normal. Before we got close, someone from the street helped an older gentleman out of his BMW and then the flames started. Yep, his car was on fire!

Photo taken from a safe distance and only after the man in the car was safely on the sidewalk!

Soon the police and fire came and put it out but not before the car was totally destroyed. Well that put a little excitement into our walk.

Just before we hit the park area we saw an amazing looking building just a block down. It had huge columns and seemed very different than any other architecture we had seen in San Francisco.

Hey, what's that?

We, of course, decided to head over to see if we could figure out what it was. It ended up being a place called the “Palace of Fine Arts”. It was absolutely stunning to look at!

There were some amazing looking houses overlooking it and facing towards the bridge. I can’t even imagine the cost of those houses! There appeared to be some sort of museum in the building behind it, but we didn’t stop as time was marching on and we still had to get to the bridge, and back!

Next, we walked towards the park area that is at the foot of the bridge. It was quite nice.

There is a beautiful beach, a walking path, and of course lovely views of the bridge. We weren’t close enough yet though, so kept walking even though my legs were telling me it was time to stop 😁

Okay, maybe I took off my shoes for a little rest 😁

We eventually walked to the end of the path and then up a hill.

Pretty flowers on the walk up!

The walk was quite lovely and others seemed to be doing the same thing.

Well mostly lovely... except this scary tunnel you have to walk through.

At last we found the spot where the movies film (we think) and took a few more photos. We decided we didn’t actually need to get on the bridge as it looked further still and I was very aware of the fact that we still needed to walk back to the hotel.

Yep, this is the spot!

At the top of the hill we saw people coming up another way. I asked them if we could take that way back to town and they assured me it was possible as they had just walked up all the way. (They were looking for some sort of bus that might take them back, but we carried on walking… Steve figured we could hit 30,000 steps today). The walk back was actually lovely and very well marked. It was called the “Presidio Promenade”. Each time you reached a juncture there was a little sign reminding you which way to go, and along the way we also found periodic maps to assure us that we were going in the right direction. We ended up walking through an area called the Presidio, and down on to Chestnut Street again.

At this point we were ready for dinner, and I was prepared to eat just about anywhere. The first restaurant we came to was a Greek restaurant called Mezes.

A little Greek beer made my feet feel better!

The menu looked good and the prices were reasonable so we went in to eat. I expect we were lucky to just walk in and get a table on Friday night as most people who came after us had reservations. We definitely enjoyed the food and would go back for sure.

While we continued walking down towards the cable car we kept our eyes peeled for an ice cream shop. A long walk like that deserves a little ice cream. Well there it was, just before the cable car, Ghirardelli! We had a lovely salted caramel sundae as a reward for our loooooonnnnngggg walk.

Finally, we headed down to the cable car and waited in line. We only had to wait for one car, which didn’t seem that bad to me.  Plus we got to look at this beautiful sunset over the bridge!

When they let you on there is plenty of time to take photos while the conductor collects your fare.

You can either pre-purchase tickets somewhere (I don’t know where… it wasn’t here) or you can just buy your ticket on the cable car. It was $6 per person. Once you paid him he gave you a little ticket to show that you paid. Steve and I were lucky enough to get the standing spots on the outside at the front, although it seems that most people didn’t want them. I guess it just depends on who gets on. It was quite an interesting ride, and I’m glad we did it. See… tourists do like touristy things 😉 It was dark by this time, so as you were travelling along you could almost imagine you were back 100 years traveling through the streets of San Francisco. Most of the building facades haven’t changed so it was like stepping back in time. The cable car wasn’t going all the way down as there was still a problem with the line so we got off at Powell and Washington and walked the rest of the way to our hotel. They did offer us a free cable car ride back to Fisherman’s Wharf as a consolation, but I was not interested in walking back over the hills again! When we finally arrived back in our room we had logged more than 30,000 steps and over 14 miles for the day. We were both ready for a rest!