Days 3 and 4: San Francisco:

For our third day in San Francisco we decided to see the city by bicycle. After walking for 2 days, our feet were not so happy. We went for the breakfast of champions: Burger King. While we were munching on some breakfast croissant, we noticed that the line for the cable car to Fisherman’s Wharf was much longer than we felt like waiting in. The security man for Burger King. . ..you heard me correctly: security man for Burger King told me that the quickest way to get to where we were headed was to take the F Train. He was right.

We rented our bicycles, passed on the safety helmets, rubber banded our right pant leg and we were off. We went by a bunch of marinas overflowing with sailboats, through Crissy field, through the Presidio, we got passed by a bunch of protesters on bike. . ..”Free Tibet!” How is chanting that phrase in the middle of a national park going to get them any kind of recognition?? Then we went through Golden Gate Park, The Golden Gate Flower Conservatory, the Japanese Garden, by Ocean Beach, up a long climb (very pretty), finally OVER the Golden Gate Bridge, around Sausalito and I was pooped. We decided to take the ferry back to the city. Once we finally got back we hauled ass by bike back to hotel to get ready for dinner. I felt like one of those people on that TV show “The Amazing Race.”

For dinner we went to L’Olivier, a French Restaurant. Dinner was good, but there were 2 big elephants in the room: inappropriate people talking about inappropriate stuff. There was the one lady talking to some old lady at her table thanking her for leaving her the excess of whatever is left remaining of her estate when she dies, and 2 dudes at another table talking to the bus boy about how great this job is for him being a “Mexicano” while sounding like a complete tool and also talking about inappropriate removal of personal body parts over dinner. I was like “Where are we!!??!??” Jeff pulled a good one on our reservation, he told them it was our anniversary and we scored free champagne and strawberries. Dessert was good too, Jeff got the cheesecake and I got the chocolate mousse cake. You can never go wrong with chocolate and champagne! After dinner we walked back to our hotel and laid there and watched the Olympics.

The next morning, we rode the bikes back to Fisherman’s Wharf, and bought ferry tickets to go to Sausalito to connect with a bus that will take us to Muir Woods, home of the Redwoods. We took every means of transportation that morning. . ..bike, walk, ferry, bus and repeat in reverse minus the bike. The Redwoods are big. They are so tall that you cannot see the top because their own branches get in the way of the view of the top. We got some nice pictures on the woods.

We also stumbled upon a small deer munching on some foliage on a hill right on the pathway, so we stopped and watched for about 5 minutes. We also got him on video. We were about 10 feet away and he didn't seem to mind.

On the way back we managed to skip the ferry and take the bus which got us back to the hotel earlier anyway. We managed to confuse the bus operator and ourselves and ended up getting the ride for free. . .oops! After cleaning the dust off ourselves we went to find local food. We didn’t feel like going far, so we walked to local high end mall to find everything closed except the movie theater and a few restaurants. We settled on a Mexican place called Zazil: Coastal Mexican Cuisine. YUMMY! They make your guacamole tableside. I had the flautas and Jeff the shrimp skewers and the WHOLE bowl of guacamole!

It was our last night in town and we got some sleep to begin the wine tasting in Napa in the morning!!!