Well despite that being our longest flight ever, it was fantastic. Even more amazing was that our luggage last seen at Manchester airport also successfully negotiated its transfer and made it too!
We made it to our hotel and arrived about 16:30 local time. What a lovely hotel – look up its history online – Westin St Francis. There are some photos posted below. We’ve been in the glass elevators that ride up the outside of the building and the view is amazing. Rachel would be happy as there is a Victoria’s Secrets in the Hotel shopping area. After 18 hours of travelling we were exhausted and so managed to fall asleep very easily, despite the live band below our window outside in Union Square!
The hotel is very well situated on Union square and today was our day for the sightseeing bus tour. Still being on uk timeish, we were up and out of the hotel by 8am, or maybe it’s the fact we had no kids! We got a trolley ride down to Fisherman’s wharf. Steven stood on the runner like a pro! We went over that bridge thing and hugged a very tall Redwood in Muirs Wood. It was beautiful and the journey there smelled fab – they have massive Bay trees growing wild over the roads so we picked some leaves as we drove below. We visited the picturesque Sausalito and then toured all over.
San Francisco is completely different to Manhatten – the buildings are lower, the streets wider, it seems more airy and lighter. Its cooler and less muggy. There are flowers in abundance and its way more relaxed. And it smells nice too! Oh and it’s hilly, very hilly – as we found to our cost. We finished our last bus tour at about 20:00 and walked to the street car – a queue an hour long was ahead of us, so we decided to walk back to the hotel as the distance wasn’t that great. However the hill at the beginning was a 1:3 – I guess I’ve walked off what I’ve eaten and I guess I’ll sleep well again!