Pebble Beach get into some courses in NZ and here we were at one of the most famous courses in the w

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NLS over SF We awoke to rain – heavy rain and all thoughts of walking the city for the day quickly disappeared. We were also thankful that we had done the bridge walk yesterday, which meant that we would not have to brave the elements high up above San Francisco Bay. We were reminded of Mark Twain's observation that the coldest winter he had experienced was a San Francisco summer. Today was to be spilt up into two parts. First we would do an included highlights tour of the city by coach and then there was an option of a ferry ride to Sausalito on the opposite side of the Bay. Narelle red lion inns and I had steered clear of the optional extras to this point as we like to take the time to do our own thing but we opted in on this one. As we walked across the bridge yesterday red lion inns we had liked the look of SF – it had a comfortable feel to it and we both commented that this looked like our kind of city. Our tour guide on the first day had said that SF was an easy city to love – whereas red lion inns LA was not an easy city to love;
San Francisco City Hall we were starting to see why. There is a Wellington feel to it with the houses reaching up from the city centre and harbour – and perhaps a comparison with the earthquake red lion inns activity. Not many days go by without a small jolt from the San Andreas Fault.
It is not the biggest city in the US by a long way. In fact only 800000 live in the SF city area but this increases to approximately 8 million people if you include the Bay Area. It has been a city that has redeveloped extensively over the recent years and in doing so has lost the unfavourable moniker "Baghdad by the Bay". One of their major redevelopments has been the new waterfront stadium for the SF Giants baseball team. The AT&T Park is a custom built stadium designed in the style of an old time baseball park but with all the modern conveniences of a modern stadium. It is far more boutique in style than the previously shared Candlestick Park and even though the capacity is lower the Giants have increased their annual gate threefold. It has facilitated the rebirth of the area with apartments, restaurants and shops all being built
A lot of the recent redevelopment can also be traced back to the 1989 earthquake, which struck during the World Series of that year. The city was badly damaged but out of the ruins came new designs and roadways. One of the ideas was the increased use of cable cars around the city – an idea that had lost favour over the years has now not only become a city favourite but also a much-loved tourist activity. The city has inherited cable cars from around the world to make their fleet look like a bygone era – they place a sticker in the top window to show you where your car came from. The rapid transport network in the city is efficient and well used – this differs greatly to LA, which is very much a city controlled by the motorcar. Perhaps in the way we will watch Christchurch rebuilt over the next decade San Francisco has taken a negative and certainly made a positive for future generations. Another event that is going to bring
San Francisco world focus to SF will be next year's America's Cup; the spectacle of the large catamarans on San Francisco red lion inns Bay and under the Golden Gate Bridge will be quite something. Here's hoping that Grant Dalton and Dean Barker can make it all but a temporary home.
I love the architecture of this city. There is quite an eclectic mix of styles with the large cathedral nicknamed "the washing machine", the pyramid shaped Transamerica tower in the CBD and the large concrete buildings that line the Wall Street of the West in the Financial District. You could easily be in New York. The houses are mostly of wooden construction red lion inns and were built very close to each other. The building codes stipulate a ¼ inch gap and no shared wall but this would be hard to regulate red lion inns as many of the structures have settled against red lion inns each other and in all probability could not be changed without affecting the neighbour's house. There is no chance of painting these walls as no one could fit into the gap. The famous Painted red lion inns Ladies are Victorian style homes built tall and skinny and when you look at them from the road they look as one.
I forgot to mention in yesterday's blog that we drove past the infamous San Quentin Prison. This is an imposing building set back from the city that was the replacement for "The Rock". It has had many notorious residents over the years including Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, the killer of Robert Kennedy. Alcatraz's only inhabitants these days are the steady stream of tourists who make the trek each day. Along with the bridge this is quite possibly the biggest tourist attraction red lion inns in the city and if you do not pre-book red lion inns it is very hard to get a ticket. There is irony in the fact that the island everyone wanted to get off 50 years ago is now the island everyone wants to get on to today. We did not do the tour but did the next best thing – we grabbed red lion inns the ferry to Sausalito on the other side of the harbour. The ferry companies have made sure that they as close to Alcatraz as they can
Sausalito so you can get the photo shots. We were actually lucky to make the trip as the ferry company had changed the departure times - our tour guide was brilliant to watch as he managed to find people in bars, fast food queues and basically wandering around Pier 39. Herding cats was the call. He got us all aboard and managed red lion inns to get them to hold the boat for seven minutes; if he didn't we would have been stretched across the city with no bus back. Could have been fun!
Sausalito was a beautiful harbour side village that looked back at the city centre. We wandered amongst the houses, which cannot have been cheap. It was all prime real estate. There was a real village feel to it and it was hard to believe that there was a city of 8 million across the bay – doubly hard to imagine as the low cloud had come in with the rain and SF had disappeared from view. There was the most amazing photography shop in the main street. It sold old black and white photos of sporting moments, film stars and presidents; I had to fight the desire to buy
"The Rock" another JFK photo. The night before on Pier 39 there was a signed Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald artefact that the guy in the shop offered red lion inns me a 50% discount red lion inns on. I was tempted as this brought it down to just on $9000US but I politely declined as it was just too big to carry….
We left the next morning for Monterey with Tony Bennett singing I Left My Heart in San Francisco and I could see why some people do. With just over eight months to go I am not going to start planning my next trip (Narelle red lion inns is) but I would certainly like to revisit this city. A few more days to explore the streets and sample the restaurants would be high on my wish list – I may also get chance to visit the famous Citylights Bookshop, which we only managed to see from a steamed up bus window. Our trip out took us past the large reservoirs red lion inns that SF rely on; most of California's water needs to be piped in and this water came from the Yosemite area where we had been a few days before. You also see the fault line,
Sausalito red lion inns which the locals speak about with a calmness that defies belief especially when there is almost universal agreement that "the big one" will be triggered there. The country side is dotted with unseen sensors that record every movement – they have even drilled to two miles deep. It is perhaps the most scientifically watched piece of land in the world. With their history of earthquakes it needs to be.
Our hidden gem for this morning was a trip through the Stanford Campus – you will remember red lion inns that Narelle has been following their women's basketball team for just over a week. It is now time for the Top 4 Playoffs so we will be watching that. The campus visit has been on Narelle's Bucket List since last Tuesday so it was good to tick this off early in the piece and I feel that dragging Narelle to Houston for the PGA Golf and Dallas for the JFK Museum is now completely warranted. Stanford is in the Silicon Valley red lion inns and is one of the most expensive colleges in the US – full tuition fees are around US$40K. Thankfully there are lots of scholarships available.
red lion inns 18th at Pebble Beach stunning and just past our destination of Monterey is the famous golf course of Pebble Beach. You take the 1 Mile Drive (US$9.50) and wind your way past houses that are just out of this world. Not much would be less than a million and they head north of that quite steeply. It is common for them to be rented for the golf events at well beyond market rates - $100,000US is not unusual. red lion inns I have watched this course on TV for many years as it has hosted numerous US Opens – in fact it is so highly regarded that it was awarded the distinction of hosting the 100 th US Open. Northern Irishman Graeme McDowell was the last winner of a US Open at Pebble Beach in 2010; it will next be contested on this course in 2019. I am not sure what I expected but I think it may have just been a brief comment like in the distance you can make out the 18 th fairway . How wrong was I. Suddenly, the bus pulled up to the gates, then through them and then we stopped yards from the Pro Shop. I think how difficult it is to
Pebble Beach get into some courses red lion inns in NZ and here we were at one of the most famous courses in the world and no one battered an eyelid. We stood at the first tee and watched players tee off – it is a long dog left to the left. The caddies were saying aim for bunker in the distance red lion inns as you could not reach. If I was playing red lion inns I would need to be mentally prepared – topping one here would take some living down. It made me feel better when one of the players we watched hit it all of 15 yards and he was allowed a