Revisit San Francisco

My 2nd visit to San Francisco after 4 years! This time, another business trip took me to SF for 1 week.
I had blogged about my 1st trip to SF in Nov 2007 here SF Nov 2007

Luckily for me, I've been to SF, so I was not too disappointed when the trip was to be only for 1 week. Still I had half a Sunday and Friday to explore the unexplored places which I did not manage to do 4 years ago - Primarily Land's End (Ocean Beach) and Golden Gate Park!

After a long ardous 20hrs flight, upon checking in and washing up, off to Land's End it was! It was a 1hour bus ride so I had to make every second count! Luckily, the bus service in SF is rather frequent (about every 5-10mins), so I took bus 47, and changed to bus 38 all the way to the very west end of SF. The view that greeted me was fantastic!

The weather was beautiful that afternoon and perfect for a good long walk - Sunny but not too hot with the sea breeze blowing.

The entire trail is 1.5miles long (return) but you can choose to keep on walking till the Golden Gate Bridge, which was what I initially set out to do...


What can I say about the scenery but just amazing?!?! You have to be there to experience the wowness..





There is just 1 restaurant there - Cliff House which offers you the fabulous view of the Ocean! Also, there is a Seal Rock when You look out, and s'posedly seals love to congregate there. But seems like they have abandoned that rock long time ago cos there were no seals....



Walking up the steps to follow along the coastal trail. The trail is quite well marked and there are alot of people on the trail - walking or running so you will not get lost!

A pitstop area where you can see the Golden Gate Bridge! This was after a 40mins walk..

And there's the Bridge! Looks really near right? After a 40mins walk, and this view, I thought "Hey that's too easy and short a walk and I'm already close to the bridge!". Yea rite, I thought I could easily get to the Bridge on foot within the next 2hrs, but I was WRONG!!!

I walked a total of 2hrs but still NO WHERE near the bridge! I ended up at the China Beach which was still miles and miles away from the bridge and it was already 630pm! So unfortunately, I had to give up the walk and take a bus back to the hotel. By the time I reached the hotel, it was close to 8pm.

And from Mon till Friday noon, it was work work and dinner dinner, no sight seeing...

We had a crab feast at The Crab House by Pier 39! Yummy!

The starter - Mussels and shrimps

The main - CRABS!! Dungeress Crabs, all 3 of them and they were humongous!! But yummy! The shells are very soft, so you just need to softly crack them with the tools provided! Not like the hard shelled sri lankan crabs. These were baked in garlic butter sauce.

We had dinner at a Perusian restaurant Limon on the last night of work. Yummy food!

Cerviche mix (not my kinda food)

Vanilla Panna Cotta dessert

A stop at Lombard street at night, courtesy of the nice taxi driver! Who's wife happens to be a SIngaporean!

Then on Friday afternoon, after we wrapped up, off I went to Golden Gate Park. Yes another 1hr bus ride, this time bus 47 then bus 5.

Beautiful park and flowers greeted me..

Flower conservatory. Entrance fee of USD7 to enter. So I didnt go in :)

There were quite a lot of people walking and sunbathing in the park! Hey it's summer in SF for them!

Map of GG Park. The park is 3miles long and 1.5miles wide. There are quite a number of attractions within the park - Japanese Garden, conservatory, musuems, botanical garden, but all these require separate entrance fees (probably about USD7 onwards). So i didnt visit any of them! Isn't a park s'posed to be free?? So I just walked from 1 end to the other end, all the way to Ocean Beach.

Cute squirrel

The Ocean Beach is ok... the waves were huge! Good for surfing, and the interesting thing is cos it's coastal area, the sky above that area was cloudy and foggy, but once I walked further inland, the sunny sky appeared! Cool!

So there ends my small little adventure in SF. Of cos, I did shopping :) 1bag in, 2bags out! Online shopping for the most part.. Next up in Oct - Chicago the wind city!