The Golden Gate Bridge
I was, admittedly, apprehensive of the idea to drive into downtown San Francisco because I thought it would be chaos and parking would be insane but it was actually pretty fun. We missed our exit off the freeway and ended up seeing some of the Southern part of the city where there are several dead end streets. When we eventually made it to our target, Golden Gate Park, there was lots of free parking.
Golden Gate Park is what I imagine Central Park in New York to be: a rectangular plot of land in the city with walking paths, gardens, and a few “lakes” that are more like ponds. We walked up to the Science Museum, gallery, and Japanese gardens but they all cost money and we didn’t feel like they were worth it. The Japanese gardens looked nice, but not authentic and a little crowded. We ended up at Stow Lake that has an island in the middle. I knew it was a fake lake because while we walked around it, the roadway was lower and I realized the island in the middle was the highest point in the park. We climbed up the mountain but the view wasn’t too great because of the trees.
Yuki’s been to San Fran three times before and knew of a really good Thai restaurant that serves boat noodles. We were able to get there because we had a car. It’s not in the nicest part of town, and when we arrived we found out that it wouldn’t open for 15 minutes so we walked around the block once and the loitered near the door. The noodles were very good (why is there no Thai in Vancouver?) and then as the sun was setting we drove out to Golden Gate Bridge.
I was looking for a good view of the bridge and Yuki had been to good a viewpoint so we tried finding it. Instead, we ended up at the bottom where I got the best photo of the trip (top). I didn’t look on any photography websites but if I had, I would have known that this was one of four main viewpoints. The next was up near the bridge where we parked again and walked over an old fortress. It was dark by now so we didn’t get to explore but we saw the view from the visitor centre and then walked out to the middle of the bridge to kiss and say we’d been there.
Then we drove across and I found out how big it really is. In comparison to the Lions Gate Bridge in Vancouver, it is twice as wide at 6 lanes and nearly a kilometre longer at 2.73 km. On the other side, was the 3rd viewpoint that nearly equaled that of the visitor centre.
That day, we drove across four different bridges that were all unique. It was cool to see the differences from a truss bridge to a suspension bridge to the cable-stay/suspension bridge. Most of them are tolled in one direction but it was still nice to have been over them and the cost (next post) showed that it wasn’t all that much cheaper to take the BART.
Yuki’s uncle also took us through the Napa valley that Barb and Tony had talked about before. We didn’t see the vineyards in their most colourful time but we did have good french food- coq au vin and onion soup. It wasn’t the restaurant that has a 3-month reservation list but it was still excellent. Then we went to drive by a nearby lake, Lake Berryessa
