City by the Bay 2

That big, red thing is kinda famous, according to the recording

We plan to take a sightseeing tour of San Francisco Bay and then visit Aquarium of the Bay. Online advice suggests taking the tour either early in the day or later in the afternoon to avoid crowds. Both are located near Fishersman’s Wharf, several blocks east of Ghirardelli Square. Our bus passes are good for three days, so we’re saving them for our last three days in town.

Let me say that although we take our vacations in September or October to avoid big, tourist crowds, apparently this part of September (second week) is still full-on tourist season. And it’s not just older people who have no children in school. Our fellow tourists are all ages and seem to come from everywhere. Our hotel sounds like a veritable United Nations at breakfast, and the same is true when walking the streets. We chat with a Slovenian couple, a family from Yorkshire, England, an Aussie couple and a few other folks with accents I can't identify and fail to ask about.

I check the weather forecast and see that there’s a small-craft warning for early afternoon continuing through 9 p.m., meaning the winds will be sort of high, so we decide to take the first tour of the morning. We arrive early and stroll the pier, taking more pictures and listening to the crowd of sea lions that have taken up position at the end of the pier across the water. Between them and the seagulls, the noise level is pretty high. Lots of people fish from the pier, but I don’t see anyone actually catching anything.

Fishin' and visitin' on a beautiful day/

Sea lions at Pier 39.

We board at the appointed time, joining what is indeed a smallish crowd. We take up position near the bow, pretty much by ourselves, but once underway quite a few folks come join us, pushing to the front for the best positions. Still, there aren’t too many passengers to prevent us from being able to move side to side and have decent views of everything being pointed out on the PA.

At one point on the way out toward the Golden Gate bridge, we’re joined by some dolphins, but they don’t stick with the boat and race on ahead. The tour narration makes quite a point about the uniqueness of the bridge and the various complications involved in building it. It is indeed a sight to behold, and like most famous, iconic places, is more impressive in person than in all the pretty pictures you’ve seen.

The narration went on an on about this bridge, like it was specialor something.

Fort Point, built during the Gold Rush era. It was slated for demolition 

when the bridge was being built, but the bridge designer wanted to save it 

and included a framing arch in the bridge design to save the fort.

We’ll go past Alcatraz on the way out and the way back, coming closer on the way back. (No, we didn’t take a tour of Alcatraz. Why? Because we didn’t. Same is true for any other attraction you don’t see mentioned later. We were tourists, but we didn’t try to see or experience everything, so some popular sites weren’t visited.)

Gentlemen, welcome to the Rock.

I believe that about covers it.

I can’t tell you much about most of the narration because I didn’t listen closely. I was there to take pics and soak in the sights, meaning I missed a lot of (probably cool) history. We didn’t see fog on this trip, but a haze seemed to hang over the city and bay most of the time, lessening visibility unless you were close. We sailed to the other end to see the Bay Bridge then headed back to the dock. By the time we returned most of the gulls had left, and most of the sea lions were asleep. 

See what I mean about the haze?

It was close to lunchtime by the time we returned, and Pier 39 was close by, so we decided to try a seafood place there. Several options were available, and we elected to go to the nearest one, Fog Harbor Fish House. Turned out to be a rather swanky place, where the food on the lunch menu cost nearly twice what we would ordinarily pay for a meal. But hey, we were on vacation, and everything seems expensive in San Francisco, at least in the touristy parts of town we frequented. Sharon had some sort of fish, and I had a shrimp dish that was so loaded with minced garlic that my mouth tingled by the end of the meal. It’s a wonder Sharon hung around me for the rest of the day. Days later I think I’m still exuding garlic, but that might be my imagination.

I found the Aquarium of the Bay to be vaguely disappointing in ways I can’t really express. But it was a cool enough place, especially a glass tunnel area on the lowest level that mimics the bay environment near the docks.

Hard to tell from this pic, but these jellyfish are huge.

We saw sharks and rays and all manner of fish. At one point I was quite surprised to turn and see a monster fish floating near the tunnel wall, staring at me at eye level. That guy was as big as me.Here's a vid of him swimming past a bit later.

The other display I really enjoyed was the river otters. The pair in the tank were quite lively and entertaining. One of them quite enjoyed doing back flips in the water.

Because we were right at Pier 39, we decided to check out the rest of its offerings. Pier 39 is a quintessential tourist area, and the travel guides often tell you to skip the concourse for that reason. The masses clearly ignore the advice. We spent quite a bit of time browsing the shops before deciding to head back to the hotel.

At this point, we are much farther away than the seven blocks it takes to arrive at Ghirardelli Square, but we plodded on, stopping occasionally at souvenir shops along the way.. The hills seemed a bit steeper this time, but we managed anyway. Sleep came easily this night.