We did not bother with the free hotel breakfast as it was so bad yesterday, instead setting off for the BART station again for our second day in downtown San Francisco. We need to get a bus as well today which drops us off on the edge of the Golden Gate Park. From here, we grab a cheap breakfast of coffee and a pastry from a garage and set off to exploring the park. The park is very beautiful, though with lots of rotating sprinklers that threaten to shoot across the path and soak you at any minute! It turns out that to see inside most of the things in the park you have to pay individually, but we do get to see some nice park areas with fountains and plants, along with a 'temple of music', a kind of roman style stage for performances. We picked the Japanese Tea Garden as our one thing to visit, and it was a good choice! Filled with beautiful Japanese plants and decorations, we saw many rivers and prettily shaped trees...
... Koi carp...
... a very high pagoda...
... and fun stepping stones! It was a very interesting place to explore with lots of twists and turns and new pathways to discover. The golden gate park is very long and hence we only got to see about half of it as we needed to head to the bridge!
A little confusingly, the golden gate park is nowhere near the golden gate bridge. We knew it would be a long walk from one to the other, so we stopped at the 'bagel house' along the way for bagels with sun-dried tomato cream cheese and cucumber and pastries. We reached the edge of the park leading to the golden gate bridge already pretty tired from all the walking, and then realised the park was a little more of a forest than we were expecting and we didn't know how to get through!
Stumbling upon a map, we took what we hoped would be a path taking us to the bridge, although it was 2.7 miles long and labelled as not made yet! Despite our doubts and a little bit of walking along a road with no sidewalk, we did end up at the bridge, and with some great viewpoints along the way!
Stumbling upon a map, we took what we hoped would be a path taking us to the bridge, although it was 2.7 miles long and labelled as not made yet! Despite our doubts and a little bit of walking along a road with no sidewalk, we did end up at the bridge, and with some great viewpoints along the way!
The fog had mostly lifted over the city by this point, and it had gotten nice and warm but a little fog remained over the bridge giving a cool spooky aura! Apparently fog is a regular thing at the bridge in summer due to the differing water temperatures of the pacific and the bay.
We headed to the start of the bridge, determined to walk the 4 mile journey across and back! Walking across, we got great views of San Fran behind us and the hills ahead on the other side.
We headed to the start of the bridge, determined to walk the 4 mile journey across and back! Walking across, we got great views of San Fran behind us and the hills ahead on the other side.
Making it to the other side, we looked back celebratorily on the bridge and city behind us!
Although by this point we had pretty achy feet and considered trying to hitchhike back across, we decided to toughen up and do the return walk. It didn't seem so bad in the end luckily and we returned to the city feeling victorious! From here, we grabbed the bus and BART back to the hotel area where we topped the car up with petrol to return in the morning, tidied and packed, grabbed some Thai food for dinner and are, as we speak, getting ready for a short few hours sleep before we wake up at 3.30am to go catch our first flight!
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