San Francisco

Bay Street, San Francisco, yes you heard right we were on our way back to California, however this time we didn’t fly or drive, this is where our cruise ended. We had just spent a week on the beautiful blue ocean and we got a great deal if we got off near San Francisco. So we made reservations with Hertz to have a car waiting for us at the pier. We were going green again and chose a Toyota Camry, we had it ready to go in the closest available location to the pier. Now I know everyone says renting a car is a hassle, and it was for us the first time, but if you follow all the steps they give you and don’t make any mistakes it goes flawlessly. We have made it tradition to rent a car on every trip we make, and we have never had any major problems.

When we landed we were offered a taxi ride, a service provided by the cruise line. We were taken to our Toyota Camry, a paper or two exchanged hands and we were in and out in several minutes. Now the first thing I said at the start of this blog was Bay Street, that’s because that is where our hotel was in San Francisco. It wasn’t until we arrived that I realized how massive this city actually was. We couldn’t help but drive down Broadway while we here, the streets are so crowded and it took us a little to get used to the stop and go style of driving. When we crossed over to Bay Street were right next to the Fisherman’s Wharf, now don’t get me wrong this place was beautiful we could see the entire bay and all, but once you got down to the floor level the smell of fish lingered.

Now I’m not complaining because I love to fish, and we had made plans for my wife to go shopping and I to go fishing down on pier 39. Besides who doesn’t want to see what all the fishing boats are catching, everyone enjoys the anticipation of raising the nets out of the water. We had brought my fishing rod with me, because we were on the cruise I had hoped to use it the whole time, however on the ship there wasn’t that much fishing being done. When I got to the pier I actually just bought fish their for bate, all the sellers told me that there are a ton of fish under the pier, because fish scraps fall in and it’s a natural feeding ground for the fish. I cast my line and began catching all sorts of fish. All of them looked like bottom feeders, dark and strange colors, and a few fisherman told me what they were, mostly the kept telling me dog-fish. Regardless all of them were to small to consider edible. And besides were they going to let me take fish into the hotel?

We went and saw the Golden-Gate Bridge, we even paid to have a helicopter take us close enough to Alcatraz to take pictures, we considered a tour but decided against it. We visited China Town, and then walked around Union Square, all this was done in-between fishing trips and shopping sprees. But overall we didn’t really spend a lot of time site-seeing. We were extremely interested in just relaxing, for me this meant fishing, for my wife it meant wiping my credit card clean on her “relaxing” shopping trips.

I spent the next three days fishing catching smaller and bigger fish; I took several pictures but never decided to keep any of the fish. All in all it was an enjoyable weekend, and all this time I still cringe at the amount of cash my wife spent while shopping, but hey I guess that’s brownie points for me. We took the Camry back to Florida and left it at the airport, had some friends pick us up and take us home. This trip wasn’t really eventful, but the cruise was awesome and the time I had to just relax was over-do, the time was fun and very inexpensive.