Visits from Friends and Walking in San Francisco

Ava and Dave.

Sunday night a friend of mine from New Hampshire (we went to junior and senior high school together), Dave, and his wife Ava drove from Sacramento to see Richard and I on the boat. It was a beautiful late afternoon so we hung out in the cockpit, had some wine that they brought (thanks guys!), and caught them up on our trip so far.  Dave has been following our blogs pretty closely and related a funny story about calling the marina in Bodega Bay looking for us when he didn't see our location map update our position to Sausalito. The funny thing was that Richard had called the marina in Bodega Bay and the harbormaster told him that someone had called looking for us.  They drove us into town and we enjoyed an al fresco dinner on the waterfront with a stunning view of the moon rising over Angel Island and San Francisco in the distance.  

Richard enjoying his diim sum.

Tuesday, the crews from both Osprey and Rhythm took the bus into San Francisco in search of dim sum for lunch. Tim, from Rhythm, had found some good reviews for a dim sum place in Chinatown but when we got there, it was take out only.  So being the tourist that we were, several in the group whipped out their smart phones and we quickly located another dim sum hall for lunch.  

America's Cup challengers in San Francisco Bay.

After lunch we started walking towards the Golden Gate Bridge with the intent of walking across the bridge. Along the way, we happened upon the America's Cup stage and ended up spending some time there walking around and looking at the various vendors' booths and exhibits that were on display.  As we made our way through the exhibits, we noticed that you could actually see the qualifying races going on in San Francisco Bay from the beach behind the America's Cup stage so we walked out there and watched the races for a while.   The speed these boats attained left us envious as we recalled how long it had taken us to make it down the Pacific coast to the Bay Area.  These were state of the art boats designed for nothing but speed.  Here's hoping the USA can win and bring the cup home again! 

As it turned out, we ended up walking from downtown San Francisco all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge.  The views of the city and the bay were spectacular.  Once on the other side of the bridge, we opted for a taxi into Sausalito. Someone calculated it and in all we walked close to 10 miles on our excursion into the city. Because we walked over the bridge, we could now all say that we had both motored under the bridge and walked over it; now if we could only fly over the bridge, we would have the perfect tourist triple crown!

Here are some pictures from our tour of San Francisco, starting in Chinatown and ending on our walk across the bridge.

Chinatown produce vendors.

Getting our bearings in Chinatown.

Richard and Stacey contemplating Chinatown desserts.

Eglise Notre Dame des Victoires in San Francisco.

San Francisco as seen from Golden Gate Park.

Stacey and Richard walking across the Golden Gate Bridge.