Episode #907
June 20, 2026
Amtrak Vacation – part 2 of 5
San Francisco
Wake up call, get dressed, take coffee, and a short walk to the tour bus stop.
A gregarious informative guide drives over the Golden Gate Bridge, through Sausalito, to Muir Woods.
1000-year-old sequoias endure my touch and craning neck with silent strength, as they always have.
We shopped for souvenirs on the quaint and unaffordable downtown Sausalito main street while eating ice cream cones.
The Golden Gate viewpoint obscured the bridge with heavy fog.
We finished the tour at Pier 39, and watched the California Sea Lions fighting over nearby docks, which they had stolen from the fishermen.
Paula decides that she will have a sourdough bowl of clam chowder before we leave San Francisco.
A short walk down the Embarcadero to Pier 41 is the bay cruise with its freezing wind and ocean spray, an almost visible route under the bridge, and a near miss of Alcatraz.
The tour included dinner at Swiss Louis Italian Restaurant back on Pier 39. The restaurant’s tour menu had two choices of appetizer, three main courses, and one dessert. There was no Italian food on it, except for tiramisu, which we do not like. The owner made us a deal to trade two tiramisus for one cheesecake, which we shared.
Our Kimpton Alton room had a working Victrola record player and a happy hour DJ to accent its history of music theming.
Free happy hour drinks and conversation prepared us for a good night’s sleep.
The next morning we walked to the Hop-On-Hop-Off Big Red Bus tour, which took us all around the waterfront and downtown San Francisco.
We Hopped Off at the Ferry Building for lunch.
We hopped back on the Big Bus and off again at the Presidio to take a selfie with Yoda at Lucasfilm and to watch the seagulls and swans swim in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition Greco-Roman-style Palace of Fine Arts rotunda pond.
At Boudin Sour Dough bakery, Paula had her clam chowder, and I had a sandwich made from 170-year-old mother dough.
On the way back to the hotel to pick up our stored luggage and have some happy hour drinks, we stopped at the Ghirardelli chocolate factory and bought some chocolate, of course.
There was a hippy-painted VW bus along our walk, of course.
We picked up our luggage at the hotel, and an Uber took us to the Salesforce building, where we found the Amtrak bus to Emeryville. It drove us to our train’s sleeper car bound for Portland.
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