Day  10- Yosemite

I feel that all 3 of us weren't very impressed with Yosemite. I think it pales in comparison with Yellowstone. Our guide was a young lad who was pretty slack. The waterfalls had dried up, so we spent the 3 hours of free time slacking. I was pretty tired and this might be due to the fact that we only reached San Francisco at 10 plus the night before. Our tour comprises of 1 Taiwanese couple, 1 British couple who were quite friendly and 1 American-European couple.

 <Yosemite>

 <One waterfall which has yet dried up>

Day  11- San Francisco

We did the touristy stuff on Day 11. We headed for the Golden Gate bridge to attend a free guided tour. It proved to be a bad day to view the Golden Gate bridge, or it might be said  that we had experienced the real San Francisco- a totally foggy San Francisco. The guide provided us some information on the bridge and hence our trip was not totally meaningless.

<A foggy Golden Gate Bridge>

After Golden Gate bridge, we headed to the fisherman wharf and enjoyed our lunch at McCormick restaurant. The clam chowder is really delicious, so is the Calamari.

 <Tasty Calamari>

<Delicious Clam Chowder>

We walked towards the pier area after our heavy lunch. We visited the Hyde Pier before proceeding to Pier 43 1/2 for our sunset cruise. Our chosen date wasn't a good one as it continued to be rather foggy. Along with the fog came the cold and windy weather.

<Sunset viewed from cruise>

After our sunset cruise, we went for ice-cream at Ghiradeli Sq and we bought the popular chocolates at the official store.

Day  12- San Francisco

We took the iconic cable car (it's actually a tram) to the Chinatown in the morning as the cable car station was rather near to my hotel. As this California line was less crowded, we could have the outward facing seats. I really like the outward facing seats. I can feel the wind and see the slopes clearly. Ps:San Francisco is a hilly city. It has many slopes. People can choose to stand and hold onto the railing. The cable car is manually operated.

 <Cable car>

<There are many steeper slopes and the cable car doesn't go too fast down these slopes.>

San Francisco has quite a huge Chinese population. It's quite common to bump into Chinese on buses or at the hotels. San Francisco chinatown is just like any other Chinatown. It's lined with shop houses. We searched for the shop selling fortune cookies. It's a very small shop in one of the alleys and apparently it attracted many tourists. We overheard a US tour guide describing Dim Sum as fast food. I didn't think that it's a suitable description. Dim Sum isn't really fast food. We walked towards the Coit tower and we finally caught glimpse of the golden gate bridge from that area.

<Top part of Golden Gate Bridge>

<Slopes of San Francisco>

We had our dim sum lunch at one of Chinese restaurants in Chinatown. I love the Siew Mai. The prawn was fresh and sweet. After lunch, we took a bus to Union Sq and began our shopping at Forever 21. We spent a few hours there.

Day  13- San Francisco

This was our last day in US as well as San Francisco. We wanted to take the Powell-Hyde cable car line, so we had to queue at the Union Sq area for the cable car. It was a pretty long queue. This line was recommended by Lonely Planet. I could understand why it was recommended. There were lotsa of steep slopes, but I couldn't really enjoy the ride as the cable car was simply too crowded and I was sitting on the inward facing seats. We dropped off the cable car at the Lombard St. The street is famous for being crooked. C commented that it's just like our multi-storey carpark.

  <Lombard St>

We took the next cable car to the Fisherman Wharf. It's a sunny day and finally we saw the full golden gate bridge from the Hyde Pier. We walked to Pier 39, but I didn't find it interesting. It's very touristy. We took the street car to Union Sq where I gone crazy at H&M. I bought a working dress and 2 skirts. The H&M in San Fran is defintely cheaper than London's. The prices are affordable kind. We went to Macy next as this was highly recommended by a friend, but we didn't find it fascinating as it's just another departmental store. We decided to nuah at the Cheesecake Factory next. It's strange that there were such a long queue. We were given an electronic queue device. When the table was ready, the device will beep to inform us. We ordered the Godiva cheesecake, the original cheesecake and a fruit cheesecake. I like the Godiva cheesecake the most. We decided to have dinner at the Cheesecake Factory as we were too lazy to move around. We continued with a bit of shopping before we took the cable car back to our hotel. Our flight was at 1am, so we took the cab to the airport at around 10pm.

<A clear view of the golden gate bridge>

Meals on the SQ flight was rather interesting. there's Ee Fu mee and Chee Cheong Fun with Siew Mai (this is probably because we stopped over in Hong Kong).