Touring The Piers

Our first day in San Francisco and we’re going right in. Our campground, while not in the city itself, is quite close and can be reached by either ferry or bus. After some debates on Mum and Dad’s part, we finally settled on taking the ferry and were out of the trailer and walking by 8:30am. The ferry was about a 15 minute walk from our campground and we made it with plenty of time to spare. On the other side of the bay at the terminal, I got distracted by a bookstore (shocking, right?) and decided to take a look around while the others found a washroom. I ended up buying Looking For Alaska by John Green from a selection of used books. It costed four bucks, so it was worth it. Plus I got to stand on one of the rolling ladders for a picture, which was pretty awesome. We had decided to buy the

CityPass which was available over at Pier 33, where the boat to Alcatraz docks, and had to walk there from the ferry terminal because trolley tickets were included in the CityPass (which we didn’t have yet), and the walk wasn’t that long anyway. On our side of the bay, it was relatively warm with a little bit of a breeze, so I didn’t bring a sweater, but it was drizzly and foggy on the city side, so I got a little cold and a little wet. In the rain, our walk wasn’t the greatest journey but from what all the locals were wearing, I could tell that, to them, the drizzle was nothing. We had no trouble picking up our passes at Pier 33 and we continued on the few blocks to the famous Pier 39 after Dad bought them. It was still raining a bit while we were walking around, looking at all the shops, so we decided to stop for some chowder. It was served in bread bowls, so that made the

whole thing even better. Mum and I also shared a crab cake and it was all very good. The rain had let up by the time we finished, which made the outdoors a lot more pleasant. Since one of the items on the CityPass, Aquarium of the Bay, was also on Pier 39, we decided to take advantage of our new passes and take a look around. The aquarium wasn’t very big in comparison to all the others we’ve visited over the course of our trip, but it was very well done. Most of the fish were species that you could find in the San Francisco Bay, but there were some exotic species as well. Isaac’s favourite area was the section where you could touch rays and sharks. I liked the turtle one of the employees was letting wander around on one of the counters. It only took us about an hour to look through the whole building and then we headed back outside again.

We then walked down a couple of blocks to Fisherman’s Wharf where everything they were selling was seafood of some sort. While we were down there it started to rain a little bit again, so we decided to hop on one of the famous trolleys and head back down to Pier 15 where the Exploratorium is. The Exploratorium is a entirely hands on science centre and was one of the things also included in the CityPass. We had some fun running around trying out all the exhibits for a couple of hours before getting ready to leave and head back to Kizzy. I would definitely prefer to have and Exploratorium in Calgary instead of our TelusSpark. We took the trolley back down to the ferry terminal and grabbed a coffee before hopping on the first ferry back to our side. Back at the trailer, after the parents took the dog out for a long walk, we ate some dinner and put on the Martian with Matt Damon. I had been hoping to read the book before I saw the movie but no such luck. The movie was amazing though, so no complaints at all. Now I’m really looking forward to reading the original story. Peace out m8s.

#camping #sanfrancisco #california