Seconds With Steff

Some mornings I start with a full face of make-up and some mornings, I barely slap face lotion on. This was a face lotion morning. The bathroom was so tiny. There was not enough room to put anything out. However, it was a really nice hotel room and our view is gorgeous even if through a screen.

With a three hour drive to San Francisco ahead of us, I told Hunter to go back to sleep…fight that infection!

So there I am white knuckling it… I mean driving down Highway with the Cliffs of Insanity on my right and a mountain to my left with just two lanes and a guard rail… sometimes, when I pass a cow crossing sign. WHAT!?!?!?!? Where would a cow come from? Like are they flying cows? Or are they getting dropped in by helicopter? Are they swimming out of the ocean and scaling a 5,000,000,000 foot cliff? Asking for a friend…but then within the next five miles, I’ve been saw Bobcat. So go figure…

On my first trip to California, I went to Hotel Vertigo, and now we visited the town where The Birds was filmed.

After a short mile wrong direction and lack of signage, we arrived at Muir Woods about a half an hour early for our 11:30 parking reservation. Once parked, bathroomed, and ticket gained through the Access Pass, Hunter and I had planned to walk about 15 minutes to bridge two and turn around. But we continue to bridge three and The Cathedral Grove. The woods was spectacular. Very well maintained with trails raised above the forest bed smelling like the best cedar closet ever!

Well ahead of schedule, we had a nice lunch and walked around Sausalito a bit.

We were on our way to Sausalito to get some lunch and see the houseboats of Sausalito which wound up being incredibly cool. Link in pics (as always) but this is a really fun history.

After that, the drive to San Francisco was fairly easy. We went up to the overlook to get really good views of the bridge and then drove over it. When I went to San Francisco in 2019, I left the rental car in the hotel garage, and relied on the hop-on/hop-off tourist bus, Lyft, and my feet to get me around, so I never got to drive the Golden Gate Bridge or Lombard Street! So be prepared for photo dump of the same bridge…and a Hunter video!

Next on my list was Golden Gate Park where there were a few oddities I wanted to see. First up was Camera Obscura which takes the image of the immediate surrounding area and projects it inside.

Then I snapped a few pics of the old remnants of the Sutro Baths. Showing where The Cliff House had once stood.

As discussed on our travel day, the first version of this trip was The Lincoln Highway, so I wanted to find the western terminus. We had to go into a golf course within the park… And that is when I saw it… the car that was driving itself. Yep… Skynet has taken over the car drove itself… not a single human being was in the car… so I googled it when I got back to the room and it’s a Lyft/Uber-eaque service… link in picture.

I must have heard about The Presidio when I was a kid and the vast military base it was, so I was slightly obsessed in 2019 but never really got to do anything on the defunct base other than go to the Walt Disney Family Museum. So today Hunter and I meandered through the complex, winding our way to Lucas Films to see the Yoda fountain. You’re allowed into the lobby, so we were able to get some really good pictures of some of the characters. And as we were leaving, we noticed someone was looking at us. 

From the exit of the Presidio and it’s a straight shot to Lombard Street which I had always assumed would be an insanely difficult drive, but it is actually quite easy and really fun.

We had so much time left that we headed down to Chinatown for dinner. Through Union Square and a quick encounter with a passing cable car, I figured it would save me time tomorrow and gave us somewhere to eat since I was so looking forward to eating at Great Eastern again. However, this worked against me because the one thing I wanted, they only serve at lunch and despite my practically crying And sad at the waiter they were moved by my request/desperation…you choose.

We are staying in the same hotel from 2019, Hilton San Francisco Union Square.

Vertullo Summary – San Francisco and surrounding area