Continuing on from my last posting, on day #3 of our Yosemite trip but
#4 of our actual trip, we had made it back to San Francisco around 10:30pm after a 5 hour drive with our group. We honestly loved our group and that along with the accomplishment of climbing a mountain made this one of the most incredible experiences of a lifetime! I can not walk down stairs, sit on a toilet, get out of bed, or a chair without screaming a little but so happy that we went on our adventure! We had 11 people including ourselves on this trip. Sarah, Angela, and I were the only people from the US. We had: Paul from England, Marc and Megan from Ireland, Cathy from china, Kirsten from Scotland, Erkin from Russia, Katia and Jonas from Germany. These people were amazing!! My favorite line of the trip was when we finally got to the end of the 8 1/2 mile hike down the mountain and Erkin and Angela were still waiting for us. We thanked them for waiting and Erkin’s response was, “You never leave your comrade’s behind!” I love them:-)
We got off of our bus and we had quite a bit of stuff in the cooler but our guide said, it’s all packed in on the bottom of the gear if anyone wants their stuff. This was the back of a trailer that we had pulled. None of us had the strength to pull or move anything! So he got to keep everyone’s stuff:-( Man I dislike him intensely! After hugging everyone in the group we headed off to our hotel that we remembered was within a couple block radius of the drop off point, in some direction, on some street…What was the name of our hotel again? We were so slap happy at this point and causing a little concern to the rest of our group but we smiled cheerily and said, “We’ve got this! No worries!” And we continued to circle the 2 block diameter of the hotel for about an hour. We finally went into a Hilton and tried to describe our hotel to the front desk man. Mind you at this point we were completely covered in dirt. We were sunburnt, our clothes were stained and we were acting drunk. I pretty sure we were scaring the homeless people. After a little bit of time the front desk man figured out what our hotel was and explained how to get there. We had passed by it a couple of times:-/ When we checked in we were heavily inspected and found to be lacking in the eyes of the front desk man of our hotel. We didn’t have the claim check for the luggage we had stowed there and tried to explain what it looked like and finally he walked away while I was searching and talking and he brought our luggage out. We realized we had never booked a hotel for the next day because we thought it would be fun to be adventurous and try a different location the next night… We reserved a room for another night at this hotel. Got to our room and took the best shower of my life!!! Our ankles were so caked with dirt that they were stained and required a second showering the next day. We washed our shoes and still haven’t determined whether we will throw them away or not. Slept like rocks!
Day #5 – So much pain! We asked our concierge for the best route and took a very sketchy bus to the opposite side of the city to go to the science and nature museum/aquarium. On our walk to the bus, we realized that we were in a semi questionable neighborhood. Once we were on we bus we totally realized that together we were horrible at listening to directions and had no idea when we needed to get off:-/ Luckily our stop was the last one and the bus driver made us get off:-) The museum was amazing and invoked many amazing discussions! We somehow managed to figure out all by ourselves how to get back to our bus but were still a little unclear as to where we get off. We only missed our stop by a few stops! Bonus, a shopping mall:-) Did I mention that it is winter-like weather in San Francisco? We needed coats:-( We made it back to our hotel in time to change for our dinner reservations! We deserved a little pampering! We took a taxi down to Pier 39. Most terrifying ride of my life! This man needs to be in NYC! We walked around the pier and shopped and even had a water massage. Best thing ever except when it hit my calves and my bruises I cried out every time! Time to take our boat out to the world’s only floating island restaurant, Forbes Island Restaurant. There is an actual lighthouse and the entire restaurant is under water! So amazing! We had champagne and wonderful food. We decided to head back to our hotel and were told to jump on the F line. Ok, they have busses, rail cars, subways, and trolleys. So confusing! We were crammed into a sardine can on a rail car in dresses and heels. We had to constantly apologize for falling into everyone around us but they were entertained by our bizarre conversation and Sarah’s singing and dancing in her little space. We were still apparently slap happy! We realized we couldn’t see out cause it was so packed and we couldn’t understand anything the driver said because he mumbled so when he said something that we thought we had heard before, we got off:-( No where near our hotel and still a sketchy area. We kind of knew the general direction so decided to just walk and figure it out. I’m going to blame altitude sickness and dehydration still. After a man raced by us on a bike, threw it down onto the ground in front of us and ran off we started to become a little nervous. We eventually made it back after about an hour walk. We collapsed in bed and had a great night’s sleep!
Day #6 – Today we are going to spend time on the Pier, bike across the Golden Gate Bridge, tour Sausalito, and hopefully fit in a ghost tour in Chinatown!:-) Oh God! We don’t have a hotel for tonight and need to check out in 2 hours:-/ Have to find us a hotel! Goodbye for now!