9th August 2016

San Francisco Sunny temp 21c

Today we went on the Ho Ho bus again this time to do the tour to Sausalito. The Sausalito tour actually starts at the stop which is at the end of the Golden Gate Bridge and you get there on the regular red line tour and get off at the bridge stop to change to a single deck trolley like bus. Yesterday they did say if we get there early we can go on a bus which will go by a more direct route to the bridge. This is what we did only to find out that because there were 2 cruise ships in port they were using the double decker buses to do the tour so we stayed on the same bus all the way. This turned out to be a slight dis advantage because the teller buses cannot go around the normal route because of low hanging trees. You could walk to see this section of the town but it meant quite a walk so we did not. Sausalito is a quaint town where the hippies of the 60s made home. There were once more than a thousand house boats there but now there are only about 400. Some of them are very elaborate even one shaped like the Targe Mahal. We got back to the ship for some lunch and then went out again to check out Pier 39 etc. This area has changed since we were here earlier, they have extended it. San Francisco is of course famous also for it’s cable cars which operate on a continually moving cable in the ground. The Gripman pulls on a lever to grip onto the cable between 2 wooden blocks to pull the trolley up hills and releases them when going down hills applying the brakes as required. The wooden blocks are replaced every week and the entire cable every 6 weeks. As we have been on them before we did not go on them this time. In addition to the Cable Cars San Francisco has Trolley Buses and normal Trams so their public transport is quite good.

After a lot of walking around we returned to the ship for dinner and to go to the Princess Theatre to see Bernie Fields who plays the Harmonica and he did it very well. He was accompanied by the ship’s band who do a terrific job.