Activity Summary
Wednesday 15th March - Day 195
Flight to San Francisco
Stay with the Nairs
Thursday 16th March - Day 196
Explore San Francisco:
Powell station
Union Square
Chinatown
Coit Tower
Pier 39 & sea lions
Fishermans Wharf
Walk along the coast to the Golden Gate Bridge - Fort Mason / Marina District / Presidio
Golden Gate Bridge
CBD
Friday 17th March - Day 197
Napa valley drive courtesy of Anuj
Peju wine tasting (Rutherford)
Sonoma village walk around
Saturday 18th March - Day 198
Family outing to San Fran
Senor Sisig
Mission district
Japantown
Walk to through Soma & to the Ferry building
Sunday 19th March - Day 199
Chill & research day
Monday 20th March - Day 200
Car rental pickup
Goodbye to the Nairs
Drive to Monterey
Summary
Berkeley
Seems nicer than San Fran and certainly has some decent food places but we didn’t explore a whole lot.
San Francisco
Such an odd city. Pretty horrible in a lot of places and quite nice in others. The wealth gap in the population is so noticeable and shocking to be honest. With the whole gun thing and hearing about the quite high crime stats for the city we were on edge pretty much the whole time and this isn’t really a fun state to be in. Pretty much going to be what we’re like in all the cities.
Nice tourist spots but can certainly do it all in a day.
Accommodation
Berkeley
Number of nights - 5
Price per night per person - £-
Anuj, Terri & Elina were the best in putting us up in San Fran, a city which is ridiculously expensive and meant we could see it on the cheap and also have a complete recharge with friends.
Loved our time here purely because of these guys.
Diary
[Continued]
The flight was pretty decent compared to our previous journeys, simply because it was during kosher hours. A 5 hour flight during the afternoon meant we could watch a few films, eat the not too bad cheese toastie with a glass of rum punch and not have to try and get some sleep.
Once in San Francisco airport we were able to get through to our bags and out of the airport without need to provide any documents which was immensely helpful considering we didn’t have any onward journey from Mexico.
We had a bit of confusion trying to find Anuj, who had so generously offered to pick us up and put us up for our time in San Fran, but it wasn’t long before we were on the road to Berkeley.
We spent the evening chatting with Anuj & Terri, who had just resurfaced after accidentally falling asleep putting Elina to bed. Great seeing them again after so long!
We were sleeping on the sofas in the living room and they were properly comfy. We really didn’t want to surface before 10am but we felt bad hogging the social area. We slept like absolute logs the entire time we were here.
We had a short welcome from Elina before she went off to nursery. It was a cute run in to see her ‘friends’ and then get so shy she ran away to Anuj and Terri. Bless her she always got so excited and then shy the whole time we were there!
We had a nice brief from Anuj & Terri the night before about San Fran, where to go and mainly where to avoid! Basically the Tenderloins. It did give us some nerves to be honest; the level of theft (especially car break ins) is incredibly high, violence and guns are normal and potential crazies on the streets was pretty unnerving. Not a well balanced city at all.
We were very kindly given clipper cards to allow us to get around the city and walked over to North Berkeley BART station and got the metro into Powell station. It wasn’t too shabby a metro service to be honest; not overly new but spacious, had seats pretty much every time we got on it and ran pretty frequently.
Once at Powell we started our walking tour of San Francisco. Union Square was the first stop which had plenty of designer brands knocking around but otherwise it was just a big open space.
From there we walked through Chinatown, which was a pretty long street and had our first experience waiting constantly at crossroads. It’s pretty painful trying not to jaywalk each time. Chinatown really wasn’t impressive however.
We carried on around Washington square and over to Coit tower which had a decent viewpoint over the city. The various bridges were cool but the best view was the ridiculously steep streets.
From there we walked to Pier 39 and in search of food. It wasn’t the warmest of days and the clearly popular sourdough clam chowder bowl spoke to us. It was pretty delicious and affordable which was nice.
The pier itself was pretty tacky. Almost like a pier in the UK but actually popular and doing well. We had a decent walk around, got a fridge magnet and then Nicola got super excited when a ton of sea lions were chilling around the corner on some floating platforms. These guys were pretty jokes.
We continued along the coast on our way to the Golden Gate Bridge through Fisherman's Wharf, Fort Mason, Marina District & Presidio park. It was a very pleasant walk from this point having got out of the hustle and bustle of the city. It was a lot quieter and less of a reminder how terrible the nonexistent US welfare state is which in turn, sadly truthfully and selfishly, makes us feel a lot safer walking around.
We got some cracking views of the Golden Gate Bridge from the beach side in Presidio park.
We got the bus back into town and had a walk through the main CBD (Market street), found the BDO office and then decided we were done with the stress of San Fran for the day and got the BART back to Berkeley.
Back with the Nair’s we had a lovely evening properly saying hello to and entertaining Elina where we were very kindly treated to a great slap up sushi dinner. Just a wonderful wholesome evening.
Anuj had very kindly offered to take us wherever we wanted as he had the day off, one of the suggestions being the Napa Valley and some wine tasting so Luke was pretty set once this idea was thrown around.
Much like NZ he had done a fair amount of research a few days prior and truth be told, he got quite disheartened. There are a lot of subregions in Napa, which made sense seeing as the area is huge, so getting a full tasting was never going to be on the cards. Also having so many wineries made it absolutely impossible to choose which ones to go to. So the pick and hope method seemed like it would be used.
The deciding factor however was cost. Tastings at a normal winery seemed to cost upwards of $50 for 5 wines. Plus tax and service fee, all in all this comes to around $70. To put into perspective, it cost $5 for a tasting in New Zealand. 14x the cost is absolutely ridiculous but when in Rome.
The 3 of us left Terri to her workday (soz) and then travelled about an hour's drive to Peju winery, in the more upmarket Rutherford area. The valley was pretty barren due to all the bad weather lately and being the back end of winter, so compared to the fruit laden vines of NZ the contract was pretty interesting. Napa was still nice to look at however and very thankful to Anuj for taking us there.
It was a lovely sunny day so once at the winery we grabbed a seat outside, Luke paid the extortionate tasting fee and we were greeted by the host. He was an eccentric guy but was pretty entertaining and made the experience good fun.
The wines tasted were as follows:
Sauvignon Blanc 2021 - 4/10
Chardonnay 2020 - 3/10 *** French style but still too buttery
Pinot Noir Rose 2021 - 6/10
Province (Rose) - 7/10
Cabernet Franc 2019 - 7/10
Cabernet Sauvignon 2019 - 8/10
Barrel EXP 2019 - 5/10
The region is renowned for its Cab Sav and it was certainly very nice. Medium bodied, so it is heavier than the Pinot Noir Luke likes so much but certainly is still enjoyable. The Cab Franc was a surprise showing and was quite similar to the Sav.
Overall, bad whites, decent roses and good reds. Ridiculously overpriced for the whole experience however… NZ wines are better. The service was good but having to pay it hurt.
The winery however was lovely.
Once Luke was done, we were done chatting and we had a short walk around we went over to Wholefoods, the equivalent being a big fancy Waitrose, to get some lunch. Expensive but absolutely banging sandwiches and Nicola ended up spending $20 on a help yourself hot food box citing ‘she got her weights confused’. Woopsie.
Rather than go to another winery that Luke couldn’t afford, we went over to Sonoma village for a casual stroll around. It was a lovely little village, like a bigger Martinborough.
We ducked into a bar to use the restroom which happened to have a St Paddy's day live event going on so we stood and appreciated the jovial music and atmosphere for a while.
We arrived back home in the late afternoon and shortly afterwards Terri, Elina and Terri’s sister Traci arrived in a great mood after being a few cocktails deep. Very entertaining and they were then kind enough to cook a wicked dinner.
We spent the evening eating, drinking some more and then busting out the all important Mario Kart. Anuj has consistently kicked Luke’s ass in this every time so he’s stayed pretty determined to try and win. This evening he failed again. Terri was rather sad to have missed the games as she was on Elina bedtime duty.
Luke ran off to the post office to send back his signed flat contract which took him an age as the person was so unhelpful and he didn’t know what he was doing. Took him 4 attempts of the customs form before he could get it right and then paid $70 for the privilege of sending quickly to the UK. The whole experience hurt somewhat.
All of us went into San Fran to explore some of the other areas we hadn’t been to. Anuj drove Elina, Nicola and I while Traci and Terri got the Bart citing for some reason they enjoy trains. It meant we got the more comfortable ride in for sure.
Once we parked up we had a walk around the Mission district. Honestly we both won’t get used to how impoverished some places are here, and after a corner the whole street atmosphere can just change. The Mission district wasn’t a nice place and parking up made Luke nervous for future car journeys to come.
We all met up in Senor Sisig, a Filipino Mexican fusion place that came recommended by Rich. The Cali burrito was our fave.
After munching we continued our saunters around Mission. There was some pretty cool street art down one side and seemed to hit the nail on the head with most of the States problems.
Next up was Japantown but as it was a fair way away for little Elina to get to, it was a combo drive and Uber jobby.
We had a pleasant walk around the Japanese themed mall, grabbed some iced lemon tea and some mochi donuts for later courtesy of Anuj (they are pretty delicious - nice and chewy).
We parted ways with the Nair entourage and decided to walk from Japantown, through Soma & to the Ferry building. It seemed fairly sketchy at points and we tried to avoid going down what seemed like less than pleasant streets, aka avoid the Tenderloins, and we were fairly successful. The city hall building and area was pretty nice actually.
Market Street is a tale of two halves. Initially seems pretty rough with a load of people loitering and shouting, then suddenly transforms into designer brands and then the CBD. So so weird.
The ferry building on the coast was pretty nice. It had plenty of bougie wine, cheese and charcuterie shops (even had a mushroom shop but was sadly closed) so we had a browse before going back to Berkeley.
Safe and sound at the comfort of the Nair’s we were again treated to a lovely home cooked meal, socialising and Mario kart. Great evening.
We felt we were pretty much done with San Fran touring and we just loved spending time at the Nair’s chilling so that’s what we did with our day plus some final US research.
It was a nice restful day, only leaving the house to do our first US grocery shop at Safeway. Decent supermarket.
Anuj was again kind enough to feed us pizza that Luke had long been craving but could never find a decent place for it. Luke was very happy with the choice.
It was time for us to prepare for our onward travels down the coast. After a relatively chill morning we got the Bart into town and to the Thrifty rental company office near Union Square.
We got there half an hour before pick up and just as well as there was really only 1 guy serving people and a UK couple had his attention for well over 30 minutes. In contrast we were done with him in 5 minutes.
We are now the proud renters of a white Nissan Altima. Automatic so it made the left sided driving and the variety of odd US rules a hell of a lot easier to get used to. But otherwise pretty comfortable to drive.
It took a little squeaky bum time getting out of San Fran but it wasn’t a long drive to Berkeley.
It was time to leave the Nair’s. We’d had our goodbyes with Elina, who was still shy with us but apparently still called us her friends so that’s all that really matters. Luke had even managed to get the nickname of ‘tricky dada’ somewhere along the way which made us all laugh quite a bit. Nicola did get tricky mama once or twice as well.
Anuj & Terri were the most incredible hosts. Provided us with food, Luke various coffee runs and a number of takeaways that we are so so grateful for while also dealing with Elina not sleeping so well and trying to pack the house up for their perm move to the UK (right decision) in a few weeks. They were wicked fun and it was so nice to relax with friends and family after such a long time just the two of us. We felt absolutely refreshed making our way onwards.
It was totes emotional and Anuj & Terri’s couple on the porch wave goodbye was pretty entertaining. Until we meet again soon in the UK permanently!
We were then off down south and the coast of California.
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