As we moved closer to San Francisco, the weather was dull and seemed pretty foggy. Then we found out from the Lonely Planet guide to the USA that the temperature doesn’t usually get higher 70 degrees and can be foggy most of the time.

We arrived in San Francisco a day earlier than planned and we had booked a night in the Hotel Marina as the hostel we planned to stay in for the duration was fully booked up. Not wanting to waste time we parked up our rental car and dumped our bags in our room and headed off to look around. We walked up some very steep streets which were pretty tiring. We eventually ended up at Lombard Street where queues of cars line up to drive down a very narrow winding road. The road itself is actually a residential area. There were masses of people on both ends of the winding street. I don’t know how the locals put up with it!

From there we headed off to the very touristy Fisherman’s Wharf. We strolled down a few piers but the most interesting of them all was Pier 39. This was home to the sea lions. They were very smelly and noisy but entertained us nonetheless.

After, Fisherman’s Wharf, me and Chris had to go back to Vallejo to pick up Mikes glasses. It was about 20 miles away, but it was the only pair mike had so we had to get them. The distance wasn’t a problem. The problem was that we left during rush hour and we had planned to drop the car off on the same day. It took over an hour just to get to Vallejo when it should have taken much quicker. Another bad thing was that about on the way to Valljeo, the fuel light comes on telling us we were low on fuel. We still had about 20-30 miles left to do! The car rental company told us to left the car fuel as empty as possible. This influenced our decision not to buy any fuel but it was pretty nerve racking considering that the car manual says when the fuel light comes on, there is only 2 gallons remaining in the tank. The minivan we was in runs 20 miles to the gallon so we were cutting it fine. Fortunately, we made it back to San Francisco, but never made it back to the car rental place in time. This meant a daunting task of driving another 1.5 miles to our hotel and then driving it back another 1.5 miles back in the morning with virtually no fuel…

Anyway, we just left the car in the hotel parking lot and left our worries for the next day. We decided to go stufff ourselves with chicken wings and beer from infamous Hooter’s bar to end the day.