While Richard was conferencing, I sought wider experiences. These included a trip in to the city to visit the tourist information centre (booked a winery tour for Wednesday), walk around taking in the sights, and trying to find a good coffee shop - not as easy as I'd hoped. The city doesn't impress me as much as New York or Washington, but it is still quite attractive - just not as user friendly as our previous experiences. San Francisco is very hilly and quite cool and windy. The area around our hotel is actually very attractive and just walking around is fascinating.
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| Interesting variety of architecture in the local area |
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| Something about this photo reminded me of friends at home |
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| Chocolate box house - Richard would prefer an actual box of chocolates |
I've never seen so many fire engines and ambulances as I have in the USA, and the fire engines are huge.
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| Even the fire engines here are big and there is a man in the rear cabin |
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| Another house - the colours they paint houses here are quite interesting |
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| The top of our hotel, flag proudly flying - palms in the foreground and big gum trees on the hill behind the hotel |
I had to get up early on Wednesday to meet the tour bus in the city. The tour lasted for about 9 hours, and driving north of San Francisco was interesting - a lot warmer than the city and quite dry. The scenery was very like Australia. We visited three wineries and the wine there was OK, but nothing special. The bus driver didn't stop talking the whole time and we probably found out more about him than we needed, such as he has been married five times. Lunch was at a lovely litle town called Youngville, which had interesting street sculptures. A few shots from the tour are below.
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| Dry countryside |
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| Vines |
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| First tasting |
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| Big cask |
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| More vines |
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| Street sculpture in Youngville. The title is 'The Chef' |
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| Cute little church on a hillside |
The days without Richard were fun, but I'm starting to look forward to going home at the end of the week. We'll go out on a high with another Segway ride on Friday, around the Golden Gate Park.
