San Francisco - Day Three - Sharp Curves Ahead

This was my last 'free' day before heading to my meeting the next morning. I had to switch hotels today which meant I had to check out by 11:00a. I stuck around the hotel as long as I could doing a bit of work before heading downtown. I had hoped to catch the shuttle but it seems that it only runs on Friday and Saturday so I had to take the airport shuttle instead and then get on the BART to go downtown. Not much of an inconvenience, however like the Vancouver airport the cost of getting on at the airport is excessively more expensive then at other stops.

Once I got downtown I hopped on a bus for Lombard street. This was another of the 'must see' San Francisco sites. The whole city is quite hilly and this particular street tops them all. What amazed me the most was that there were several houses lining the street that had their driveways here. I can't imagine having to push past all the tourists every day just to get into my front door. It was a fun sight but the hardest part was that the bus dropped me off at the bottom of the hill on the other side. A tough trek with my luggage and backpack but worth it.

Once I'd tackled Lombard, it was a short walk to Ghirardelli Square where I felt it was important that I replace all those calories I had lost climbing the hills. Ghirardelli is a well known chocolate company and San Francisco was it's birthplace back in the 1800's. It was recommended to me that I try out one of their Sunday's and I'm certainly glad I did. I chose the Sea Salt Caramel creation and it was layer upon layer of sticky goodness. It more than made up for the lost calories and then some.

After several more hours of wandering around it was finally time to meet up with my work colleagues. We were meeting for dinner before driving out to San Ramon to our hotel which was near the location of our work meeting the next day. I was quite surprised that the first thing Will wanted to do was to get on the carousel at Pier 39. I think he's 90% kid. Even after dinner he wanted to check out some San Francisco sites when the rest of us were ready for bed. We obliged with another trip to Lombard. This time with a car and we drove down in the dark. I'm glad we did. It was a fun evening and a fun trip overall.