Moving on, Easter worship at St. James' Fremont and afternoon with the Scruttons

We had an early start this morning to get the BART train to Fremont where we were picked up by Mike to take us to his church, St. James' Episcopal church.  We joined with the congregation for Easter morning worship which was a joyous occasion indeed.  Lots of good liturgy, a great choir and a lovely welcome from many people present.

We went back to Jan and Mike's home in Fremont and shared lunch with them and their children (who are hardly children being 13 and 16).  We enjoyed meeting their cats, Percy and Peeta too.  We had a nice relaxing afternoon and after dinner watched the film Argo, about smuggling six american embassy staff out of Iran after the storming of the US embassy in 1979.  We all enjoyed the film greatly and slept well afterwards.

Brunch at Fort Mason, A walk along Crissy field and a visit to Golden Gate Park

We got the Powell-Hyde cable car this morning up to the coast area and walked along to Greens Restaurant to meet another old friend, Andy, from College.  We had a nice brunch there and then went for a lovely walk along Crissy field towards Golden Gate Bridge and back again.  The weather was lovely and we got some great views of the bridge.

Andy and family then dropped us at Golden Gate Park where we had an explore and visited the gorgeous Japanese Tea garden.  We then walked south to pick up a bus along Lincoln Street and into downtown via Haight Street, which is a fascinating throwback to the hippie years of the 1960s and has a huge diversity of people and businesses.

We got off the bus and had a look at City Hall before getting the Metro back to Powell and having a look around a shopping centre there.  We got the cable car back up to the hotel from Union Square.  We had a wonderful evening meal on the recommendation of a staff member at our hotel at a wonderful Indonesian restaurant called Borobudur.

SFMOMA, Jewish Museum and GLBT History Museum

We went to the San Francisco museum of Modern art this morning.  We both enjoyed lots of art, particularly the bright and bold Mexican Modern art.

After the museum we had a delicious Mexican lunch with lots of salad at a restaurant called Tropisueño, in the financial district.

After lunch we had a really interesting visit to the Jewish History museum - it laid out some fascinating facts about life for Jews in the Bay Area and it was good to see that the area had largely been safe and welcoming over the years.

After the Jewish Museum we met briefly with an old School Friend for a drink and then went down to the Castro to the see the GLBT History Museum.  It showed life for GLBT people through the latter part of the 20th century and had a fantastic audio tour to accompany the exhibition.  From the Castro we came back to the hotel for a wash and change and then went out to dinner (via a cable car) to a nice place called Bix, with Robert, Sean and Sian.

We finished the evening with a few drinks at Twin Peaks, one of the oldest bars in the Castro and with huge windows so you can sit and watch the world go by.  As we did!

Fisherman's Wharf, a submarine and Alctatraz

We got a cable car up to Fishermans wharf today and had a good wander around including an enjoyable look around the Museé Mecanique which had lots of old arcade games and automated musical instruments on display.  I felt old seeing a coffee table-style PacMan game among antiques - I remember them being all the rage when I was a kid!

Next we went on a fascinating tour around the USS Pampanito, a submarine that had done active service patrolling the Pacific Ocean area in World War II.  It had a brilliant audio guide that really captured the essence of how life had been on that vessel as it was narrated by men who had actually been there at the time.  We had a nice lunch at Alioto's and then briefly visited the chapel at the port but couldn't get inside.

Our main visit for the day was to Alcatraz.  We got a boat at 3.20pm and I was impressed to see it covered in Solar PV panels and with a wind turbine on the hull.  It was pretty much self-sufficient for energy and was a very smooth 15 minute ride to Alcatraz Island.  We enjoyed seeing the Island and the old and notorious prison that's on the island.  There was another excellent audio tour that gave a real feel for life in the prison and told us about a couple of escape attempts that had been made.  Nobody has ever been known to escape from Alcatraz with their life.  The prison closed 50 years ago this year and the whole island is now is the care and control of the US National Parks Service.

After returning to the mainland we got a trolley bus along to Pier 1, and saw the famous Ferry Building.  It has a nice indoor market now and we had a beer or two in a bar there.  Next we walked across to Market Street and got a cable car up California Street to Chinatown where we had a fantastic meal at a rather hectic restaurant called House of Nanking.  We walked back to Bush Street and had a couple more drinks in a bar up the road called The Summer Place.

A day with Mike and Jan - Golden Gate, Muir Woods and Sonoma

We got up early today to be ready to be picked up by Mike and Jan.  Mike is an old friend from school days who I've not seen since late 1991 so it was somewhat of a reunion too!  Mike and Jan live in the Bay Area now and had kindly agreed to take us for some sightseeing for the day.

We started with a drive along Lombard Street, the crookedest street in the world, and then went on to the Golden Gate Bridge.  We parked and walked along to the first support tower to get a feel for the size and perspective of the bridge.  It was quite misty so the views were not as good as they could have been but it was pretty impressive nonetheless.

After Golden Gate we went on to Muir Woods where we stopped for a coffee and then went for a walk to see some extremely old and extremely tall Giant Redwoods.  It was a good walk and was pretty busy, it being Easter Holidays for some.

After this we went for lunch in a town called Mill Valley and then on to another small town called Sonoma.  Both towns were pretty and clearly quite well-off.  We tasted some Californian wine in Sonoma and then Mike and Jan drove us back to our hotel via Alamo Square where the famous "painted ladies" houses can be seen - so typical of many movies made in this area.

We went out for dinner in the Hayes Valley area, using another cable car and a trolley bus to get there and a street car and a cable car to get back to the hotel.

First full day - cable car museum, Grace Cathedral, Mission Dolores, Castro

We woke fairly early this morning, still being somewhat on GMT.  We went and found some passes for the MUNI transport system which covers metro trains, cable cars, trolley buses and street cars (trams).  After seeing Union Square looking gorgeous in the spring sun we went up Powell Street on the Cable car and to the museum to see the history of the cable cars and how they work.  The cars work by gripping onto cables under the road that move all the time at 9.5mph.  The driver is called a gripper and controls the speed of the cable car wit what is essentially a huge pair of pliers that grips onto the cable to a lesser or greater extend depending on the desired speed.  San Francisco has the only system of this type left in the world now.

We had lunch at a nice Italian restaurant called the Nob Hill Café and then went to Grace Cathedral where we had a good explore and a cup of tea with a friend from Oxford, Jane Shaw, who is currently the Dean of Grace Cathedral.

Later we went to visit the Mission Dolores in the Mission neighbourhood.  It is a well preserved mission from the Catholic Spanish Mexicans dating back to 1776, before the colonists had got to the West Coast.  We walked on then through Dolores Park to get up to the Castro.

The Castro area is famous for being the area where Harvey Milk, the first openly gay US politician did much of his campaigning in the 1970s and was assassinated in 1978.  We visited the shop that used to be his camera shop in the 1970s (and above which much of his political activism was based) and a few bars.  We had a burrito for dinner then came back for a fairly early night.

Easter in California

We started out Easter holiday for 2013 this year with a 10 hour Virgin Atlantic flight from Heathrow to San Francisco.  It was uneventful but we did have some fantastic views of the Rocky Mountains from 38,000ft as it was very clear.

We got to our hotel around 5pm and found it to be friendly and welcoming.  We stopped for unpacking and a brief rest and then went for a wander as we were keen to make sure we saw some daylight and see sunset so we could adjust to the new time zone, 7 hours behind GMT as the US is already on daylight saving time (PDT).

We ate dinner in Chinatown in a simple but pleasant little restaurant called the Far East Café