Travel: San Francisco to Yosemite

San Francisco is an amazing city, in a lot of ways it reminds me of Sydney. I have visited a few times over the years and was looking forward to visiting again.

We arrived in San Francisco quite late at 12:30 am on Saturday morning, with only 3 days in town we didn't have a huge amount planned other than to catch-up with some friends and explore a little.

Saturday morning we did our best to wake up at a reasonable hour to combat any jet lag and set out to find some breakfast. We went to a little cafe just near where we were staying and grabbed something to eat.

After breakfast, we decided to power through and went down to the ferry wharf, one to explore, but more importantly to get a coffee from Blue Bottle coffee company. They make great coffee, which is the closest coffee you will find in America that resembles coffee from Australia.

The wharf has a farmers market on every Saturday so it was buzzing with stalls and people.

After we explored the farmers market, my friend suggested we grab a ferry and head over to Alameda and explore the island a little and head to the abandoned Naval base that now has a distillery and brewery that look out over the airfield. The ferry ride provided a great view back over the city.

Once we arrived at Alameda it was a short walk over to the Naval Base. This place was really eerie, it honestly felt like we should be walking around on the set of the walking dead, with building after building of boarded up windows and falling down fences. But sure enough, after walking through the base for 10mins we arrived at the old aircraft hangers that have been converted to various establishments, including faction brewing company.

The next day we decided to get some exercise and burn off the excessive amount of alcohol that was consumed on the previous day and do a bike ride over the Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito and then catch the ferry back.

If you plan on visiting San Francisco, I recommend getting a Clipper card, you can buy them at Walmart for $3 and load them with any cash amount to use on trains and ferries. The ferry ride was $6 using a clipper card vs $12 if you bought a paper ticket!!

On our last day in the Bay Area, we did some more touristy things and visited Pier 39 and Fishermans Wharf. There is a cool little museum near Fishermans wharf called Musée Mécanique that is full of old penny arcarde games that is well worth checking out.

Followed by a dinner and a visit to a speakeasy called Bourbon and Branch, that you need to book to get the address and passcode. Unfortunately, they didn't allow photos inside, but if you are in San Franciso I would highly recommend paying it a visit if you like cocktails.

The next day we picked up our hire car from Hertz and braved the American roads to start the drive to Yosemite National Park.

I will be posting a photography series post on San Francisco soon with all the photos we took around the Bay Area.