Saturday morning now and I think we had both made a full recovery apart from Jane still has a cough but that was getting better with the medicine she was talking. Today we were going to get to do something that we couldn't do last time we were here and that was to go to Treasure Island Flea Market which is only held on the last weekend of each month, so it was out onto Market Street to catch any downtown bus to just before the Embarcadero (or Bayfront) then walked through to the Transbay bus terminal to catch the one over to it.
Treasure Island is located out in San Francisco Bay halfway between the City and Oakland and is reached by going over the Bay Bridge on the bus, there's no pedestrian walkway on this part of the bridge so this is the only way to get there, I thought we were going to have to wait a while for the bus as I had checked before we come out and there was only one running on the route at the moment so instead of being every twenty minutes with two buses running with only one its up to a forty minute wait. As luck would have it after waiting only a few minutes the second bus came out of the depot to go over there, we had just missed one by about five minutes so thought we were in for a long wait. It's about a fifteen-minute ride across the bridge but you don't really get a good view because it's a double deck bridge and the outward journey is on the lower deck.
We got off the bus at what is called the main gate and got a coffee from a small shop that is there then sat on the wall that looks across the Bay to San Francisco, this is a wonderful view to see plus the road that we were sat on is lined with palm trees. Treasure Island used to be a naval base for many years but was sold off to be what should have been a very desirable place to live until they found out the land was contaminated with low-level radiation and nobody wanted to live there anymore, not even when they tried to build low-cost housing there for the poor, so now most of the old accommodation blocks are boarded up around the bottom but not had much vandalism to them because it's not that easy to get here. There are some people living on here but they probably wouldn't want to eat anything they have grown in their gardens.
It cost three dollars to go into the flea market which helps pay for the rental of the land and the staff that they have there and it's well worth it. It's not like the flea markets we have in this country its more of a craft market than anything else with all sorts of weird and wonderful things like animals made out of bits of metal to other things with old dials for eyes and that sort of thing. I got myself a very nice bag from here for thirty-five dollars and Jane bought some badges. Another thing the flea market is famous for its the food trucks that they have there, in total there is about twenty or so of them serving everything from authentic Chinese food to traditional America Burgers so we opted for the bacon cheeses burger, at nine and a half dollars each with a drink it’s not cheap but you would believe how big they were. They have some picnic tables but all them were taken so it was time to just sit where we were on the grass and eat there. It took us about thirty minutes to get through these burgers and wash it down with a can of drink. Time to make a move now before we nodded off were we sat so we walked back through the market again then went to have a look at the snow machine they were trying to get going. I think the idea was to have a snowball fight but there seemed to be problems with snow machine due to the temperature being around twenty-five degrees today. Think that's what they call a spectacular fail.
By now it was time to move on so we came out of the market and headed to the far side of the island, I really wanted to see the new the east span of the Bay Bridge and this is possibly the best place we could get to see it from. The Bay Bridge is split into two half’s with the break in the middle being Treasure Island, the old span on the east side was damaged back in 1989 in the Loma Prieta earthquake and the replacement was started next to it only six years ago at a cost of seven billion dollars. It really is an incredible piece of engineering and near three miles long, it must look fantastic when it all lit up at night. Behind it you can see how the old bridge is slowly being dismantled bit by bit; that alone is going to take around three years or so. Apart from the unusual views you get from here, there wasn't much else to do so we walked out back the way we came towards the main gate bus stop. I think just the round trip to see this bit of bridge and taking some photographs has taken the best part of an hour an half. Back at the bus stop it was time to nip back in the shop and get a couple of ice creams while we waited for the bus, we had plenty of time to eat them as when the bus comes over the bridge it then goes past where we are sat, around the island and then picks you up before heading back across the bridge to the Transbay Bay bus terminal this time on the top layer of the bridge so you get some good views.
From the bus terminal we walked onto the Embarcadero then along the Bay until we got to the Ferry Building marketplace where there was a farmer's market on today, probably not the best idea as the place was absolutely packed out, even the queue for the toilets was massive but the main reason we have come in here was to go to the Golden Gate Meat Company shop where you can get the most fantastic turkey and mushroom pies. We discovered this shop on our last visit here and it's a must do item on our things to do list. At seven dollars each, the pie’s aren’t cheap but one on its own is more than enough to fill you up, it has been a while since we had the burger and as we were now feeling better we had got our appetites back with a vengeance. We sat on a bench outside to eat the pies and watch the historic F line streetcars go past every few minutes. One thing we have learned in San Francisco is to always have a jacket with you as some places are really warm when you move a mile or so and if can be freezing, this was one of the cold places now so it was time to eat up and move on, it was starting to get late by now anyway. We headed across the road, tram lines, road and a plaza to get to the bus stop at the very end of Market Street and waited for the bus.
All of Market Street now has free Wi-Fi so it's time to get the phone out and use the bus app I had on it to see where the next one is and how long it was going to be, as it turned out it wasn't more than about ten minutes or so. By now it was rush hour and Market Street was at standstill almost but unlike this country, it does move and they have traffic police on the junctions controlling the traffic as the traffic light system can't cope with it. It certainly makes things a lot better and keeps things moving; perhaps they should do that in places in this country. We have seen them do it in New York as well. In the end what would have been a ten or fifteen minute bus ride ended up being about thirty minutes but we weren’t in any rush, we ended up getting off at the wrong stop anyway as this was an express bus and didn't stop at the normal stop we would have got off at so had to get off at the one beforehand. By now it was about six o'clock so after getting some bits from the shop we headed back to the hotel and called it a day. One thing we did have in the hotel room was an old cast iron deep fill bathtub; it was lovely to have a soak in that for a while and then just lay on the bed and watching TV for a few hours. It had been a long day but I was glad we had spent most of the day over on Treasure Island because it’s not the sort of place you would go to normally as there isn’t that much to look at when the flea market isn’t on.
