Wednesday morning was a lovely sunny day so today we had planned a boat trip across The Bay to Sausalito where the rich and famous all live so the first thing to do was to catch the bus to the Ferry Building then head around the back to get the tickets from the vending. These tickets are really strange as they are only thin cardboard but you don't swipe them you just need to touch them on the card reader for it to work. I was surprised to find out that even though it's a 30-minute ride on the ferry the tickets on cost $11.50 or about £7 for a return. We now have about an hour to kill before the ferry arrived, they don't run that often so we went into Peets tea & coffee house for a drink while we waited. Actually, a funny thing happened when we got the tickets were somebody put a $20 bill in and it gave him his change all in quarters. When we came out of the coffee shop and arrived there were already loads of people getting on it but they load it up really quickly so off we went for the 30 minute trip across The Bay to Sausalito.
It was a lovely sunny and warm day when we arrived and it's a very peaceful place here away from most of the crowds. After having a look around the few shops that there are went and had some lunch from a burger bar then walked about a mile or so to have a look at the Bar Area Model. This place is inside a massive warehouse and was built by the army engineering corps and it's a scale model of the Bay area, they use it to see how changes to the coast affect the way the tides come and out, so it fills with water when the tide comes in, amazing when you see everything is to scale with all the little replica bridges like the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge in place. After spending a couple of hours looking round in there, we were the only ones at times; we walked it back into Sausalito town to have a look at the shops the further down there’s plenty of gift shops here so I was in my element plus I found some things you can't get anywhere else. Now it was time for an ice cream from an Italian ice cream parlor and that was huge and yummy. From there we just had a sit on the Bayfront for about 45 minutes until the ferry came back.
By now there were lots of people waiting to get on the ferry, a lot more than when we came because lots of people hire bikes on the San Francisco side then ride across the Golden Gate Bridge and down through the Muir Woods then catch the ferry back. They load all the foot passengers up first then they cram all these bikes on; it's a good thing that you get on the lower level of the ferry but go upstairs to get off so we went and sat up there, as we were nearly first in the queue there was still plenty of seats. By now it was starting to get late in the afternoon so the boat ride back was almost at sunset as we passed around the back of Alcatraz Island with the sun setting sun behind the Golden Gate Bridge. Seen as how we were getting off at the Ferry Building Marketplace we headed inside for one the pies from the Golden Gate Meat Company, it would have been rude not to. By now it was almost dark but still fairly warm so strolled across the plaza on the other side of the road to catch the bus back along Market Street to the shops for some nibbles for later. I think we were both glad to get back to the hotel as it has been a long day in the warm weather but well worth it.
