We toured a chilly San Francisco and got out of town.
What a chilly surprise we got this morning. We stepped out of the hotel and thought it was winter. I don’t think the temperatures got out of the 60’s all day unless they dropped into the 50’s. Lucky for Frances, she had brought a jacket with her. I had some long pants but no jacket or long sleeve shirt. We grabbed a breakfast at Denny’s, went back to the hotel and finished packing and checked out. We left our luggage at the hotel as a matter of convenience.
We started our journey for the day by walking across the street and catching the “Emery-Go-Round.” It’s a free shuttle that will take us to the BART terminal. A trip to the ticket vending machine and about a five minute wait and we were on our way to San Francisco. When we arrived at the surface at San Francisco we walked around for a few minutes to get our bearings. Frances spotted a bookstore and wanted to pickup something to read if the scenery turns bad on the rest of our trip. We made our way to Grant Street and headed toward Chinatown.
Melissa wanted us to look for a knockoff purse while we were in Chinatown. It didn’t take long to find some. The second place we went to had one of the brands she was wanting. We tried to call her to see exactly what she wanted but she was on the phone. We walked down the street while waiting for her to call back and found a place that had both of the brands. Called her back and talked about what they had and we picked out something. Hope she likes it. We strolled through the rest of Chinatown and then about a half mile to “Fisherman’s Warf.” We looked at all of the tourist things. I was surprised to see that most of the sea lions were “gone for the season.” Last year we saw a hundred or more and this year we saw one swimming and three on the floating docks. There was a sign saying that they leave in early June for their mating season and only a few non-mating or male sea lions stay during this time of the year.
We saw some of the same street performers that we saw last year and most of them in the same places. The “Bushman” was still there, hiding behind his bushes and scaring folks as they walk past. We picked up a few souvenirs and got in line for the cable cars. The line was a little over an hour long. Seemed like the temperature dropped several degrees while we were waiting in line. It’s nothing real exciting but if you go to San Francisco you probably ought to take the ride. The cost went up from $3.00 last year to $5.00 this year. We were able to ride the rear platform and we got some really great views from that vantage point.
The cable car terminated a half block from the BART station. We were about ready to head back. We were a little tired and Frances wanted to get somewhere out of the cold and the wind.
I’m sitting in the Amtrak station at Emeryville now. We got here about an hour before the scheduled arrival of our train but we knew it was running late. I had checked it’s ETA on my phone. It always runs late. The questions is “How late?” Right now it’s 1 hour and 9 minutes and it may become even later before it arrives here. I’m looking forward to a scenic trip tomorrow but I’m really concerned about our arrival time in Seattle. Three or four hours late won’t bother us too much since it’s supposed to arrive at 8:30PM anyway, too late to do anything when you get there. I just hope it’s not eight or ten hours late like it has been on some trips. Since we’re traveling on the weekend, maybe the Union Pacific won’t be blocking the tracks for track work. Then again, they might be doing the really heavy stuff since the number of freights going through the area on a weekend are less.
You always see some characters when traveling. While waiting for our train a lady walks in guiding her male friend. He is blindfolded, and later I found that he had earplugs. He had a sign hanging on the front of his jacket that said something like:
Shhhh! It’s my birthday. I don’t know where I am or where I’m going.”
His wife said that he was from Seattle but they were going to Portland for a few days. Hi had figured out that they were at a train station but didn’t know where they were going. He was assuming they would be catching a CalTrain to somewhere else in California. She finally let him take off the blindfold and the ear plugs since the wait was so long but he didn’t know where they were going until they boarded the train.
It’s 10:42PM and things just got worse. The train is at the Jack London station in Oakland. That’s the good news. That puts the train just eight minutes from our station. The bad news is the host railroad has had an accident and a HazMat team has to be called out to access the situation to determine if it’s safe for our train, or any train for that matter, to go through the area. After about 45 minutes we get word that HazMat has determined it safe for passage.
The station agent announces that another train, the California Zephyr is about fifteen minutes from arriving. The Zephyr, which usually operates pretty close to schedule, is running over six hours late this day. They may bring the Zephyr in first and let those passengers detrain before they bring our train into the station or they may bring our train in first. There are two tracks at this station but when they use track two, passengers have to cross track one. It becomes an unsafe condition when 2 trains are involved. The Zephyr arrives on track two first but stops so that the passenger coaches are short of the platform. The Red Caps can start unloading the baggage car but the passengers must stay on board. About five minutes later our train pulls in on track one, the near track, and slightly past the station. As our train stops, the Zephyr pulls ahead so that it’s passengers can detrain and walk behind our train to get to the station.
11:056PM and we are on the road, one hour and forty-four minutes behind the original schedule, or two hours and twenty-nine minutes behind the modified schedule. The conductor said they had made pretty good time until the last hundred miles or so.
Posted by john at July 15, 2006 05:02 AM