We arrived early evening after the long two stage flight from Manchester with a stopover at Atlanta and stayed at a reasonable motel in Millbrae near the aiport, then travelled into San Francisco the next morning on the BART. We reached our rented flat in the Hayes Valley area in a typical Victorian house and had revived sufficently after lunch to walk up to the famous Painted Ladies row of restored Victorian houses at Alamo Square. A detour to the nearby Safeways supermarket to get some provisions was enough for the first day. Armed with various guidebooks and leaflets we planned the next couple of days of sightseeing.

San Francisco is easy to travel around using the good value MUNI three day passports allowing travel on the trams and cable cars as well as the buses and trolleybuses. We walked from Market Street to Union Square continuing through Chinatown to the Embarcedero then took one of the restored vintage trams to Fishermens Wharf to visit the Historic Ships, take a boat trip on a fishing boat under Golden Gate bridge (luckily just as an aircraft carrier was arriving for Fleet Week) and around Alcatraz, and look at the sealions at Pier 39.
       
     
                   Historic tugboat

The next day we took the cable car from Powell and Market Street to Mason Street entertained by the friendly patter of the brakeman and conductor and the vigourous bell ringing at each intersection, alighting to walk up the "Crookedest" zigzag Lombard Street before calling in to the interesting cablecar museum and returning to Powell and Market Street. From there we took a trolleybus to Golden Gate Park, a quiet green haven except for the Blue Angels Airforce display team practising overhead then headed back on foot to our flat via the still hippy-ish Haight Ashbury district.