A Nob Hill Adventure

Since we were a little messed up from the time change, we were up and ready to go at 8am our first morning - so much for sleeping in!

We decided to spend the day exploring on foot & headed down the enormous hill to "Sears Fine Food" (you can see it behind the trolly) for breakfast.  It was very good!  At had a great little atmosphere.  In the 2nd picture, you can see the inside - lots of close little tables, low lighting, dark wood.  

We grabbed 2 passes to be able to use the MUNI (the public transit), and headed through Nob Hill.  This neighborhood is where the "old money" is - some super nice hotels & incredible neighborhoods.

This is by far my favorite way to see a city - just walking and taking it all in.  We found a great "walk" in a guide book we had & set out to explore

Our first stop was at Grace Cathedral - don't know if you can see the lady in the front of my pic, but it has labyrinths on the ground - seems like a crazy thing in a church, but it was neat to watch people do.  Love old churches like this - the grandure takes your breath away

Our walk took us winding through neighborhoods & by all sorts of really neat sites...

...definitely not what you see in Longview!

We made a stop at the cable car museum, (which I had my doubts about), but it was free, and very small.

Did you know the cables are ALWAYS moving??

Next, our walk told us to take a left down the middle of a street, that ended in what looked like a dead end, but if you kept going it took you up the "Valejo Steps".  Seriously, a LOT of steps.  

this was only the first little section of them!

a stop to take a pic along the way (really just an excuse to sit down -  ha!)

We climbed & we climbed, and we climbed!  Along the way there were little parks & houses, so muchh to look at! To give you a better view, we thought we'd take this little video...

and no, i can't turn it.  so annoying.

After climbing all those steps though, there were some INCREDIBLE views of the city!

Now that we'd made it to the top of this crazy hill, we headed down...

the hill was so steep, they cut stairs into it!

The sign underneath this tells people to park at 90 degrees.  Would be embarassing if your car rolled down this hi

In the picture on the right, you can see me way down the hill.  Can you tell we were intrigued by how crazy big these hills were?  I mean you hear about San Francisco being that way, but it was totally different experiencing it!

We passed a local artist along the way...

We continued along our little walk & around the next corner was the famous Lombard St.  It's a street that just spans 1 block, but is so steep, that made it turn 8 different times back and forth! I couldn't get great pictures from my perspective, so google it if you want to see all the turns.

Don't worry, we just walked up it.  :-)

 A view from the top...

After climbing to the top, we waiting for a cable car to take us down to the coast so we could check out Fisherman's wharf & head to the pier to get on the Alcatraz Ferry.  Here, you can see the coast at the bottom of this street.

 On our ride down that hill in the famous trolley!

Next up: The Second Half of Day 1 - Alcatraz & Dinner!