San Francisco (part I)

Let's be clear : I have "attended" more Robotics conferences than Physics conferences. In particular, I have been to IROS2010 in Taipei, to World Haptics in Istanbul, and to IROS2011 in San Francisco in September. Always as a "+1" :-)

So, this post and a few others will be about this nice trip in San Francisco. This time, we went just the time of the conference (plus weekend).

Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge
Obviously, the first thing you do when you arrive in San Francisco, is to try to see the Golden Gate ! We arrived on a "grey day", very cloudy and foggy. We rented bikes and went towards the bridge, with the idea of crossing it.

The port of San Francisco in the clouds ...

First, I want to say that even if San Francisco is known for its steep streets, the way to the bridge from our hostel in North Beach is not too hard. Except just before the bridge, obviously, when you have to climb quite a lot !

So, it was almost raining, and we could not see the bridge until we were on it, and even on it, we could not see it well !

View from the Golden Gate bridge

Cold and wet, but happy :-)

The bridge in the cloud ...

View of the Golden Gate bridge from the other side.

Sausalito
After crossing the bridge, we continued on the bike to Sausalito. It's a nice town, where we could eat in an excellent fish restaurant (called Fish). We wanted to visit Sausalito because it's the name of a cookies brand that we like - and also because guides say that it's a nice place.
And it is !

The San Francisco Bay from Sausalito

Floating houses in the port of Sausalito

Yes, I like taking photos of animals, so what ?

Back to San Francisco
As advised by the guy who rented us the bikes, and because we are lazy, we came back to SF with a ferry. We were not the only ones, there were a good 50 other bikers ;-) Apparently, it's a classic loop : you take a bike in SF, cross the bridge, go to Sausalito, and come back to SF with the ferry.

On the ferry, we were hoping to have a nice view on the bridge, Alcatraz and the city, but it was still cloudy so not easy to see. But, no worries, we'll try later !

On the boat, with SF in the background

Alcatraz and San Francisco

In the next post, the visit of Alcatraz, or how we turned Hara-sensei into an inmate ! Stay tuned ...