Parting is such sweet sorrow. Yes indeed it is. This has been a fantastic trip, made all the more so by the wonderful staff aboard the NCL Sun. We can’t say enough about everyone aboard, and we will miss them all dearly as we sadly say goodbye and leave our dear Carlos in the terminal as we collect our bags. We are out fairly late, as we have nothing pressing to do – but once in the terminal, our bags are right there, and we make the 10 minute walk to the rental agency without a problem (been there, done that, it’s easy and almost ingrained now).
We take a page out of Ken and Cheryl’s playbook, and take pictures of our rental car where we can see lots of dings and dents that weren’t marked on the rental sheet. Then, once in the car, we head out onto the Golden Gate bridge, our destination north to Bodega Bay – where they shot a lot of “The Birds” film. Cool! The drive across the Golden Gate and into Marin county is quite painless at this time in the morning, as we drive up into the hills, then turn off the highway onto small 2 lane roads the wind through farmland, little towns and finally out onto the coast.
It’s a beautiful drive, and Bodega Bay turns out to be an adorable little town with gorgeous headlands…that we discover because even though we delayed our departure from the ship, we are still way, way too early for lunch.
So, we meander through the little streets and end up at the Bodega Bay headlands, where we drive past the “hole in the head” which is where Pacific Gas & Electric planned to build a nuclear power plant in the 60’s. Fortunately, the project was killed by activism – and hopefully the saner minds that figured out it isn’t the brightest idea to build a nuclear power plant on top of the San Andreas fault! It is now just a depression in the ground at the top of the hill, and a pretty amazing story.
After passing the hole, we wind our way down to the end of the road where there is a beautiful view back into Bodega harbor – with a beach and ferry terminal.
On the other side of the headlands are the rocky outcroppings facing the Pacific. It’s a blustery day, so the surf is really up, creating quite a lovely view down the coast.
Back down and around the harbor, we wind through the little fishing village and on to Lucas Wharf restaurant, right on the water.
I have no idea why I didn’t take pictures of the food – but I didn’t. Oh well. I had an overly expensive crab cake dish – but it was phenomenal. Ed had the famous clam chowder and the calamari – both incredibly good.
After sating our appetites we struck out to make the big loop back to San Fran and our airport accommodations. We follow the road along the coast north, finding ever increasingly beautiful vistas – the pounding Pacific and incredible beaches. We stopped at so many view points, snapping pix of the wildlife and the wild Pacific along the way.
After an hour or so of beautiful coastal scenery, we turned inland and went from the ocean to redwoods (no good pictures), so majestic towering above us on both sides of the road. Then, the landscape changes yet again, and we are in the rolling vineyards around Santa Rosa. Acres upon acres of undulating hillside vineyards.
Back we go, headed toward San Fran. Again, across the Golden Gate, this time with pictures.
On through the city, down some parkway that wound through typical San Fran neighborhoods, those Victorian rowhouses, and other retail and residential places until we finally hit the freeway and exit on old Bayshore road for the Bayshore hotel. But as we exit the highway, we see a whole slew (a platoon actually) of riot geared police. Hmmm…SWAT? What? I though maybe President Obama was here, but no – it’s The Donald! The convention is right down the road from us and there are police and protestors and the roads are closed. Oy.
We make it to the hotel – but not the gas station to top off the rental car because it is past the barriers. But no worries, we’ll do that later. We check in, and the problems begin. Our room, while very nice, and not facing the road, does not have wifi access. The node outside our room is dead. And we spend the next 2 hours fighting with the front desk, calling the tech support line (oh, and just to add insult to injury, one of the phones has been blocked, so you can’t call out but somehow you can all 911 – which I managed to do – and then apologized profusely for using up valuable emergency phone lines). The front desk staff was awful – beyond rude and totally unhelpful. They finally sent up their onsite tech guy – who was a doll. He totally understood the problem, and tried a few different solutions, none of which worked. Finally, he suggested we change rooms – which is what we had been saying from the start. Argh. But – we ended up with a better room – higher floor and facing the water – and wifi (well, sort of, but that’s another story!). Our tech guy also brought us these little chocolates as a way of apology. At least one person on staff was worthwhile.
Later, we managed to get gas (the protestors are gone, roads now open – but it was ugly while it lasted), beer and wine at the gas station and then chilled out in the room for a bit until it was time for dinner.
We had already scoped the food options, and chose the Elephant Bar – right next door to the hotel. Great reviews and we can walk. That’s a winner. And it truly was – the atmosphere was lively, sitting at the bar with a view of the water and the entire restaurant, we could people watch and enjoy view all at once. The food was fabulous. Ed ordered a burger- which we dubbed the burger that ate SFO. This thing was beyond monstrously huge…
… I had the chicken lettuce wraps which were so fantastically good, I decided I would try to get or find the recipe to do at home. It was that good. And how hard could it be? We hung out for a while, got to chatting with the guy next to us at the bar, who was a contractor for Electric companies, had been literally all over the world, and was heading to Richmond, VA for work. Small world. Great evening trading stories with him and talking about life and travel in general.
Then back to the hotel so we could hit the hay and get up at the crack of dawn for our early morning flight back home. Wow. Amazing how fast this trip went, but what a great ending to a wonderful 3+ weeks.
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