January 7, 2011

Friday 7~~~~Another chilly day here in California, it is sunny, but chilly and no rain. We rode the "Bart" again to downtown San Francisco, we now have the trolley car system and its tickets all figured out now, so we are doing good. We went to see the trolley car museum the first thing. San Francisco has the only operating cable cars in the world, they have no motors or power of their own, they are towed by tracks in the street by a moving cable. The cables are always moving, the cables move the cars at 9.5 MPH all day long. There are 40 cable cars in the system, double and single ended cars. The double ended cars turn around at the end of the line on a set of track on a circular board that turns around clock wise and it puts the train heading backwards . (picture) On an average day, 26 cars are in operation. They are a lot of fun to ride up and down the steep hills of San Francisco. You can ride on seats facing the streets or inside the cable car or you can stand and hang onto a rail, just be sure and keep your butt pulled in close, as the cars really whiz fast past the trolley real close. After we went through the Trolley Museum, we walked all over China town, we were going to have lunch there, but some of the food hanging in the street markets didn't look to good, so we decided to pass on eating there. It was quite interesting to see all the laundry hanging out the windows of their apartments above the stores in China town. Next we rode the trolley to Fisherman's wharf where we wandered around looking at everything, you can see Alcatraz real good from the pier there. It was getting dark and we missed our bus to the cable car, so we had to wait awhile before we got back on the cable car. Of course I had my good book along, so I was fine and Kent always finds someone to help with directions or to talk to. We finished up our day by eating at Morton's Steak House where we enjoyed a wonderful steak dinner, the steak was so tender, you could have ate it with no teeth. They served it with a good amount of crab on top of it and with steamed broccoli. Of course we filled up on the loaf of bread they served first, so I could only eat half of my steak and baked potato. We rode Bart( Dark Picture) back to our truck and then home, we were really tired after such a long fun day we had.