Only In A Jeep

So Day 3 in the Bay was pretty enjoyable. We got up early and went to breakfast at Lefty O’Douls, a local landmark. It is a baseball themed piano bar, that conveniently serves a quick hot breakfast. I got the Lefty’s Home Run special thinking it would inspire my boy Jimmy at the game that night… not so much I guess, but more on the game later.


We took a Jeep tour with Hank Davis of Golden Gate Jeep Tours. It was a little pricey but worth every single penny, we pretty much saw the entire Bay area in 6 hours. We never would have been able to see that much of the area in that short of time on our own. Nikki took the back seat, and she gets today’s Kudos… evidently it is just way windy in the back seat, especially when crossing the GG bridge and our short jaunt on the freeway, and Nik was pretty much beaten to death by her ponytail.



Here is a just a brief list of the places we saw on the tour: Chinatown, North Beach (Italian neighborhood), Telegraph Hill, Coit Tower, Russian Hill, the cable car house, Palace of Fine Arts, the Presidio, Lombard Street, Golden Gate Bridge, Muir Woods, Sausilito, Belvidere, Tiburon, Lincoln Park Golf Course (nearly got nailed by an errant golf ball), Baker Beach, Sea Cliff, Pacific Heights, Haight-Ashbury (which now at the corner is a Ben & Jerry’s that is about as counter-culture as it gets these days)



Some Hollywood tidbits from our tour: we saw the street corner where she crashes the car in “Princess Diaries”, some of the movie was filmed on Baker Beach. We had a view of Treasure Island, where the airport scene in Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark was filmed. We drove by George Lucas’ house in Tiberon, Robin Williams’ house in Sea Cliff, and author Danielle Steele’s house in Pacific Heights… also we saw the author of Helter Skelter, who’s name escapes me at the moment, walking down the street.


We had lunch on the water at an Italian restaurant in Tiburon. There were two ladies each dining by themselves but were both wearing some really big and fancy hats that they had both gotten at the hat shop across the street. Sadly they did not comment on my hat… I was sporting the baseball hat (go figure)


Our driver, Hank, was great. He was a big A’s fan, so we talked a lot about baseball. He told us that the Cardinals stay a the Westin St. Francis around the corner from our hotel, and that their bus will load on Post Street. Gotta love Hank.





Hank brought us back to our hotel about 3, then we changed for the game, but walked down to CC to post yesterday’s blog. On the way there was a small group of demonstrators telling us “We believe in Aliens, they exist and have contributed greatly to our society”. We were rockin’ the Cards gear, so the alien supporters shouted out to us specifically… we felt special. There are lots of crazy and whacky people here. Some are homeless, some just was to hand you a flier about Aliens and such.