Vandrea Does America: Day 108 (Tuesday 11/6/12)- San Francisco, CA

Today was a serious Tourist day. We verified that we could skip the Wharf, but only after suffering through it. I did get fudge though and saw some sea lions.

Then a quick tour of the Maritime museum. Quick only because it was an overbooked day and because apparently it was field trip day for the Juvenile hall. Otherwise a nice place to stay.

Next a bus ride to a horde of more tourists. This attraction was morbidly lovely. Local bicyclists nearly elbowing camera snappers off the Golden Gate bridge, and signs imploring others not to voluntarily jump. We survived with a phenomenal panoramic of the city. We then walked down to the water's edge and along it through a massive recreational area. Touristy and lovely.

Our final stop for the evening was the Palace of Fine Arts. Not a museum, but perhaps the most breathtaking city park we have ever seen. Grace Cathedral is to a Church what the Palace is to a park. Indeed a palace, domed and columned and all that.

For our evening accommodations friends Jessie and Bobby generously opened their home and cupboard to us. We spent the evening enjoying a delicious dinner, and after a polite period of pretending, for fear of offending one another, that there wasn't an election going on, watching and discussing the results. After weaving around the Northwestern quadrant of our United States and finding plenty of pleasant but sparse areas, with banners and billboards, bumper stickers and yard signs touting an America we are unfamiliar with we landed at the perfect place, for us, to talk politics--Berkley.