Day 17: The journey to San Francisco

And here we are, in a different place again, San Francisco! Today was the day of arrival. We left around 9 am towards San Francisco and arrived at our hotel around 3:30 pm. As a stopover, we spent 1.5 hours in an outlet about 1.5 hours before San Francisco to pick up an ordered pair of jeans for our stepfather, we didn't need anything ourselves. What accompanied us without a break on every step of the way for 3.5 hours was agriculture. There is a severe drought here, and you can see that the farmers concentrate on certain fields because they can no longer cultivate everything due to the water shortage. You can stop at every corner and buy fruits and vegetables - 8 avocados for 1 dollar, strawberries, cherries, tomatoes, garlic (it smelled worse than in Kreuzberg or Spain on the bus), nuts... It's a shame we didn't need anything! We often saw protest signs from farmers and information boards where you could learn that California alone generates and supplies half of the agriculture for the entire America. One state (where there is a drought) for 50 states. That's something to think about.

After a short stop at the Gilroy outlet, it was just under 1.5 hours to our hotel in San Francisco. The traffic became denser and more stressful. This system where you can overtake on both sides is simply not a system. Defensive driving is not applied in SFO. When Uli dared to blink right because we wanted to turn, we were angrily honked at. My goodness, so far the car (even in Las Vegas) would slow down and let us in, but here people just honk wildly. This was not an isolated case, other cars also honked at each other. We wouldn't care about this for the next 3 days because the car will probably stay parked. Thanks to the navigation system, we found our way to the hotel and after an hour's rest, we walked to Fisherman's Wharf to get a first impression. My first impression is not yet ready for a verdict. I also expected a bigger wow-effect here because everyone raves about this city. But for now, I'll leave it at that and see what the day brings tomorrow.

By the way, we are experiencing the ultimate cold shock here. After getting used to 40 degrees, it's only 20 degrees here in San Francisco. SFO pullovers in the tourist shops are in high demand. I have already mentally picked one out, and Uli has even bought one. We visited Pier 39, saw the few remaining sea lions (hopefully there will be more tomorrow morning), and then Uli wanted to go to the Bubba Gump restaurant. So, after a 20-minute wait, we also took part in this tourist spectacle. Since I hardly took any photos today, I photographed our food. Uli had the shrimp platter, the perennial favorite at Bubba Gump, and I had the grilled shrimp with rice (without vegetables :-( ). Everything was okay, of course expensive, but you only do something like this once in such a city. Afterwards, we took the famous Forrest Gump photos in front of the restaurant and strolled towards the hotel through all sorts of shops. At first, we just looked around to get an impression, as I said, pullovers are selling well at the moment, and every other passerby is wearing a San Francisco pullover. I have already noticed today that there are quite a few 'unpleasant' homeless people here. They are so ragged here that I want to keep at least a 5-meter distance from them. So dirty, smelly, and in such a terrible condition, I have never seen them before. We were still in the good areas. Here you can see that America could still learn a lot about how to treat fellow citizens who are not doing well, but they are simply thrown onto the street and forgotten in the truest sense of the word. I find that really terrible and I condemn it.

On our way back to the hotel, we took the bus. Thanks to the American SIM card, Google told us everything we needed to know. So we also found our way to our hotel very well.

My first impression of SFO is not yet a wow, but still quite good. Let's see what tomorrow brings!