Last day

It was raining again yesterday morning and forecast for the day. So we donned the waterproofs and walked up to the City Hall for a free guided tour by a volunteer.  Our chap was so keen to impart as much as he could about San Francisco past and present that our tour lasted for an hour and a half instead of the planned 45 minutes but we were warm, dry and entertained. Our guide took us into the Mayor's outer office hoping the mayor may have been free for a meet and greet but he was in a meeting.

There was a steady procession of weddings - each took 5 minutes, conducted by a volunteer officiant. This couple hadn't even dressed up!

But most did.

Well I am very sad to write that we are now at the airport and our trip has finished.  We have had a wonderful time.

What an evening!

During my google searches I found out about a concert and tree lighting ceremony in Grace Cathedral on this evening which would feature the grammy award winning San Francisco Boys Choir which was free. I didn't read the details too closely - there was something about the tree having been donated by the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bi and transsexual) community. Well what an interesting evening it was!

We arrived at the cathedral a bit early at the end of our day's wanderings and a sound engineer told us that there was another tree lighting event in the park opposite before the one in the cathedral. We went to the park and one of the organisers told us about the free refreshments on offer - all welcome. So we spent a very pleasant half hour listening to a jazz trio,  drinking warm mulled cider and eating cookies and joined in with the countdown to the lights turning on.

We then went back to the cathedral for the concert. The Christmas tree was covered in paper origami cranes which had wishes written on them - e.g. " let there be peace and no war", "equal rights for everyone", " make it snow for 2 weeks so school is closed". These had been sent by the public and by famous people including Barack Obama. The tree had been donated by the Rainbow World Fund a charity whose volunteers are from the GLBT community and the theme of the night was 'hope'. It was also World Aids day today.

The choir sang Christmas carols for about 25 minutes and were fab. Then a duo came on to sing and play the piano. We soon worked out that the singer was a drag artist. There were then speeches from the Mayor of San Francisco, Margaret Cho, (comedian), the Bishop of California, and an evangelical Cleve Jones who initiated an aids memorial in the eighties. Then the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, some of whom were in over the top drag (google them) got us to join in with their performance by chanting "they gotta have hope" then led the countdown to lighting the tree. What a diverse and unusual evening!

The mayor and the japanese consul with the sisters:

San Francisco

The reason we arranged a  short stopover in San Francisco was to visit Jim who was on 'New York' with Martin in the Clipper 11-12 race. Jim and his wife divide their time between 2 homes ( in San Francisco and Nova Scotia) and we were all looking forward to spending time together. However,  Jim's best friend passed away last week so they have had to fly up to Canada. So we have to find something to fill the next 2 and a half days. We have done all the normal tourist attractions here on previous visits so it is a challenge to find something different to do- on a budget too. But if I had to choose an american city to spend time wandering around San Francisco would be top choice.

So we did just that today. We walked for miles stopping at some places I had found when googling 'free hidden San Francisco'. It is strange having spent weeks in the spring in the southern hemisphere that we are suddenly in autumn with the early dark nights, leaves falling off the trees and cooler weather. Also having spent weeks saying hi to everyone we passed in New Zealand and the Cook Islands we have had to adjust to the city way of not doing that.

Moving on again

Thankfully our flight to LA was on time and arrived an hour early. We spent ages queuing for the tedious US border checks. When we queued to check in for the short hop to San Francisco we were told that all flights to San Francisco had been cancelled due to bad weather.  Oh joy. However as our flight wasn't due out for a few hours and was on a 737 the staff were confident that it would go which it did after an hour's delay.

It was raining heavily on arrival so we got the raincovers on the backpacks and our wet weather gear on and made the journey to the motel by metro and bus. The bus was full of hobos and 2 of them kicked off during the ride! We then had a 10 minute walk in the dark and rain but the motel is not far from Fisherman's Wharf and the area is safe.

Muri beach

Hopefully from the panoramic picture below you can see the small islands - these are at the edge of the lagoon and there is a reef all the way around the lagoon just beyond them. You can walk from the beach to the islands - if you pick your path carefully the depth is no more than waist high. The fish are amazing and the starfish almost luminescent in their bright colours. Martin was nipped by something on the back of his calf and I stumbled over some coral and cut some toes and a thumb. As I waded back to the beach trailing blood I did think it was lucky sharks were kept out of the lagoon by the reef!

There were no hawkers on the beach, we were never hassled by bar or restaurant owners and the crime rate is very low so that was all refreshing.

We have really enjoyed our 'island time' and glad we learnt a lot about Cook Island culture.