Roadtriplife: Visiting the Bay Area and San Francisco

Follow our adventure! Browse my blog to find out some more about the roadtrip of our lives!

This happens top be the time our car broke down - I am going to save you on reading about our car breaking down again (if you are interested anyway: klick here to read about it). 

So, after this little detour into hinterland California we finally made it to San Francisco! One day late, but luckily, we could change our Airb'n'b booking. Time for a little 'luxury', 2 nights in a real BED in a HOUSE with a KITCHEN! And San Francisco! I was particulary excited to see this  town. 

Cable car

After weeks of sunny, hot weather, we hit the fog. And the wind! Luckily, we found out on time that we have to pay for crossing the Golden Gate bridge going inwards before actually crossing it. We went downtown to explore a little. The mood was a bit down because of all the car (and money) issues and we couldn't make much of downtown San Francisco. But the next day, we went to Fishermen's Wharf and all the Piers which made up a bit for ugly downtown. We did not know that going to Alcatraz required as reservation made weeks before. Kind of a bummer, we really wanted to go. Instead, we treated ourselves to a nice lunch and bought NFL hats...Time for a little treatment for ourselves. We didn't cover some of the most popular sites in San Francisco. I feel we could have made a lot more of this visit and we were really missing out, but there is up's and down's and these days, we were not at our best. BUT the stay definitely helped to recover ourselves a bit, get some sleep and eat proper food.

View on Bay Bridge

Alcatraz

Found some pretty flowers!

To finish up our visit to the Bay (and a bit recovered from the last shock) we went to see the University of Berkeley! Our accomodation was strictly spoken in Oakland and our Airb'n'B host recommend to just drop by as this uni was literally around the corner. It was super nice to sniff some uni air again! There was a lot of construction at the time we visited, but of course we did find the biology buildin.

After getting a taste of uni again, we remembered that there is a second well known university near San Francisco (yeah and obviously a lot more all over California ;D), so off we went on our way to Stanford university! We crossed a bridge over the Bay and of course, the trouble started again. The engine was heating up and... oh well. The next drama was coming. We stopped as soon as possible, quickly became memberes of the AMA (Alberta motor association) to save money on towing and had to get towed to the next auto repair shop. Again, they were really helpful people, but close to 5 p.m. there was nothing they could do the same day.  We were allowed to sleep in the car in their backyard (yes we were that desperate at this point) and the next morning got an estimate for getting the cart fixed. Another 1100$ made us want to cry. Then, again, we were extremely lucky with the repair shop. The owner had daughters our age and felt really sorry for us. He phoned around a bit and we ended up only having to pay for the parts - 800$ it was. Still, basically money we didn't have and the though to just leave everything as it is and just go home did cross our mind not only once. Again, I can't be more thankful for my family, who jumped in to help pay for the repair and made it possible for us to finish the roadtrip! Also, a good talk with them and some motivational speeches of a few other friends did help a lot. The mood was up a bit!!!

While our car was being fixed, the owner of the repair shop helped us organize a rental car for the day for only 30$! We were stuck there already for 1.5 days and we were in kind of an industrial area, so it was good to be able to still do some sightseeing for realtively cheap. We already were in Palo Alto, a very nice suburb (?) of San Francisco and also the town were Stanford is located. And WOW!!!!!!!! I am still amazed by this place. I feel like I need to marry very rich very soon to be able to go there and study! It is a very very cool place and I don't want to even imagine how much tuition is. See for yourselves:

This is the DRIVEWAY to uni. The driveway.

Following a 'secret' tip from our favourite repair shop owner: Facebook! We went to see 'the Facebook' ;) The only thing that's really remarkable though is that it is really really huge! And we did the must-do pictures with our thumbs up. This is very social media is made, so it was still cool to see it. We finished the little sightseeing trip in our cute rental car up by a visit in downtown Palo Alto which was really lovely. It becomes obvious really quickly that this is probably a town where mostly rich people live and this is reflected in the whole town. We had some food there and were finally able to hit the road again! Time to get going!