Being an early riser, I rose early. Being up really early means you don’t wait for showers, which makes me happy.
We had breakfast with this utterly delightful man from San Francisco who was coming home from his own coast to coast adventure. He had Views on education, history, and the general state of Humanity. Well educated, well-traveled and erudite, it was a pleasure to have breakfast with him.
Lunch was with two really different people. One was a retired woman who didn’t fly, but lived in Oakland and had family in Chicago. She was a California Zephyr veteran and a former accountant. The other woman?
She was beautifully turned out for a cocktail party. She had about six disparate businesses and claimed she liked to take the route from Reno to SF because she could work on the train on her various businesses. This last she mentioned after a comment that I usually take the Northeast Regional, which has Wi-Fi, so it was really strange for me not to get some work done on the train. Peter and I had to put our hands over our mouths leaving the dining car all the way back to our roomette to keep ourselves from laughing loud enough to be heard all over the train.
By this time, I have to admit that we were getting a bit weary of the train and ready for our next adventure. The scenery was still lovely, of course, but you can only walk around on a train so much, and we wanted to be able to get up and move.
We got to Emeryville on time, and were able to board our bus to Pier 39 at Fisherman’s Wharf with no trouble. But since we decided not to rent a car, how to get to our hotel?
We walked.
It was a little over a mile, and Google Maps was fine with walking directions, so it was no big deal. After days of mostly sitting, a walk was pretty welcome, our carry-ons were backpacks, and our big suitcase had wheels. The slope up Van Ness wasn’t as bad as coming up the hill to our house, so I was kind of eyerolling the whole “San Francisco Hills” thing, even though we were happy to get to the hotel.
When we got to the hotel, we really kind of collapsed, though. It was nice to be off a train and able to take a long soak in a bathtub. We ordered dinner in, and I took care of some work a client had sent me. I’m self-employed, and my ability to work is mostly controlled by Internet access. The California Zephyr doesn’t have wireless, darn it. Being used to the Northeast Regional and the Vermonter, I gotta admit not working on the train was one of the stranger experiences of the trip for me!
We turned in early, our bodies still kind of on East Coast time, but ready for more adventure the next morning.