A Frisco Morning

The Pilots on BA flights often talk about 'San Fran' when we're coming in to land at San Francisco. I've always wondered whether that's like talking about 'London Town', or whether it is something the locals also say. On Friday one of my colleagues (who's lived here for at least 3 years now) referred to it as 'San Fran', so I think the pilots are probably alright with that. The jury is still out on 'Frisco', though. And talking of the city, we popped in for a quick visit this morning. We were debating whether to go on Caltrain or whether to drive in. It would take about an hour and 20 minutes on Caltrain, and then we'd still end up in a corner of the city we didn't want to be, and have to get a bus (or one of the Streetcars) to where we wanted to be. So, given that it was Sunday morning and traffic should be quite light, we decided to drive. It was a really easy journey, and only took us 40 minutes to get to Fisherman's Wharf. Not bad, really. Yes, yes... I know Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39 are the most horribly touristy areas of San Francisco, but we wanted somewhere familiar and easy - and there are a lot of things for Lucy to see and do. We'll work our way through to the more worthy sights and attractions as time goes on. We took Lucy on a merry-go-round on Pier 39. We weren't quite sure whether she would like it, but she seemed to think it was fantastic... so much so that there were a few minutes of grumpiness when we got off (mostly from Lucy) before we went to the end of the pier to see the sealions. There's actually a webcam on the Pier 39 website which shows pretty-much exactly where we were standing. And a passing stranger was kind enough to take our picture. Also, we now know that Lucy does an uncanny impression of a sealion.