This is my room, with an unfeasible number of pillows and a sort of cushioned pool noodle thing.

And a view of Canal Street.

And hotel corridors which are … a little unusual in the lighting department.

That said, the whole hotel is a bit unusual.

Interesting lobby music though, which is a nice change.

I slept in a little, had Lost Bread for breakfast (it turns out to be French Toast, but more gooey) and ambled down Canal Street and along the river.

And in the course of ambling, found a place where I could take a lunchtime Jazz Cruise on the Natchez, 9th of it’s name.

It’s got a steam carillon, which they play … well, because they can.

And, to the left of the boat and the right of the picture, the Lower 9th Ward.

I’m pretty sure this is Jackson Barrracks – I should maybe take a few fewer photos and a few more notes?

Former car-part plant & current sugar refinery.
I did try to get a shot of the big-ass scoop picking up raw sugar from that boat on the right, but … it came out grainy?

OK, it was too cluttered a background to see what the hell was going on.

Sittin’ up the front, enjoying the ride down the river.
There’s the Captain’s Saloon off to the right, where one of the folk at the bar recognised my Dr. Who shirt; She was the second member of the Natchez team to do so, so apparently they’re a bunch of nerds.

A profusion of flags;
Barely visible to the right of the smokestack is the Jack of the United States, which I’d not realised was a thing.
The nearly indistinguishable one is the Flag of New Orleans.
Blue with 3 Gold Fleurs-De-Lis is a historical French-In-The-Americas thing, from what I can tell.

The ferry lets us go by, …

In addition to a steam calliope, the Natchez also has a steam whistle.
Quite a loud one, as it happens.

The Natchez, even though it only dates back to 1975, is a steamship, and runs like a much older type of ship.
Engine room telegraph (I wandered through the engine room, but took no photos), and orders relayed to the helm by one of those big cone speaking trumpets.

Got as much sleep as I could in Sauna 307, and the packing up process went very smoothly. Maybe I’m getting better at that part.

Taking a bus to the station was the easiest approach, and the only trouble I had was looking for the stop on the wrong side of the road. It’d have been correct in New Zealand, and I figured that out about halfway across the road.

For a 10pm train I was vastly early. Fortunately, a sleeper cabin comes with access to the Metropolitan Lounge at stations which have them, so I could stash my bag & go wandering.
In this case, to a bookstore Andrei had recommended I go check out, which turned out to be a not-too-bad walk from the station.

Spotted one of those multi-city signposts on the way; This is probably the closest to NZ I’ve been since … June, maybe?

And yet, some things followed me here.

And then there was The Last Bookstore.
It’s … different. In a good & eclectic way.

Upstairs is a gallery wrapping around the central space, filled with art gallery space, the book labyrinth, which essentially means you’ll be doing some meandering, and a few small arty businesses.

Luggage space is an issue, so I bought nothing, despite them having a copy of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl in their comic & graphic novel grotto.

It was , as they say, as hot as hell out there, so I spent a bunch of time hiding from the day-star in the Amtrak Metropolitan Lounge, watching the room fill & empty as trains left.
I also watched people turn up to the lounge five minutes before their train left, then leave their boarding passes on the counter when told to run to the appropriate platform. No idea whether they made it.

Eventually, ‘my’ train arrived, and I got to see where I’d be living for the next two days.

Roomette 14, downstairs, at the other end of the car from the toilets & the shower.
Basically the same design as the other roomettes I’ve stayed in, though this one replaces the narrow ‘wardrobe’ with an indentation in the wall, a hanger rail, and a strap to hold things in place. Since I had nothing needing hanging, it meant a little more space, so I’m good with that.
In the interests of even more space, Big Red lived in the luggage rack in the centre of the car, so I could fold the top bunk hard up and get more head room.
The bed was already made up when we got on board, which makes sense, as it was kind of late.

I slept well, or at least better than in the sauna, and woke up at sunrise.

This trip seemed a lot more social than others. Not sure why.
I did make an effort to get off the train at every stop where it was feasible, so I met a lot of the other sleeper passengers.
Jay the sleeping car attendant helped, I think, by generally being cheerful and outgoing and involving everyone around him in his conversations.

I even met Daisy the Service & Therapy Dog, who, in one of the most adorable moments of the trip, shook my hand and gave me her card; She keeps them in her harness pockets.

It’s mostly photographs from here on

Not sure that I specifically took a picture, but somewhere along the line I’ll have looked at the Pacific Ocean, probably during the Christchurch to Wellington portion of the trip.

This is what it looks like from the other side.

And from the end of Santa Monica Pier, once you work your way through the crowds & the folks who’d like to sell you things, it looks like this.

The crowds were actually pretty non-existent; It was mostly folks strolling along trying to eat ice-creams before they evaporated.

And this sea lion. 

Like I said, crowds not too bad.
It was, after all, mid-afternoon on a week day, so presumably people were off working or something.
You know, employed-people stuff.

The Hortisaurs of Santa Monica.

I was only in LA for two nights – Catching up with Andrei, then catching a train.

The hostel is in a historic building, which … has been the case for all of the HI hostels I’ve stayed at in the USA, come to think of it. Surprisingly good free breakfast, and very surprisingly well-organised, though that may have a lot to do with the space available to them.

The weather was hot. Damn hot.

There was a fan in room 307.
It helped a little, if you were directly in the path, as my bunk was.
For the rest of the residents of Sauna 307, not so much.

Interestingly, the building had a central courtyard, shadowed by the buildings above, which was pleasantly cool, and any space which wasn’t on an outside wall was quite nice on the temperature stakes.
Just not the dorms.

~shrug~

So be it, it was only two nights, and with a shower in the room it was possible to cool down immediately before sleep.

The Amtrak thruway bus was scheduled to pick me, and any other passengers, up at 7:25am.
Advice from Amtrak suggested being there a half-hour early.
It was about a half-hour walk from the hostel to the bus stop in the early morning, with no pack to carry.

Given all of that, I’m not sure why it was necessary to be able to take the picture below at 6:05am.

In the interests of not getting murdered by the other residents of the dorm room, I packed up the night before & left my clothes laid out where I could grab & go without needing to turn on lights, though I did use my torch a bit to make sure all was well.

The bus arrived more or less when it was expected, though the other bus turning up was a tad confusing; Both the Oakland & Emeryville thruway connections leave from there, about ten minutes apart, and there’s nothing on them to indicate which is which.

There was an Australian Mother & Son and a trio of Romanian backpackers also waiting.
The Australians had somehow attracted the attention of a possibly drunk, possibly stoned, probably orbiting Neptune chap; He was doing a lot of topic changes based on words which rhymed or sounded alike, so there was a pattern to the rambling.
Friendly, but not good at noticing that they really weren’t that into talking to him.

From here on, it’s mostly pictures.

As we got closer to the coast, the mist rolled in.

And I’m keeping this one because I rather like the effect.

We got into LA Union Station early, which was just fine by me; I’d been feeling steadily less well over the course of the trip, and decided that I would not be taking a commuter train or bus to the hostel in Santa Monica.
Not when taxis exist & the roads are reasonably clear.

Well worth it.

Yosemite turned out to be way too difficult to get to without a lot more planning than I’d done, and a conversation with someone in the hostel kind of put me off the one-day bus tour option (roughly a third of the tour happens outside of the bus, at best), so I went with Muir Woods instead.
Still a bus trip, but a much shorter one, as it’s just across the bay.

It was all scenic, which is what I was there for.
There were a number of tracks you could follow, with estimated times for each, and we’d been told that we could just make the third bridge up the river and back in the time available.

Yeah, I think I walk fast, ’cause I could have done it twice.

I mean, I didn’t do it twice.
I wandered up to the first bridge, checked out various groves of Coastal Redwood along the way, checked my watch, figured I’d go for the second bridge (on the assumption that their map was more schematic than I’d thought), checked the time there, and realised that their times were calibrated for the zimmer-frame crowd.

So I looked at trees, basked in the cheap showyness of nature, …

…, enjoyed the shade and the cooler air, …

…, and took a walk in the woods.

I made it to the meeting point for the bus in plenty of time, which was a good thing.

• The folks I’d reserved the ticket with marked the wrong place on the map – It was a block further back.
  Fortunately they also wrote down the street number.
• Their system for buses involves you being given little laminated boarding passes of various colours, related to the tour.
• There is nothing to indicate which bus corresponds to which colour; Instead, the drivers just call out.
• Across a four-lane road, because the buses stop on the side opposite to where people were told to wait.

The phrase “fucking shambles” comes to mind.

On the plus side, a sea fog had rolled in, and we drove through it as we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge.

After Muir Woods, the bus stopped at Sausalito so … Well, so that people could wander around and spend money, I guess.
In hindsight, I should have taken the option of taking the ferry back to San Francisco through the fog, but I took a tad too long to investigate the option, and missed the boat, as it were.

So I took a picture of this elephant instead.

Back in San Francisco, the fog had crept closer to shore, which made for some fun photographs, such as this one, taken from inside an Applebee’s.

And these, taken on the walk back to the hostel.

By later in the afternoon, it had snuck around behind us too, so the Fort Mason headland was encircled with fog.
If nothing else, it was atmospheric and kept the temperature down.

And then there’s this thing.

When I leave San Francisco, it’ll be by train, but the train doesn’t come into the city, and the cable cars don’t run out far enough, so Amtrak has some buses.
Given the consequences of missing the bus, and my own nature, I got up early one morning to see how long it’d take me to get to the bus stop in the dark, since I’d need to be there at 6:55 or so to meet the “be there a half-hour early” suggestion. Also, I wanted to make damn sure I had the right spot, as the signage only mentioned the connection to Emeryville, and the bus I wanted was going to Oakland.

Along the way, I tried taking a picture of Alcatraz in the dark.
I think we can all agree that it didn’t work well.

There were some folks with luggage at the spot, and a bus with an Amtrak sign arrived, so mission accomplished.

Photographed a few things on my way back.

My tourist thing of the day was to go and look at the Palace of Fine Arts, which is what this thing turned out to be.

Impressive entryway, with tiny humans and their puny human conveyances for scale.

Looming like a classically-designed alien landing craft, …

Yep, assuming that’s a window, not a … high relief? … those folks would be maybe 12′ tall? Possibly 15′?
Does anyone remember the old Trigan Empire comics?

In one of those hostel “yeah, why not?” moments, a group of us from Room 7 wandered down to watch the sunset.
From memory we had a Canadian, an Israeli, and a Bulgarian, plus me. I’m sure there’s a pub joke in there, but the hostel only had a cafe with an alcohol licence, and they were running a trivia night that night, so we’ll never know the punchline.

I didn’t take part in the quiz,  though I did enjoy the music the quizmaster was playing between questions.

Alcatraz was all booked up, as is to be expected, so I did a boat tour which took you out under the Golden Gate bridge, did a lap around Alcatraz, and down to the rough area of the ferry terminal. About 90 minutes, with a recorded commentary.
I think I’ve been spoiled by the live commentaries in Chicago & Seattle, and a few other places, because the recorded one just wasn’t as interesting. That said, they did have recorded comments from former inmates & guards, and mentioned the reunions which sometimes occurred.

This one’s image-heavy

I have actual content, but Wiseauthulhu here demands special placement.

The rest of the post is normal, I assure you

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yeah, these aren’t getting any better, are they?

So, the view from the hostel, or the hostel area, is still worth the walk. There’s a network of paths & steps to get down from the headland, plus some roads if you’re into that sort of thing; I wandered down a different way to how I’d come up, just to check it out, and found various former gun emplacements, many very steep stairs, and a sign telling you not to use them at night. With no explanation as to why.

• strange lights and disappearances?
• muggers?
• homeless folks who need their beauty sleep?
• chupathingy?

As a start to tourism, I headed for a pier with various historic looking boats, on the grounds that it’s probably a tourist attraction.

Turned out to be Hyde Street Pier, part of the Historic Maritime Area, and as luck would have it they were having a free day, so I wandered around the steel-hulled sailing ship Balclutha & the sidewheeler Eureka.

Balclutha had been through a few trade incarnations over it’s life, so they had the historical interpretation stuff in the upper hold divided into sections for those trades. They also had the Captain’s cabin rigged as it would have been in port, with all the nice furniture and delicate lamps brought out of storage.

Apparently the papers were signed after said Captain’s wife, who’d been in on the negotiation and was an active part in them, confirmed that a deckhouse was still there, as she wanted a spot above deck where she could do crafts & keep watch on the ship.

Eureka started life under a different name, and was completely rebuilt after military service because of the strain put on it. Too many heavy cargos.

It did the cross-bay trip with cars and passengers, and had a restaurant on board. And it’s a double ender, which is why they went with side wheels.

According to the plaque, the issue with the sort of engine it has is that if the piston stops at the top or bottom of the stroke, steam pressure won’t get it started again. To get around this, they’d turn the paddlewheel manually through an access hatch, using a big damn lever they kept there for the purpose, and move the piston that way, ideally before they hit the dock.

Coit Tower was the second tourist thing.
It’s … up a ways, and it was a hot day, so I took advantage of some convenient steps to take a breather & enjoy the shade and the view.

And, apparently, the Coyotes.

There’s a fair bit of view.

And the tower, which I’m told only coincidentally resembles a fire hose nozzle.
On a memorial to a woman who was famous for how much she loved firefighting & fire companies.
Riiiiight.

In the car park, Columbus stares at Alcatraz.

There’s an elevator to go up the tower, but they warned me at the hostel about the giant queue.
Said queue didn’t look too bad, but then, after a few minutes, I discovered that this was only the outside portion; The queue inside the building would be another 45 minutes or so.

I noped out at that point.

Every time I see this place, I misread the sign as saying ‘Chunder’.

The hostel I’m staying at is in Fort Mason, so it’s all historic.
Also uphill.

I remember the hill from cycling around SF in 2012; It’s the one where I had to stop because I couldn’t stay upright due to crowd-induced slowness, and got an aggrieved cry of “Don’t Stop!” from the cyclist behind me.
Don’t know what they were complaining about, they only had to push a regular bike. I was pushing an e-bike, so it was heavier.

I don’t remember the domed thing from last time, though it may have been blocked by people or outraged cyclists.
Looks bloody huge.

I got to the hostel wildly too early, but they let me store my bag so that I could go for a wander.
For those who’re curious, here’s a link to the HI San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf.

Lke I said, it’s a bit historical-looking.

And it’s at the top of a hill, at pretty much the end of the headland, so the view is good.

This part of the view is where it all went wrong, …

… because if we zoom in on that banner, …

… we’ll see this.

Only bought two books, and they gave me a $1 off voucher on my way in, so total spend was $3.

Outside there’s this.
I’m assuming it was a case of an oncoming storm,  high tide, and no better option than to beach her in the retaining wall.

I’m interpreting this as;

In the event of a Tsunami, everyone has to get out of my way.