San Francisco (2) - Tour de Bay Area and Cable Car Fun

To test how much our spin gym class has helped our fitness we rented a couple of bikes for the whole of Monday. Well, I don't think I have changed gears on a bike so much before. Got up quite early (still have not got used to the hours yet) had our complimentary fruit, bagels and coffee and went to bike rental center. Got two bikes and followed a route which would take us along the bay area and up across the Golden Gate Bridge. Started off fine, then we stumbled across hill one; a short but very steep climb. A nice warm up and we were rewarded with a long down hill path that took past the Marina and some meadows. We then came to the big climb; the climb from the base of the bridge to the toll booths of the bridge. Absolutely brutal, at one point I thought I would start to roll back down. But I did it, I made to the bridge. Had to wait for Sam, but she got there in the end. We rode over the bridge and saw porpoises swimming under the bridge. After the success of the crossing we thought we raise the game and head to the Golden Gate Park (Note: This is not near Golden Gate Bridge as many would think). We then rode along some lovely ocean roads and had a lot of space to pedal like mad. After another hour we became quite desperate for food so we made some changes to our route and started down some residential roads. I was flying over hills like Steve McQueen in Bullit. We finally found a hot dog stand where the vendor was slightly disturbed by Sam's "You are a sight for sore eyes" comment. After reloading we took loads of back roads and main roads to the rental center. Once we got back to the hostel, we were given free food and attempted to have a social night; we stayed up to 11pm (very late for me).

Today we finished off some other tourist things. We walked up to Coit Tower which over looks the whole city and Bay Area; it was one hell of a walk. That got the heart pumping. Then made our way to Fishermans Wharf, had some lunch and then got a cable car to the Westfield shopping center! As you can tell by the effort in this post; I am pretty tired. Got a big night ahead of us tonight, we are representing Great Britain in the hostels beer-olympics! Should be good!

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