Vac Day V - Drive to San Francisco 2 of 2

Wednesday - September 1st, 2010
San Simeon - Gorda - Big Sur - Carmel - Santa Cruz - San Jose - San Francisco
We checked out around 10AM after having a light breakfast. The motel was very close to the beach, less than a mile away, I'd say. We drove across the street and took some pictures -- this would be one of the many stops we made to capture the magnificence of the Pacific Ocean.

Oh, not to forget the mountain and the herds along the way as well

Since the only attraction in San Simeon is the Hearst Castle, that's exactly where we headed to:

BUT... tour costs money, almost $30/person I think, wasn't feasible for all five of us to go into the castle and we didn't have the time anyway. So, we just hang out at the Visitor's Center and try to take in as much information as we can about the castle.

It definitely is a huge property, it's a Castle for goodness' sake. It takes about 30 mins for the tour bus to get you up there from the Visitor's Center. This place surely is a cash generator.

Notice the fascination with seagulls hehe

The great thing about driving up to San Francisco via Highway 1 is the coastal views and we snapped aplenty of them.

A little after San Simeon, we stopped by at Gordo, I've heard about gas station hiking up their prices up to almost $5/gallon for premium gas just because they're the only gas stations available for miles. This went on up until Big Sur which we stopped for a quick snack, but once we reached Carmel, the rates went back to normal. We stopped at Carmel for about an hour, walked around, did some shopping and had a late light lunch.

Reached Santa Cruz pretty late possibly after 5PM. We walked around the boardwalk, took some pictures and even managed to ride on one of the roller coasters, The Giant Dipper sans Mom and Sien Ee, of course hehe. Papa really enjoyed the roller coaster rides to my surprise :)

After an hour or so at the boardwalk, which the sun had just start setting. We decided to stop at San Jose since it's on the way to SF for dinner. About less than an hour later, we found ourselves at this China Wok Chinese restaurant in Downtown San Jose. We were starving and the only customers there, but the food was good, so maybe it was just late and perhaps it was a weekday. After dinner, we strolled outside really quick and bumped into a bunch of night cyclists with loud music accompanied by the smell of marijuana and there were patrol cars riding alongside with them. Gutsy.

After a little less than hour's drive, almost reaching our final destination, San Francisco, well not exactly, the inn we're staying is in Daly City, about 20 mins away, we received a call from Florence's group saying that their flight has delayed and that they could not get their GPS to work. Since we were not too far away from the airport, we told them we could go to the airport and have them follow us back to the inn. Well, when we reached the airport, we received another call from them saying that they were able to get the GPS to work, so we just made our way to the inn as well. When we finally reached, it was a little after 11PM. We got our keys and unload all our stuff into our room ready (or not) of what's in store for us the next day.