This morning was another foggy morning. Actually, that’s an understatement; it was more of a heavy mist when we went down to the coffee spot by the beach.

The fog and moisture ruled out the hike Mike and Brian wanted to do, so we decided to see Fisherman’s Pier in San Francisco.

The pier reminded me very much of Chatham or Provincetown, in that there is a lot of retail aimed at the tourist. There’s a wax museum, which we didn’t have time to see, and a ton of restaurants.

The pier faces to the North into San Francisco Bay; you can look to the North to Alcatraz, or to the East to the Oakland Bay Bridge. The road bordering the Pier has a historic streetcar line running PCC cars in historic livery. On one of the wharves, sea lions haul out of the water and sun themselves. Pelican are overhead and perched on the docks, and there’s a World War II submarine, the USS Pampanito, there.

The fog burned off briefly while we were there; by the time we’d had lunch, the sky had cleared, leaving a line of low clouds on the horizon.

We didn’t have much time to explore any of the shops or museums because we had reservations to go on a Segway tour of Golden Gate Park at two. Riding the Segway was cool, although I did have a spill once when I had trouble steering it, and by the time we were done, my feet were killing me. You’re basically just standing on it, not moving your feet, and I brought the wrong pair of sneakers out with me, so they have very little resilience left.

Golden Gate park itself is very cool — lots of different kinds of botanical displays, a Ferris wheel, a band stand, and an art museum. It’s also very very large. You could easily spend days here, exploring. As it was we got an overview of the whole thing. We weren’t able to take pictures during the tour, so I had to content myself with some pictures when the other guys first tried it out, and a picture at one of our brief stops, and an overview picture when we were done.

After we were done, we headed for the Beach Chalet, a restaurant across from the beach on the western side of San Francisco. The service was great, and we had great view of sunset.