San Francisco: Ferry building and Pier 39

One of the very touristy things that I absolutely had to do in San Francisco was to go visit the sea lions at Pier 39. I do not even know how long I had been waiting to visit the famous pinnipeds. I love the fact that they live in the city, that they are part of it. While planning our trip, I read Mighty girl's guide to San Francisco so we followed her advice and started the day at the Ferry building with coffee from Blue Bottle* (the boy had lemonade there, which was also pretty good). The Ferry building is quite a special place, as it is one of the historic landmarks of San Francisco:

"...designed in the Beaux Arts style in 1892, the ferry building was completed in 1898. At its opening, it was the largest project undertaken in the city up to that time. Brown designed the clock tower after the 12th-century Giralda bell tower in Seville, Spain, and the entire length of the building on both frontages is based on an arched arcade."

It used to be that San Francisco could only be entered by ferry, and thus this was the main gateway to the city. Nowadays it is full of gourmet-style little food shops (one of whose slogan is: "tasty salted pig parts") and it hosts the farmer's market (on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday). It reminded me of Covent garden, one of my favorite spots in London.

From the Ferry building we walked along the water to Pier 39 where the sea lions are. The pier has a Disneyland charm to it, with touristy and kitsch little shops and old-school signs, but if you skip through that you'll get to the lazy animals, just chilling there and enjoying the sun. There are some pretty cool whale murals there too. And I found the bike of my dreams.

*I love that Blue Bottle café was named after  Central Europe’s first coffee house to bring coffee from Turkey, The blue bottle.

The amazing story of Mary Ann Patten, who took control of the ship while nursing her husband and being  pregnant!