After rousing from our Napa slumber, and a very enjoyable day in the Valley, we covered the remaining kilometres to San Francisco, and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to arrive at Fishermans Wharf at about 7pm. We booked into a motel a few blocks from the Wharf, and would you believe it, barely an hour later an earthquake struck!!! 6.8 on the Richter Scale. We knew that San Francisco was on seismically unstable ground, but we had no idea how often the city experienced temors like this. The whole building shook vigorously, and fittings in the room were rattling for about 15 seconds. We put our shoes back on in case we might have to leave in a hurry, but everything was soon still again, so we carried on with our coffees and milky way bars and turned on the TV to see if the quake was being reported. It sure was; one station devoted the next few hours to the event. Apparently this was the strongest tremor in 20 years. How lucky were we? We're in SF barely an hour and we get to experience one of their quakes.This morning we dropped off the Pontiac we had hired in early October in Los Angeles and that had carried us safely 7,000 km across California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah. Then we walked to Fishermans Wharf for lunch, trying the clam chowder and Dungeness crab the place is famous for, then uphill and downhill to Chinatown and Nob Hill. San Francisco is very hilly, with street grades amongst the steepest in the world. But it is a very attractive place with balmy air and a pleasant maratime atmosphere that has attracted people (and sea lions) from across the world to come and live here. Walking around it's not hard to see why.
