San Francisco Day 2

Easy start to day a relaxing Breakfast in the cafe watching a man from the parks service cut a grassed area outside the hostel with the most inappropriate mower ever. He has to change the grass box after doing just over 1 length of the grass each time and he is desperately trying to get straight lines when the ground isn't flat. To cap it all he has bright blue fluffy earmuffs and a white paper dust mask on (to go with the wellies and overalls) I was quite impressed he had left his hi-viz jacket and hard hat on the van; He'd never get a job at Middlewood!
Back out into the big city and I walked down through the park towards Fisherman's Wharf which is at Pier 39 (the piers are odd numbered at this end of The Embarcadero and number downwards to the Ferry Buildings where they start to number evenly away from it)
The strip along here is full of the usual restaurants and tack shops but hidden amongst them was the Maritime Museum – a pier with a load of boats tied up to it, you had to pay to go onto the boats but it was free to walk up and down and look at them. The pier they are on actually used to be the 'southern' end of the ferry which ran across the bay to connect Route 101 to the north before the Golden Gate Bridge was built and there is a ship here which contains old cars parked on it as a tribute to that era. Somehow putting priceless cars on an old boat, in a bay, subject to bad storms, seems a bit daft to me but they must know better. Back on 'dry land' I came across a 'Musee Mecanique' – their spelling not mine! It was a museum of amusement arcade games and entertainments the majority of which were still working (as log as you introduced a 25cent coin! They ranged from the flip card type 'zoe-o-scopes' from the Edwardian and Victorian era to Bally Pinballs and Video games, similar to the ones I saw in Santa Cruz the other day.
I walked down the front to Pier 39, the home of the Sea-lions, yes they were here, though not many, the pier itself if is a gourdy money making machine and I went back out onto the main drag to find a tram. The trams which run along this stretch are proper trams (as against the 'cable cars' which run up and down the hills pulled by cables under the road.) The trams are also all historical trams and have been brought in from all over the world, each one is from a different country or state and each is painted in the original colours. There is even a Blackpool Tram here, but I didn't see it. I rode the tram line down to Union Square and then took the Cable Car up to The Cable Car museum Near the top of Nob Hill. This is where the 3 lines of the Cable Cars are run from and it houses the central power house and winding gear for the cables which pull the cars along. The 'museum' is simply a mezzanine floor over the winding shed and an underground viewing area of the underground cable entry point but it explains well enough how the system works and I found it fascinating. Back out on to the street and I walked up two bloks to get on the California line cable car and rtook it back down to the Embarcadero where I had a coffee then took the tram back up to the end of the Embarcadero to walk back to the Hostel. On the way I did come across a bar with 68 beers on tap and it was Happy Hour.... Ok so I only had one this time – Ambers Porter and it was very good, not ice cold and full of flavour and body. I didn't stay for more as a, It was a cash only bar and I was out of cash (for today) and b, they actually counted keg Boddingtons as on of the 68!