Author: Leïla

Despite a rainy morning, we decided to follow our program, meticulously organised by Vincent; driving south under heavy rain to Monterey where we made our first stop under a beautiful sun!
Monterey Bay is a protected marine area; otters, seals, turtles and many other species live in it also provides a habitat for a kelt forest. We spent some time canoeing on this bay, which is the best way to see all this wildlife.
Our second stop was the Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of the biggest and most well-known in the world. It was actually built inside an old cannery, closed partly because of overfishing in this area.
Then it was already time to go home, but surely not without driving alongside the ocean! Who knows, maybe we’d see a whale or two as it’s the season of their migratory, which path follows exactly that coast.
Sad I only saw a jet of water, we felt obliged to stop at Half Moon Bay to buy fresh-fished salmon…

Second day in SF! A very varied city, that would take months to discover even partly.
Away from the bay, I walked through South of Market, the Financial District, China Town, Nob Hill, Mid Market (Civic Center) and South Market again.

Although San Francisco is also famous for its fog, Thursday being a rainy day I stayed in Palo Alto. But there were still a lot of great things to discover! 2016 having been an exceptionally wet year after 5 years of severe drought, everything is impressively green.

We started with a walk in the neighbourhood, which is very quiet considering the emplacement of it (10min from the train station and 10min from the Stanford campus). Then a little walk in The Dish, an Environmental Restoration, Habitat Conservation and Recreation area belonging to Stanford University.

If you get the chance to take a walk on the Stanford campus – I can only recommend it to you (and it’s even better by bike)! Beautiful gardens, buildings and delicious french crêpes.

And if you’re tired of the urban life, 15min by car and you’re in the foothills park, enjoying nature and wildlife.

The SF Bay Trail is a 500-mile trail for walkers and cyclists that runs around the SF Bay. Part of it goes from he AT&T Park to the Golden Gate Bridge, permitting to see a great deal of the city without leaving the shore. That was my first day’s plan in SF. I left from the Caltrain station and followed the coast up to Fort Mason passing along the piers and Ghirardelli Square (which used the be the headquarters of the “famous” chocolate factory) and then came back through some of the famous steep streets and Telegraph Hill.