San Francisco city sights

A trip on the local 'Hop on, Hop off' tour bus services is a must...it's the perfect way to get your initial bearings in most cities. San Francisco is no different.

The Big Bus Tour collected us from the cruise ship wharf, just up from the renowned tourist hotspot Pier 39 and showed us most of the city sights in just a couple of hours. We did the full round trip including a return crossing on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Unfortunately the weather changed and the rain started shortly before arriving at the bridge so it became impossible to film or photograph along the way...the wind blew a gale and all passengers on the top deck retreated downstairs for shelter.

Apart from this slight misfortune, the remaining trip was well worth the money.

The video in this post shows some of the city scenes captured from the tour bus as well as Pier 39 and its surrounds, just a short walk from our berthed cruise ship, Celebrity Century.

The next video, to be posted in the near future will highlight our next cruise stop, Monterey.

Cruising into San Francisco

Cruising into San Francisco on a large ship is an interesting experience.

We entered the Bay on the popular Celebrity Century during a Coastal Pacific eight night cruise on the morning of Monday, March 24, 2014 for an overnight berth, just up the street from Pier 29.

It didn't take long after first sighting before we were gliding underneath that majestic ochre red structure, the Golden Gate Bridge.

Of course, the top deck was the place to be, enabling a close-up view of the traffic traversing the bridge and obtaining a good idea of the huge size of its spans.

Standing right below the funnels with my video camera, it appeared to be merely a few metres of clearance for our ship. The video gives a good impression of this experience.

San Francisco is one of the most spectacular harbour cities to view from a ship.

The Century will relinquish its service as part of the Celebrity fleet after a final season in Australia during 2015. It's been sold to an associated smaller cruise line for its new 'career'.

VIDEO: Day tripping in San Francisco

I filmed this video about six years ago whilst on a visit to various places in California. It starts with a ride on the renowned cable trolley from downtown San Francisco to the waterfront where we boarded a cruise boat to glide us past Alcatraz and underneath the majestic Golden Gate bridge. Right at the end of the movie we see a skilled artist in Chinatown at work.