We rode BART as far as Powell Street, wandered up to Chinatown, and decided to eat lunch in the venerable Empress of China. We decided on a prix-fixe multi-course lunch and it was nicely served one course at a time allowing us to linger for an hour and a half in their sixth-floor dining room and enjoy the view of the Coit Tower.
After lunch, we decided to walk over to Embarcadero and the waterfront, stopping to watch the SFFD back their ladder truck into the station - if only we'd had a grandson along.
What a fantastic day. After enjoying the view of the Oakland Bay Bridge, we walked all the way to Fisherman's wharf.
The only thing that kept it from being a perfect day was the number of tourists - the swarms of tourists - particularly as we neared Fisherman's Wharf.
We decided to enjoy a ride back to Powell Street on the only U.S. National Historic Landmark that moves, a great trivia question by the way.
We waited patiently for upwards of 40 minutes, but enjoyed the ride, hopped back on BART for the 30-minute ride to SFO (about 40 with the wait for a train) and whizzed through security with a metal detector, meaning we didn't have to choose between X-rays and groping searches.
It's going to be a late flight to LAS but it's been an enjoyable and profitable day, and the $400 we each received in UA travel certs for volunteering make the delay worth it. In fact, it was fun.