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Day 5 (February 19, 2018): Canada-bound!

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We loved Le Meridien San Francisco.  It was quiet, convenient, had a great view, and the bed was very comfy.  Too comfy, in fact:  when the alarm went at 4:30AM, it seemed almost cruel punishment.  But such is life.  Being President’s Day, the traffic to the airport was light when we departed at 545AM:  it took us only 18 minutes to cover the 14 miles from our downtown hotel to the airport. Check-in and security were a breeze, and we were on board our Air Canada A-320 to Montreal by 7:15AM.  We upgraded to the “Preferred” section to get some additional legroom for the six-hour flight, which was nice, as there were only 8 of us in the 24-seat Preferred section, making for a quiet, spacious ride.  Even the breakfast was top-notch!  Our Montreal-Halifax flight was on time, getting us in just before 9PM. For a city that was destroyed in the 1907 earthquake and resulting fire, and severely damaged again in the 1989 quake, there is a vibra...
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Day 4 (February 18, 2018): An alternative sort of day

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Weekends evaporate, it’s as simple as that.  And long-anticipated vacation weekend getaways evaporate even faster -- like morning dew on a hot sidewalk.  And so, our last full day in San Francisco came and went.  But it was great fun!  In a city brimming with places to eat, we enjoyed Mel’s Diner so much that we left the hotel at 8:30AM and headed there again.  The waitress even recognized us as regulars amid the weekend throngs of bacon ‘n egg seekers. With Mel’s breakfast #3 under our belts, we headed out in the sunny-but-cool (12C) morning to start exploring, first stopping at City Hall, where a bustling Sunday morning market was underway.  City Hall, as you can see in the pics below, is very impressive – more impressive than a lot of national parliament buildings we have seen in our travels.  Rows of ‘pollarded’ trees line the grounds in front of City Hall (thanks, Juliet Whalen, for explaining what pollarding is!).  As we stood a...
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Day 3 (February 17, 2018): Getting out of Dodge

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After tromping all over the city yesterday, we had planned for Saturday to be a "get out of Dodge" day.  What we hadn't factored into the equation is that this is the Presidents' Day Weekend here in the US of A.  So everyone else was getting out of Dodge, too!  And to boot, they had all decided to do exactly the same trip as us.  I mean, really! We left the hotel at 8AM and headed back to Mel's Diner for another 1950s-style breakfast.  Then it was a short walk to find our car rental location.  The staff was super friendly and fast and as we were about to pull away, he asked where we were headed.  When I told him Muir Woods, he said, "They just implemented a parking reservation system, so if you don't have a rez, you won't get near the place."  We immediately went online to get a parking rez -- imagine needing a parking rez to visit a National Park?! - and the earliest available was late afternoon.  We simply flipped around our trip to wine ...
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