Cycling over the Golden Gate Bridge was always a bucket list thing for me to do once we got to San Francisco. Well, that and visiting Alcatraz and eating clam chowder on Fisherman’s Wharf of course!
We’d almost made it to San Francisco a couple of times while we’d been in the USA previously – but somehow it hadn’t happened until, on our way over from Asia to the USA this time around, we managed to book a cheap flight with Air China from Seoul via Beijing to San Francisco and take a three-day pit stop in San Francisco on our way down to the Caribbean. Interestingly, during those flights, we experienced time travel as we crossed the International Date Line and arrived in San Francisco half an hour before we actually left Seoul in South Korea. How crazy is that? Of course, in real time, we had been travelling so long that we were exhausted and jet-lagged. But we didn’t let that stop us. These days we just push through with jet lag and I don’t stress about it.
We booked a room at the Holiday Inn Express in the Fisherman’s Wharf area in downtown San Francisco and we stayed completely FREE using our points collected on our IHG Loyalty Card.
TOP Travel Tip: Collect those hotel and flight loyalty points for upgrades and free stays/flights.
We hired our bikes from a company called Blazing Saddles. They have various outlets and we found them to have friendly, knowledgeable staff and the perfect bikes for us. They adjusted the seat, gave us some good information, and fitted us with bike helmets too. We’d mentioned that we’d booked online and we got a 20% discount. I have no hesitation in recommending them.
There is a designated cycling and walking lane on the bridge and various routes to follow once you have crossed over it. One of them is to ride over to Sausalito & Tiburon, have lunch, and then do a leisurely return via ferry with your bike. Blazing saddles also sell you the return ferry ticket. This sounded great but we were conscious of it taking too much time as we had also bought tickets online to visit Alcatraz Island and Prison later the same day. So we biked along the beautiful waterfront area, taking in the views of the bay and the bridge and of Alcatraz Island. Then once over the bridge we turned right around and did it again in reverse. We took our time. It was a glorious day and we were lucky because the bridge wasn’t at all busy as you can see from our photos. Nor was it too windy, as I’ve heard it can get pretty gusty up there on occasions.
https://youtu.be/Zmy2GDQ_3sk
Biking over such an iconic and probably the most famous bridge in America was a fabulous pinch-me kind of bucket-list experience for me and I loved every minute of it!
Have you biked the Golden Gate Bridge or do you plan to do it?
What bridge do you want to cross over in your lifetime?
Leave me a comment – I’d love to hear from you!
