The Transit Traveller: Day 8: San Francisco to Salinas

In the morning, we packed up and checked out of our room early. I had changed the schedule for today to give us a few more hours in San Francisco. We missed the breakfast at the hotel, but we were able to get some oatmeal for a good breakfast.

While we were eating in the 'jungle', a piece of ice fell from one of the floors above, and shattered on our table! We left quickly, and asked the front desk when the next shuttle to the airport was. There was one right outside of the door, so we ran and caught that one. We BARTed into the city, and took the Muni N Line to the same area as last night, except we ate at Patxi's Chicago Pizza this time. Because we wanted to get to the Caltrain Station early, we took our pizza to go, and hopped back on the Muni Metro. We got off at 4th and King, the last stop, and walked into the station. It was very open and bright, with walls made of glass and no doors. The wait was about 40 minutes, and we sat on a bench and ate.

A while later, a line formed next to the door to our train and they opened the doors. The Caltrain was like no other commuter rail I have ever seen. The inside was separated into only 2 levels, and the top level had a wide gap in the middle! There was a very thin staircase connecting the top and the bottom. The train stopped every 5 minutes at stations, and then I understood why they have separate "Baby Bullet" trains; the local ones were so slow.

After a few hours of sleep, the train reached San Jose. We had to go through an underground walkway to get to the main station, which was very small but pretty. Immediately we walked out of the waiting area and into the transit center. I saw the Highway 17 Express bus, the one we originally would have used to get to Santa Cruz and on to Salinas. The bus stop was on the other side of the station, with a small sign saying 55 San Jose Express with a picture of some palm trees as the background. Because there was no time for dinner today, we walked to the (relatively) nearby Chipotle for an early dinner burrito. It was very hot in San Jose, but thankfully there were many trees near the sidewalks. Once we got back, we met a lady and her teenage son who came from Salinas. She said that, every night, a gang goes around Salinas with guns, and I got scared by that. Luckily, our hotel was not in the gang's area.

The bus arrived, and it was a very shiny Greyhound style bus with a large MST sign on it. Every so often, an annoying cheerful masculine voice coming from the inside of the bus said something like "This is line 55. Monnerey! Service to" and then got a lot quieter and said the stops along the way to "Monnerey!". When we got on, the farebox said (a female voice with an annoyed tone) "Please pay amount shown.". We paid our fares, and asked the driver for day passes. The driver said that we should have asked him before paying, but gave us the passes anyways. The seats were very big, squishy, and dark blue. When the bus buzzed to life, I was surprised at how noisy the bus was, because the equivalent buses in Seattle are much quieter. The bus took about an hour and a half to reach Prunedale Park and Ride, a parking lot with a bus shelter in the middle of nowhere. Because I changed the schedule, we had to wait for half an hour for the next bus, the last one of the day. 8:04 PM. Appa chatted with the woman and teenager, and I read a book on my Nook.

After waiting for what seemed like eternity in the cold, bare park and ride, the small Gillig bus displaying ROUTE 29 TO SALINAS was welcome. The bus was warm, and had brightly colored seats with an interesting pattern in it. The ride was about 15 minutes to the Salinas Transit Center, and once we got there, we were wondering how to get to our hotel. Luckily, there was a line of taxis right across the road, and we took one (littered with cigarette boxes and cigarettes) to the H.I.Express. The new hotel was very clean and our room was modern and spacious. At the end of a long day, I went to sleep.

Here are some photos:
The faults of Embassy Suites