Along with Kelly, my college roommate, I trekked out to San Francisco recently. I'm going to try my best to stick to the fun details, but do not be surprised to read numerous mentions of my love for this great city.
We stayed with my friend Bill at his Russian Hill apartment. From outside you could look down to the water and had a perfect view of Alcatraz. Sadly, we didn’t buy our tickets quick enough and all of the Alcatraz tours were sold out. This was a huge disappointment for me! But to cope, the three of us walked down to a neighborhood video store that seemed to resemble the record store from High Fidelity, and rented The Rock from their San Francisco video section.
We took in as much of the city as we could. Our goal was to wake up early each morning to have maximum sightseeing time. We never left the house before 10:45 a.m. Needless to say we left without exploring the entire city – a perfect reason to go back soon. Very soon.
Neither Kelly nor I prepared for all the walking we did. The second day on our trip ended with treating ourselves to foot massages near Fisherman’s Wharf. The only problem was that we had to walk back to Bill’s apartment. His apartment was on the corner of a streetcar stop, and to our relief, we walked a few blocks and hopped on a streetcar to get back.
We picked the wrong day on our trip to visit the Golden Gate Bridge. It was an amazing site nonetheless, but there was lots of fog in this area and it was freezing! We walked almost half way across and decided to turn back because it was so cold. It was on our walk back that two guys on a tandem bicycle ran into Kelly.
And I think this is a perfect time to talk about the weather. I was shocked at how cold San Francisco is in August. I had no idea! Apparently, it all depends on where you are in the city; obviously the closer to the water you are, the colder it is. Maybe it was just shocking to go from 110 degrees in Kansas City to 50 degrees a couple days later. Doesn’t matter, I love snow so this weather had no negative effect on me.
We mastered the MUNI bus system and made our way over to the neighborhood I yearned to live in when I was a child – the Painted Ladies, or to every 90s kid, the Full House street. Not surprisingly, it’s nothing like I imagined for the past 20 years; it’s a block with five or six houses and that’s it. I pictured this park in the middle of a neighborhood and each side of the park had houses that looked like this famous row of homes. This was not the case.
And there were lots more excursions and fun happenings that occurred. We got a little lost trying to find a donut shop one morning, we went to Ghirardelli Square and even had a cab driver who reigned from KC. We ate lots of delicious food, and ate at a restaurant called the Stinking Rose where Bill’s side dish was simply three roasted garlic bulbs. Oh, and I never saw Bush Man. We rode the streetcars a million times, visited Chinatown, climbed Lombard Street and more that I’m forgetting to mention.
(That's Bill, serenading us over a garlic-infused dinner)
I’m writing too in depth about our trip and this is becoming a very long post! But it’s because I had a fantastic time, this is by far one of the best cities I have ever visited. We had multiple people stop us and talk to us, give us suggestions on how to visit their city, offer us their unused subway passes and point us in the right direction. The people were friendly, I loved that the city wasn’t populated with chain stores, the weather wasn’t humid and I LOVED that we didn’t have to rent a car. I will be moving to this city soon; I absolutely loved it. You can click here to see the rest of my photos from the trip.
Stay tuned for the second chapter of this story (seriously, this isn’t the end of my trip).
No comments:
Post a Comment