The next morning I was awoken by the sounds of cable cars and buses zipping past the hotel in downtown San Francisco. We headed out, past the Travelodge Bear Bites pastries, in search of a diner of some sort and tickets for the public transit. It was very exciting to me that we would not be using our car for the next 24 hours in this amazing city.
After Jon was berated by the cashier at the public transit office for talking too fast, I figured I would like this city. I was a bit worried that my flip flops weren’t going to hold up in the 50 degree temperature, though. Then, we were off to explore. First order of business was to find an independent little diner. However, hypoglycemia got the best of me and I was forced to go into a tourist trap called Lori’s. I should have known that I would not be impressed because Lori was ridiculously ugly in comparison to Ruby. On top of this, the menu outside displayed $11 omelets furthering the idea that it was going to be a bad experience. I should have known. After heeding the advice in the check presenter asking tourists to tip 15%, which is low in comparison to what we normally tip, we jumped on the trolley to Fisherman’s Wharf.
The next few hours were spent walking around taking excessive amounts of pictures of the views around the city. It’s as if every time you look the view is better than the one before. It’s amazingly easy to navigate around the city either through walking or on the transit, except that it’s virtually impossible to talk on the phone and walk up one of the streets. I tried talking with the idea that my time spent at the gym would prove beneficial, but then had to resort to texting. That didn’t work either. I blame the altitude.
After seeing the city one more time from a few hundred feet atop Coit Tower and walking up the supposed “crookedest street” we planned a trip on the transit out to the Golden Gate Park. While walking toward the cable cars, we headed through the Italian area of North Beach where we encountered Shana, the Greenpeace activist. As Jon entertained her conversation for the next few minutes, I stood there virtually silent, looking around the neighborhood. At one point in time she asked us a rhetorical question similar to “Now, doesn’t that make you want to do something about the problem?” I stood silent. After Jon responded, she turned to me and said, “What about you silent guy?” I’m just not much of a liberal. In all honesty, though, she was using Kimberly Clark as an example of one of the companies they were protesting. I have difficulty getting behind activism when they use a paper manufacture. Sorry. Talk to me about suburban sprawl.
Our trip on the transit took us through some shady areas, that weren’t really all that shady in reality. As Jon alluded to, our theory is that areas populated by lower income Asians feel much safer than the other ghettos that we’ve encountered. It’s just a much more passive aggressive culture….
We arrived at the park and proceeded to walk around, but realized that 3 miles is actually quite a long distance to walk and all we really wanted to see were the buffalo. So, it was back through the ghetto and on to the cable car for a 3 mile trip down to the buffalo paddock. I’m not sure if it was more amazing to me that I saw buffalo or that the first time I saw buffalo was in the middle of a city. At that point, I wondered if the barbed wire was to keep the buffalo in or to keep drunken teenagers out.
On the way back to central downtown we stopped in at Haight St. where supposedly Hendrix got his start. It looked pretty much unchanged with peace signs adorning the sides of buildings and eclectic bars and restaurants crowded with punk rockers. They were punk rockers at least by the way they dressed, but I really don’t know. They could actually like country music. Then, it was a trolley ride back to Fisherman’s Wharf for some seafood.
After devouring our clam chowder and sourdough rolls, we asked the waitress where a nice bar was for some inexpensive drinks. I felt a little odd asking her thinking that she would be a bit biased toward us spending $7 on a beer at her restaurant, but she told us about Vesuvio’s, which was also on our itinerary from Kasey. We thought this was a pretty decent sign that the bar was going to be good. We grabbed another trolley ride down to North Beach and searched for Vesuvio’s, not knowing what to expect.
Once stepping in to the place and sitting at the bar, I felt at home. Apparently the place was a bit of a tourist destination and the bartender responded in exactly that way. Most people just grab a drink in the spot that Kerouac frequented and then head on their way to another tourist area. I really just wanted a chill bar with good beer. In all honesty, I knew very little about him and would have gone there even if it was Bob Barker’s favorite spot. So when he annoyingly said there was a $10 minimum on credit cards, I responded with “Ha! Don’t worry about that, we’ll spend more than that.” After that, he warmed up a little and even stood there attempting to start a conversation with Jon, but was quickly shot down. It’s almost like when you wait too long to kiss a girl; you lose your chance.
After hitting a nice stride with intoxication, we walked toward the cable car heading back to the hotel. The trip home was filled with antics from Reggie, the passive aggressive Asian driver, a foreign Japanese visitor called Grasshopper, and a coked out kid. All great notes to end on in San Fran.
Upon waking to the sounds of the screeching cable cars again, I headed downstairs to check us out of the hotel. Immediately in front of me in line was a short Caucasian woman, obviously very frustrated with something. As soon as I stopped thinking about where to mail my postcards, I started listening to the conversation. In an angry tone she spoke with the hotel clerk about demanding a refund for the shuttle to the airport as it wasn’t going to be needed anymore. She kept going on about how she called Expedia, whom she booked the hotel through, and got them to relocate her. The man at the front desk tried to explain to her in a calm tone about the fact that there was no refund on the ticket, but he would call the company since he had no control over offering a refund. In all of her hotheadedness, she failed to grasp this and kept on with her verbal onslaught. Finally, the man opened the drawer, grabbed the measly $14 and handed it to the woman. Instantly she returned to normal and went on her way. Oh the joys of working in customer service.
Then, we braved the cold, windy day of San Fran and headed out to a café that offered wireless so we could upload some blog entries for our adoring fans. Actually, it was a really nice day and we needed to get something to eat anyway. Jon piled in his self-declared best Panini and we then headed off to Seattle. Yet, somehow, we managed to miss the turn for the iconic Golden Gate Bridge… A few U-turns later and we were heading north.
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