~ San Francisco ~

The main idea behind a trip to San Francisco, such as the one that I just experienced, is that it's very nice if you like that whole "view" thing. It seemed that everywhere that I went, some amazing view was present. I managed to snap quite a number of inadequate photos which in no way captured how fantastic the city really was.

~ Day 1 ~

The trip commenced (yes, I believe commenced is not too-retarded of a word for "to begin") on Thursday last. It was in the morning and Josh and I were trying to acquire mochas and an overpriced food item to take to the airport. This was an excellent plan, except for that it failed to take into account that all of downtown seemed to have lost power, a necessary ingredient in espresso-making. Thoroughly disgusted and articulating something about "Good thing we're leaving this mocha-not-making city!", Josh and I procured food items from McDonald's at the airport and some variety of airport coffee. Then we flew to San Francisco in such a manner that our arms did not become weary and we expertly navigated a variety of public transportation options until we came out on Market Street which is near to Union Square. We hauled ourselves and our sparse luggage to the youth hostel and checked into our room.

On a side note, after I had made the reservation at this hostel, the Adelaide, I read some review in which the reviewer indicated that it was located at the end of a sketchy alley and hinted that one might consider staying elsewhere during one's trip to S.F. Well, the reservation was already made and I didn't feel like changing it. Sure enough, as Josh and I were walking down Taylor Street looking for the small alley we would call home (me, having told Josh of the hotel review), we turned to walk down the alley and were struck by its sketchynitude. All of this proved to be unfounded, as the hostel was very nice. As an experienced hosteller, this was one of my better experiences by far. I would recommend it to a friend or close personal acquaintance.

Incidentally, we opted to rent a private room at the hostel rather than go dorm-style. This proved to be a wise decision which I could elaborate in detail for any interested persons.

After oogling our new digs, we wandered down to Union Square where there was some art exhibit thing happening with belly dancers. I have no understanding of what was going on, but it was a quality people-watching experience. We located some nutritional substance from this Greek hole-in-the-wall place on Geary St. and ate on a grassy knoll. The weather was beautiful - - the sun was out, it was warm and fantastic. We spent the duration of the afternoon wandering around. One highlight was the discovery of the Dior store and me entering it with the purpose of inspecting the $1,585 handbag that has caught my interest in several months' issues of fashion magazines. The woman in the shop told me that the bag has a waiting list and that if you can find one available it's best to get it right away because they are so hard to come by.

In the evening we went to a musical concert at the Palace of Fine Arts to see a performance of Ryan Adams. A funny thing happened on the way to the concert... The concert was set to begin at 8:00. We were keeping time with the use of our cellular telephones. Somehow, and "how" eludes me because Josh and I are both smart cookies who understand the concept of time at least as it relates to the act of "telling time" by looking at a digital clock, we didn't realize that the time displayed on our phones would change along with the time change. Up until the time at which we were physically on the bus heading towards the concert, we were convinced that the actual time was an hour less than what was indicated on our phones. As I was looking around my surroundings I noticed that the bus had a clock which placed the time at exactly what was on my cellphone, and not an hour before. I then verbalized the words, "Is it really 7:40?" and a female near to me checked her time and answered in the affirmative. It was at this point that both Josh and myself began to experience some anxiety about arriving at the concert in a timely fashion. You see, we were kind of far away from the venue, in a city that we hardly knew, on a bus in traffic, and not only were we both interested in this concert, but the tickets cost a pretty penny. So, blah, blah, blah, we departed the bus and ran to the concert (I was wearing heels) and we made it on time and it wasn't a big deal. The concert was good. Except for that the opening "musical" act was lacking in talent and Ryan Adams has some kind of gimmick going on in which he can't concentrate on playing his music. Near to the end, it had been a long day for me and I became overwhelmed with fatigue. When we left, we had something of an adventure locating the bus that would return us from whence we came.

As we were walking from the bus stop to the hostel, I decided that it was necessary for me to consume a beer or two in order to sleep. As some side information that may or may not be interesting, I have a lot of difficulty sleeping in strange places. So we went to a klassy place called Lefty O'Doul's which was so cheesy and lame that I would not recommend it to anyone. I did, however, manage to procure two beers which facilitated my sleep. Part of why the bar was so lame was this piano-playing guy with a microphone. And how everyone in the bar was completely intoxicated and singing along to whatever the piano-playing guy was performing. At about the time when Josh and I were getting into our second beer, the guy started playing "Hotel California". It was then that Josh and I made our feelings known to each other about "Hotel California". We looked deep into the other's eyes, clasped hands, and indicated exactly how much we dislike the song. Then we embraced the moment. We sang along to "Hotel California" with all of the swaggering drunks and it was the pinnacle of our bar experience.

~ Day 2 ~

After a refreshing night sleep, I woke up at the late hour of 8:20 in the morning. Feeling as though I had slept for an eternity, I wandered to the kitchen and participated in the continental breakfast. Even though I can't say that I've ever had good luck with continental breakfasts, I developed a breakfast regimen that worked for me, which I continued for the duration of the trip. That breakfast was a toasted bagel with peanut butter. It was fantastic.

Day two primarily involved Josh and I hanging out at various places and scoping out our shopping options. We made a big deal of walking down to the South of Market (SoMa) district, which proved to be dead by day (but rumor has it, a party by night) and succeeded in having sushi. Here, prior to becoming exhausted by the area, we found a nice neighborhood with a park (South Park) where we galavanted on some playground equipment and sat down for some coffee.

As we left the South of Market area, we walked through the Civic Center area, which was mighty noteworthy. My impression of the Civic Center is cloudy, however, because at the time I was overwhelmed with needing to find a restroom (which is just lovely to hear about).

Incidentally, the first couple of days of the trip reminded me of the movie "French Kiss" when the Meg Ryan character goes to Paris and cannot wait to see the Eiffel Tour, yet every time that she is looking for it, it is hidden, but when she is not looking for it, it is in plain view. Likewise, when we got to San Francisco, we knew that the TransAmerica Pyramid was nearby, but we could never see it due to such and such a building/hill obscuring the view. At one point, however, we were walking toward South of Market when we randomly turned to look behind us and there it was (taahdaah!!!) in full view.

At some point, we had a little adventure in the Yerba Buena Gardens. I can't remember if it was day 2 or another day, but it happened. There was this awesome playground which had a rubber ground and we had our fair share of fun.

That evening, I had drinks with my friend Amee who lives in San Francisco, who I haven't seen for over four years. She apparently has an apartment two blocks away from our hostel, which was something of a coincidence. We met at this bar halfway called "The Owl Tree" which had this owl-theme.

That evening, I had some insomnia and I sat on a couch in the common area of the hostel reading with some dim lighting to the rear of my person until the wee hours of the morning. I finally got so that I was able to sleep.

~ Day 3 ~

The third day constituted something of a climax for the trip. Josh and I had coffee at the Crepe House, which was a block from the hostel. The coffee was mediocre, but the atmosphere was fantastic. The establishment had old tile floors and walls with big oval windows. We took our mochas to-go and walked to the bus stop where we took the number 30 to Fisherman's Warf to rent bicycles. After thoughtful consideration, we rented a Burley tandem bicycle in the color of my choice (army green). We rode a path along the Bay and then up and up an incline to get to the Golden Gate Bridge. From my trust and faith in Josh as a bicycle handler, I spent a good amount of time being an amateur photographer on the back of the tandem.

As is evidenced by the photos, it was foggy and overcast that morning, but by the afternoon it became sunny and warm. We rode across the Bridge, down down down and under the highway to Sausalito. We parked the tandem and did a small bit of exploring. We determined that the town was way touristy for our tastes and left after having some pizza and soda.

Then, after consultation with our touristy bike route map, we determined that we were up for an adventure to find a small redwood forest in the Muir Woods. So we rode and we rode and we rode for miles and miles and miles. Many of these miles took us up a 15% grade around a curvy mountain narrow road. Neither Josh nor myself had come prepared for such a bicycle adventure. We both wore slip-on shoes and jeans, and completely forgot to apply sunscreen (having wrongly correlated fogginess with a lack of ultra-violet rays). Up and up we went. And then we came to an intersection....and boy were we lost. Here's a photo of the view.

Luckily, a friendly automobile-driver paused on his journey to inquire whether we needed assistance (having deduced that by our confused appearance). As he pointed to our location on the map, I noted that said location was a good distance from the point at which we thought we were. Having weighed our options of whether to fight or flight, we decided that a valiant retreat was in order and to that end we descended the way which we had come. Me, I spent the duration of the descent experiencing overwhelming sheer terror as I was on the back of the tandem (with absolutely no control over the bicycle) and we were zooming down this 15% grade windy narrow mountain road with no barriers right at the edge of a steep drop-off. I had made my feelings quite clear to Josh who seemed to take it seriously when I said that I would jump off the bike and walk the whole way down if he didn't go slowly. Even still, it was a frightening experience. As we crept towards the bottom, me in absolute panic, we came upon a small redwood park.

We then rode the bicycle back to Sausalito where we got in line to board the ferry across the Bay. The ferry ride was wonderful...pretty much what you'd expect from a short ferry trip across a bay.

We got off at the Financial District where we wandered around and finally had an opportunity to get up close and personal with the Transamerica Pyramid.

Then, as we were riding around North Beach, I had a fucking cow as Josh turned the handlebars in the direction of a very steep street. Having had enough climbing on the back of the tandem bicycle (and having had enough of having no control over where I was going on the bike), I pitched a huge fit and got all cranky on his ass (quite literally, considering my positioning on the bike). Apparently there had been some miscommunication and he thought that I understood that we were going to be riding the bike up to Coit Tower. Of the next three photos, the first is the street that we rode the bicycle up, the second is the view (me, in my cow-having state said bitchily, "Yea, real nice if you like that whole "view" thing"), and the third is from me having my last huge cow/panic attack of the day as Josh decided that he was going to defy everything that I told him to do and ride the tandem down some old steps (not visible in photo clearly) down a steep San Francisco street.

Then we went and had yet another piece of pizza, this time at a place in North Beach. Josh had some pesto mushroom thing and I had a very "interesting" slice of garlic and clam pizza. We continued to toodle around the area, including a stop off at a rad fountain, and became amazed at how much our sense of direction within the city had improved.

That evening, we dressed up and went to hit the town. I treated myself to my third piece of baklava of the trip, yum. We were attempting to go to this lounge place called Azul but it was having some exclusive private party to which we were not invited. Then as we were consulting our map, we met some locals who took us to a club called Tunnel Top. I felt kind of awkward during all of the social interaction (apparently, they wanted us to sit with them and I wasn't in meeting people mode) and succeeded in making an ass out of myself after a couple of Stella Artois. Then we stumbled home and that was that.

~ Day 4 ~

Sunday was yet another beautiful sunny day. After acquiring mochas, we met Amee at Union Square where we loaded onto bus number 71 to Golden Gate Park. We departed the bus at Upper Haight and explored Buena Vista park. Then we went to Golden Gate park and walked and walked and walked and walked.

Just thinking about how much we walked makes me feel weary. After we exited the park, like six hours later, we walked up and down Haight. We had coffee and walked and walked and went into many clothing shops. It was beautiful and lovely and fun, for sure. After hours and hours of walking, we took the bus back, got cleaned up at the hostel, picked up some take-out Thai food, bought a 40oz of beer each, and sat back watching Kill Bill with the other young hostellers in the common area.

At the end of the day, while I was making my list of that which we had done, Josh mentioned what he felt was the highlight of the day (other than being in my company, of course). When we were at Buena Vista Park, after we had climbed to the top of the hill, we watched the fog as it came in and rolled over the city like fingers.

~ Day 5 ~

Shopping, shopping, shopping. I found some hipster shoes, some Diesel jeans, and some awesome used t-shirts. We went shopping in Union Square, North Beach, the Mission (good idea, go to the district with a high density latino population on the same day as "A Day Without Immigrants"...everything there was closed), and the Castro. We partook of lunch in North Beach at a place across from Washington Square called Cafe Divine where we both had amazing pulled pork sandwiches and we found a wonderful sushi place in the Castro for dinner.

~ Day 6 ~

We had the morning to wander up to Grace Cathedral. I sat on a cement wall reading my book in the sunlight as Josh ran around photographing the view. Around noon, we got our bags from the hostel storage area and took BART to the airport. After a wonderful but long week, and a long day of travel with not enough nutritional substance, I finally walked into the door of my home and the first thing that I saw was the open buds of my African Violet.

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