Above is a map of the route that Chris and I walked on Monday through the city of San Francisco. Chris and I like to walk. Many of our best times have been spent wandering through the streets of Eau Claire or Minneapolis. On Monday we got to do it on the west coast. Forget about those crowded cable cars and buses packed with a bunch of hot, sweaty tourists. We saw the city on foot. Up close and in person. And my feet were sore afterward.
We started our day taking the BART into the city from Jamie's apartment. He lives across the street from the last BART stop on his line in Dublin. For $11.50 we got round trip fares into the city which is about a 45 minute commute. As we sat on the train we planned our day using a Frommer's guide to San Francisco. We decided to do the "San Francisco in One Day" tour with a couple of small neighborhood tours as well.
Once we got to town we went to the ferry terminal building and got some coffee and then set out. Our first stop after crossing Embarcadero on Market St. was Union Square. It is a square that was made famous for protests in the pre-Civil War days. Now it's a square in the midst of a busy shopping district and a great place to catch some sun on a cool San Francisco morning. From there we headed up Nob Hill to Grace Cathedral and worked our way over to Lombard St. (affectionately named "the crookedest street in the world"). We walked down the winding street, bought lemonade from a kid, and then continued down the hill to Ghirardelli Square. The square is right on the waterfront so we walked past the maritime museum out to the city pier for breathtaking views of the Golden Gate and Alcatraz. By this time it was noon and we were a bit hungry.
We ate lunch at a little chowder house and each had a bread bowl filled with clam chowder and a caesar salad. It's a very touristy thing to do, but we are both tourists, right? Anyway the food was delicious. We started by sitting on the outdoor patio at the restaurant but we moved inside when the wind knocked over my glass of water and we both realized that it was fairly cold in the shade. The only people that managed to stay on the patio was a family from Norway. The mom and dad sat in the shade drinking ice cold beers while their children huddled in chairs on the only sunny portion of the patio trying to not die of exposure. It was a quaint family scene.
After lunch we continued along the waterfront which is perhaps the most touristy part of the city. A lot of the piers have been converted into commercial space so there is a lot of shopping. On one of the piers we found a museum of arcade games called Musee Mecanique. It has all kinds of games some over a hundred years old, all the way up through Miss Pac Man. It also has a terrifying machine called "Laughing Sal" which is basically a gigantic clown that laughs maniacally when you put money into it. It's what we like to call "nightmare fuel."
Once we finished the waterfront area, we climbed telegraph hill to the Coit Tower (more stunning vistas of the city) and walked through North Beach and Chinatown. North Beach is famous for Beatniks and it's the home of City Lights Bookstore, which is owned by Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. We went into the store and I managed to resist the temptation to buy lots of Beat poetry. It was a rather impressive bookstore. Chinatown was very unique and we enjoyed wandering up and down the little streets and alleys. I also enjoyed watching Chris buy a cast iron teapot from a little shop in this neighborhood. Part of the fun of going on vacation with Chris is watching him buy souvenirs - talking himself in and out of the purchase many times before finally going through with it, and then overpaying for it.
After this was all said and done Chris and I hopped on the BART back at our starting location 8.33 miles later and rode back out to Jamie's. We used the hot tub to soothe our sore feet and then we went out for dinner. Jamie drove us to the airport and we took a redeye flight back to the Twin Cities. I did learn something from this experience: redeye flights are awful. They are especially awful when there is a cacophony of screaming toddlers seated strategically in the seats surrounding you and when your carry-on bag gets soaked by a bottle of water from the guy in the seat in front of you. Next time I will pay $30 more for a non-redeye flight and fly with a better airline.
All in all: outstanding trip.
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