Walkin' the streets of San Francisco

Back on blogging schedule (after being told off for keeping you all in such suspense), here is our story from San Francisco: it’s a story of an ethnic and cultural melting-pot with super-friendly people, cheap and efficient public transport, good food, and world-famous sights of both social and historical significance.

The night we arrived we found a great pizza place just across from our hotel and while chatting to the waiters we were given some insider tips on what to see. The next morning we hit the ground running: we took the bus to Golden Gate Park to see the huge newly re-opened science museum and aquarium before heading over to Haight Ashbury to experience the heart of San Fanciscan hippiedom (and experience it we definitely did – we stumbled upon the very bohemian annual Haight Ashbury festival and got custom-written poetry from a student with an old typewriter while drinking real American lemonade). Next we walked through the seriously wealthy districts of Richmond and Pacific Heights to get down to the marina at Presidio where we got a magnificent view of the Golden Gate bridge in the evening from Palace of Fine Arts, when the water glinted in the sun.

The next day we took things a little easier; we boarded the tram to the docks for the ferry to Alcatraz (a round trip, we didn’t have to follow in the footsteps of the many escape attempts and swim back, thankfully)! After that we wandered through Little Italy and the thronging streets of Chinatown before taking a stroll through Yerba Buena park (named after the town that preceded San Francisco).

Next morning, after a rare lie-in for us, we decided to take the cable car (the only one of its kind in the world) to Fisherman’s Wharf and were greeted at the ticket-line by a black baritone busker in a bow-tie (alliteration overload, I know) with a huge smile. An early lunch of clam chowder in a bowl from a sourdough loaf – a combo invented in a bakery near the old Del Monte cannery – was followed by a chance encounter with some sea-lions before we headed to Lombard Street (named the ‘crookedest street in the world’ for having 8 hairpin bends in the space of one block) and on to the small and well-hidden North Beach museum which chronicles the contribution to the city of its various immigrant communities. Finally, we returned home via Nob Hill and the Cable Car museum (which rather than being an historical affair highlighted the still-working machinery which has driven the system, almost unchanged, from the 1800s).



Not to leave a moment un-used, we spent our last morning before flying out squeezing in a few more sights. We took the tram to Castro, the heart of the LGBT district (and just as Little Italy had Italian flags painted on all the lampposts, Castro had the rainbow flag), and walked to Mission with its high Hispanic population and the oldest building in the city – an old stone church, Mission Dolores – dating from the 1790s.

Now we've arrived in Vancouver… so stay tuned.