Walking San Francisco
Back on a plane. Seems as if it wasn’t so long ago… Oh, right, I guess it’s only been a month since Perú… Now on my way to San Francisco for my cousin Anna’s bat mitzvah. It’ll be an experience, since I’m not Jewish, and have no idea what to expect. I was originally supposed to work today, and leave a bit early to catch an evening flight and arrive in SF around midnight. I decided I wanted to have another day there, so I called in “sick” and went to the airport to get standby for the 6:30am flight. So I had about 5 hours from getting home from work to pack, do a few things and get over there… I still haven’t slept. Oh well. That’s what flights are for. No problem getting on the flight, it was only half full. I have a whole row to myself. First time flying Frontier Airlines, and this Airbus 319 isn’t too bad. It’s a new plane, everything in good condition, decent amount of leg room, and individual TV’s in the seatbacks. Only 1 channel of programming and the flight map channel are free, though. $5 to watch satellite TV or $8 for one of the movies. They just have words up on the screen overlapping the show for the other channels telling you how to pay for it. I started to be able to just ignore them and still watch the shows… but after 15 minutes if you didn’t pay for it, they stopped making the channel available altogether. So back to the in-house channel. Oh well, I’ll be sleeping anyway. Next stop Denver, and hope I can get on an earlier flight there, too.
Successful landing in Denver 2 1/2 hours later, and success getting on the next flight. It was pretty full, but there were about 4 standbys that all got on, and I still managed to get a row with an empty seat in it. 2 1/2 more hours til SF… maybe I should call my mom and let her know I’ll be there 14 hours early…
Got to SFO and found my way to the free shuttle to the hotel, the Embassy Suites. Definitely not where I’d normally stay, but this is where my uncle reserved a bunch of rooms for out-of-towners coming in for the bat mitzvah. Besides, Mom’s payin 🙂 Once I got checked in, I had to get downtown to meet up with the rest of my familiy that had already been there since the beginning of the week… my mom, brother Erik, aunt and uncle Karen and Bill from Phoenix, and cousin Bea (pronounced as in Spanish, “BAY-a”) from Nicaragua. Mom, Erik, and Bea were going on the tour of Alcatraz, and Karen and Bill were wandering around the Pier area there. Best way for me to get there was to take the free shuttle back to SFO, jump on the BART to Embarcadero, $5.15, and make my way from there. I got myself to the wharf area and did a little wandering myself before calling Karen to meet up with them. I came across this interesting water fountain thing that kids were running around in… I can’t tell if it’s supposed to say something or not. It looks like it might, but I don’t see it.
I was around Pier 1, so I jumped on a cable car to get down to 39 where they were. Was expecting it to be about a dollar fifty for the cable car, but the guy wouldn’t take my money. I didn’t complain. Once I found Karen and Bill, he asked if I wanted to do a wine tasting. Ahh, what a great idea… better to start drinking as soon as possible 😉 It’s much nicer hanging out with relatives now that I’m old enough to be an adult with them. I don’t see my extended family much, and I think this is the first time I’ve seen them since being legal to drink… which has been for quite a while now…
We headed to the wine shop the had the tasting. 3 choices plus 1 dessert wine, and about 8 or so to choose from. They weren’t bad… as far as I know, but I have an admittedly low level of knowledge of wine. I tried a cab sav, a sav blanc, another very dry red that I can’t remember exactly, and a reisling for dessert, which was VERY sweet, almost like a mead. Hence the dessert wine, I guess.
My mom called right as we were finishing up to say they were on their way back, so we headed to meet back with them. This was the first time I’d seen Bea, now 13, in about 8 years or so. Amazing how much kids grow up in that time… from 5 to 13… ok, ok, that’s a pretty big gap… I guess it’s not that amazing…
We headed back down the Pier a bit bit to get some lunch. Don’t remember the restaurant name, but it was a seafood place around Pier 41. Our table was next to the window where we had a straight line view of Alcatraz… when the fog wasn’t covering it up, that is. The sea bass I had was quite good, and filling. That didn’t stop me from getting some ice cream when we stopped afterwards, though. It was apparently a mandatory stop, because Bea really wanted to get cookie dough ice cream because it’s not available in Nicaragua.
It was starting to be mid-afternoon by this point, and everyone else wanted to get back to the hotel to rest a bit and do some things before the evening service that Anna was involved in. It was optional, however, and not the main event, and I still hadn’t seen much of SF yet, so I hung back and would make my way to the hotel on my own. Erik stayed with me because he still wanted to see some things, too.
From the wharf area, we went to check out Lombardo, aka the Crookedest Street. Nothing spectacular, just a road that wound back and forth fairly sharply. From up top of the hill we got some good views, though.
We walked to China Town from there. It’s a typical China Town, lots of restaurants and cheeky Chinese gifts and clothes. There were some buildings using Chinese architecture that were cool, though.
Next on our walking tour, we wanted to get to a bar and have a drink. One that i remembered being recommended to me was Toronado because it had a large beer selection. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember where it was. I had gotten a few recommendations and locations, but wasn’t remembering which was where. Damn. Oh well, I remembered somethin’ about the civic center stop on the BART, and we were near it, so we headed that way and hoped for the best. And if we found an internet cafe on the way so I could check the address, even better… We ended up on Market Street and followed it down for a while. Well, we found the grimy area of SF. The homeless, panhandlers, strip clubs, and smell of pot were in full effect. And, we even got to see some people doing bumps of something, assuming coke or meth. Unfortunately, no internet cafes to be found, but we did happen across the library. Oh yeah! Libraries have free internet access. However, with that also comes lines of others waiting for the same. We sat for a minute, but decided we didn’t want to wait and headed off again. On the way out, though, I remembered that if I send a text message of a business name and city to Google (googl- 46645) they’ll send back the address and phone number. Yay technology. Turns out Toronado is on Haight, where we were ultimately heading anyway.
En route, we decided to go by the Mission District. We found Mission Dolores, an old Spanish style church. Some very cool architecture, but we didn’t really have enough time to go inside and check it out. It was starting to get late, and we still wanted to get to Haight-Ashbury before it got dark.
Well… it’s just a famous street. Not even really anything there, other than businesses capitalizing on its popularity… the obligatory head shops and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, naturally. And the clock on the corner is stopped at 4:20… as if that’s at all a surprise! The area had a cool vibe, though. Lots of hippy and retro hippy, of course, but also some punk influence. And the alternating smells of pot and nag champa incense follow you down the street. We walked down Haight just taking it in until we got to Golden Gate Park, and decided to stroll through there. Before even getting through the entrance we were offered stinky nuggets, and 2 steps later offered doses… and then more stinky nugs by virtually everyone we passed. Good to know where to go if I’m ever in need. It’s clearly the hippy park… drum circles, guitars, frisbee, circles of people, the smell of pot… It was a bit chilly for Cali, and starting to get dark and late, so it wasn’t full of people by any means, but I bet a cool place to hang earlier that day when it was warmer.
After leaving the park we went into Amoeba Music, a huge independent record store on Haight. I was a bit amazed and very glad to see an independent store that large, with that large of a selection, and sooooo much vinyl from every genre. It’s a rarity these days. I couldn’t stay in very long, or else I’d end up walking out with crates of records that I just didn’t want to deal with carrying around or taking back on a plane. After getting our fill browsing around for a bit, we decided it was definitely time to head towards Toronado and get some drinks…. we’d done about 12 miles of walking and needed liquid nourishment.
Well, the large beer selection was indeed true. Many brews I’d never heard of. It wasn’t a bad little place. It’s not real big, so it got a bit crowded for a minute, making seating an issue. The music selection was good, too. They tended to play good songs that never got any radio play by some of the good rock bands of the 90’s. The tunes you always knew were good if you were into the band, but never had a single released of.
A nice little bonus to Toronado is that it’s flanked on either side by the Rosamunde Sausage Grill and Mythic Pizza, and you’re allowed to bring your food from there back into the bar. We decided to try some cajun sausages from Rosamunde’s. Damn good sausages.
With our fill of drinks, we headed over to 16th Street Mission to jump back on the BART and head back to the hotel. Have to be up on the earlier side in the morning for the bat mitzvah.
Tags: California, Golden Gate Park, North America, San Francisco, Travel, United States
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