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Published: February 16th 2009
Our journey began with a 3 hour flight to Auckland for a 2 hour stop over before we embarked on our long haul of 11 hours to San Francisco. We amused ourselves with reading, playing the airplanes games console and watching movies. We tried to get a few hours sleep in through the night so that we could be fresh for our first day in San Fran, but found it incredibly hard to do. Simon managed to get about 2 hours sleep, where I had about 4. We landed in San Francisco at 10am on Wednesday the 11th, the weather was cold and rainy, something we would have to get used to. After having our photos and figerprints by immigration, we checked through customs very easily and found our way to the BART to catch the train to downtown. Looking a bit like turtles with our big backpacks we ventured up to Market Street to find our way to our hotel. The first person we encountered was a lovely guy offering us directions to catch a bus to our hotel. We thought we followed his directions and went to the bus stop, only to realise about 20 mins later that it
was the wrong bus stop all together and we had no idea which one to go to. While waiting at the bus stop though we watched a little of a usual San Fran day go by, full of all the craziness that makes San Fran so entertaining. I watched as a mentally disabled lady pulled out a big piece of chalk and start writing on the footpath of the bus stop "911 Truth Now". Just after we heard a bit of yelling and turned to see a guy on a push bike ride straight into another guy who was running across the road! After a few angry words thrown between the two of them they parted ways, with the cyclist picking up his bike and folding down his bent mud guard. We finally decided it was time to just catch a cab to the hotel, while waiting for a cab a guy in a wheelchair came up and asked if we needed any help, we said we were waiting for a cab, he said the best place to wait for one was across at the other corner. We thanked him for his help and turned to walk to the corner, he called out to us for payment for his advice, at least $3 he said! You gotta love the picky homeless.
Finally we arrived at our hotel that we had been looking forward to, the photos on the internet looked lovely and this was going to be the last decent place we stay in before the hostels of South America. We checked in and went to the lift, which was a pee smeeling, peeling carpet, horrible elevator, not a good start... We went to our room and opened the door to find the room to be much like the elevator, somehow we think this might NOT be the last decent place we stay in. To make things worse, the reason why I booked the hotel in the first place (non-refundable might I add) was because it had a mini fridge and microwave so that we could save money on food, and they were missing! Obviously American's don't believe in fines for false advertising. We made do anyway, at least the TV worked and the bed was clean, even if the cupboard doors fall off their hinges to hit you in the head (which I later found out personally). After our lack of sleep on the plane we decided to have a bit of a rest. We got up later in the day to venture to Chinatown for dinner, which was an experience. I must say, their BBQ pork doesn't stand up to that of the Laksa Hut in Toowong though.
The next day, after a big sleep of about 12 or so hours, we got up and walked our way from the Hotel to the Piers. Here we got our first glance of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge, we were in San Francisco, and today was going to be a much better day than yesterday! We walked from Fort Mason to Fisherman's Wharf, where we found the Musee Mechanique, an arcade full of antique coin operated machines, ranging from the late 1800's to early 90's, it was amazing. They are all fully operational, we had a world of fun playing with the old machines. While Simon relived his childhood on the 1983 Star Wars machine, I had my luck with the skill tester (I won a chinese finger trap). We had a tournament of Skee Ball, which was to be rematched the next night, and I recieved a ring from an old butcher in a machine. After our fun we decided it was time to explore some more, we would come back another time. We walked past the street vendors on Fisherman's Wharf where their speciality is Clam Chowder in a sourdough bowl, this delicious delight would be tasted another time. We followed the strech of the piers up to Pier 39 which is full of every kind of tourist speciality stores you could think of, ranging from pet toys, to a store entirely for magnets, there was even a crazy hat store! We didn't spend much time here as we thought we could get the same thrills from the Gold Coast. We did enjoy seeing the Sea Lions though, and watching them bark and fight with each other as they compete for the warmest spot on the pier. They basically started out as squatters on the pier after the big earthquake in 1989 and their numbers grew rapidly in 1990, forcing dock K to be vacated and left for them to habitate. They are safe here from great white sharks though as the bay is too low in salinity for them. We left the Sea Lions to climb Telegraph Hill up to Coit Tower. The climb is entirely a steep set of stairs, gave the legs a good workout. The view from the top of Telegraph Hill is slightly interrupted by the growth of the surrounding trees and bushes, but you can still grab a glimpse of San Fran, Alcatraz, Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay, and the surrounding neighbourhoods. We took a different a set of stairs back down Filbert Street which took us through some amazing cottages and houses perched on the hill, they were gorgeous, everyone different from the next, though it would be bitch to move house!
We walked down to the Ferry Building which is now full of boutique gourmet food and drinks stalls, such as mushroom, cheese, wine, olive oil, fruit, and deli stores. We sat and had a coffee and hot chocolate to warm ourselves up before we headed out into the cold once more. We followed the streets up through the Financial District to Chinatown to do a bit of shopping and look around. Chinatown is very large and you can get ourself lost easily as most streets and shops look the same. We looked in a few crazy little bazarrs at the weird and wonderfull toys and crap. They had everthing from tiny wind up jumping penis' to bobble heads toys of every kind of movie, cartoon, cereal box character you could ever dream of! After popping home to get warm we headed around the corner of our hotel to Polk Street which is full of bars and restaurants to have dinner at a little Japanese place which reminds us of Oyama in The Valley, the food was delish!
Friday we took a long walk through the other side of town through Japantown and The Fillmore, where we saw the legendary live venue of the same name, unfortunately the doors were shut and we couldn't go in. We took a stroll along the streets mavelling at the beautiful architecture of the houses to Alamo Square to see The Painted Ladies, the famous set of houses pictured everywhere with San Fran City in the background. From there we took a walk down Haight Street to the district of Haight and Ashbury, where the first Hippie movement took place in the mid 60's. The street is amazing! The stores are full of tie died clothing and all sorts of glass pipes and bongs in the shop windows. We came across a huge secondhand and modern designer store called WasteLand, which has got to be the best clothing store we have ever seen, the clothes are extremly overpriced though! You could sit there all day and watch all the colourful personalities walk by, it is definately somewhere to check out if you are ever in San Fran. We then had to head home to get changed and rugged up and head back to the Piers for our Alcatraz Tour, and in time to fit in another tournament of Skee Ball and some Clam Chowder.
While we stood at the food stall eating our Clam Chowder bowls with oyster biscuits the dark clouds started rolling over, and what was a lovely day turned into a miserable rainy, freezing night! We boarded our boat to Alcatraz for our night tour along with about 200 other people. Unfortunately due to the weather we couldn't get any good photo opportunities as we approached the island. The Alcatraz audio tour took us through the cell blocks with chilling stories of escape and prison life with actual prisoners and prison guards narrating, it definately took you back to what it would have been like for the inmates, the weather actually suited the adventure. We went outside to take some photos of San Fran City Skyline from the Island but it was so cold my camera froze up and wouldn't work, that's a bit of an idea at how cold it was! After our great 2 hour tour we headed home again to warm up and went back to Polk Street to Polkers for dinner, where we had the famous Buffalo Wings, and I had my first steak in what felt like ages!
Saturday we hired a car and took a drive outside of town (driving on the right hand side and fighting with the crazy San Franciscan drivers who don't indicate when changing lanes on the freeway was interesting to say the least). First stop, Golden Gate Bridge, we walked half way across the bridge and back, freezing our arses off the whole way! It was a miraculous site! So huge and beautiful. Down below the bridge some small waves roll in and onto the rocks, there you will find quite a few surfers braving the freezing temperatures just for the short thrill of catching a wave. We then drove over the bridge to Muir Woods to see the giant redwoods. It was a beautiful forest, very peaceful when you didn't have American tourists walking along in constant conversation around you, I doubt they even looked at the trees, it was amazing. The redwoods are a sight to be seen, just massive in size and their marvel. You feel so small and insignificant against these ancient giants who have been around for hundreds of years. If only trees could talk hey! The we took a lovely, windey, drive along the coastline to Stinson Beach, which is a tiny coast town. The Beach was lovely, if not for the cold, it would be great in summer, except for the great whites! There was a sign at the beach warning of Great Whites saying that someone had been attacked in only 6 feet of water... not somewhere I think I will be taking a dip anytime soon. Then back to the airport to take the car back, we finally got it back in time after a few battles with the GPS which was taking us around in circles for a while. For dinner we went back to Polk Street again and ordered a large New York syle pizza from Escape from New York, thinking it would be enough for the two of us, not knowing it would be the biggest pizza we have ever seen... a massive 18 inches and 12 pieces of goodness! We took the pizza and a 6 pack of beer back to the unit and watched the Godfather 2 with our feast. Not having a fridge to keep the beers and the left over pizza cold didn't seem a problem in the end as we just put them in the bathroom as it seemed to be of freezing temperatures, and it did the job nicely!
Today we had a massive lay about and watched the Godfather 1 rugged up in bed, the weather is the worst we have had yet, cold, rainy and freezing, not the best for sight seeing. Our few days have felt like weeks and we thought we deserved a rest. After eating our leftover cold pizza in bed for breakfast/lunch, we finally crawled out of bed at midday, went to the laundromat and wrote postcards while we washed our clothes and now we are here, updating you all on our adventures so far. We have yet to find somewhere to upload photos as internet cafe's are hard to come by around here, and you can't do anything but surf the web, so when we do we will put them up asap. As we sit in this tiny little coffee shop on the corner on the internet we look outside at the miserable weather that San Fran has dealt us for the beginning of our holidays and we dream of the warm weather we will be embracing after our flight tomorrow to Salvador ready to put on our dancing shoes for Carnaval! We will check back in soon...
Love Hayley and Simon
oxoxoxoxo
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Katie
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Loved it!
Loved reading about your first exciting days in San Fran! Miss you!