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Published: October 4th 2006
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8 hours of this......
Can you imagine how bored I was? Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.....
So you'll stand out from the rest of the tourists! Weyhey! Our trip to San Francisco has been one of firsts - first driving in the USA, first real American take-out and first Squirrels!
I was glad to get out of LA on Saturday morning. The nice girl at Budget gave us a free upgrade (to the biggest family wagon I have ever driven - a Chevy Impala) and assured us it was about a six hour drive north to San Fran. Well, turns out she was wrong. By about 50%! (MISSING)Which is quite wrong. Driving in the USA is remarkably easy. The wrong side of the road is easy enough once you get the hang of it. It's the being allowed to make turns on a red light and the fact that speed limit really means speed guideline that complicates things. Getting onto the interstate was easy enough, and we had a really nice drive through the Santa Monica hills with the AC off (as recommended by a street sign!) The views were magnificent and the roads were rubbish. Since they're mostly made of concrete to withstand the heat,
they're bumpy, cracked, poorly marked and in some cases, I'm not sure the lanes were wide enough for my car! Interstate 5 is the most boring piece of roading in the history of the world. They say that after WWII, Eisenhower decreed that one mile in every four was to be level and straight so as to be used as an airstrip in an emergency. You could land a plane at any given point on the I5. Any point. But, on the plus side, we did get to stop in a little hick town for some Taco Bell - average, but better than I thought - and a trip to Wal Mart. I have now been there and seen it, and no, they don't sell walls. They sell damn near everything else though. 😊
The hostel in SF is stunning. Well equipped, well appointed, and in a really nice spot. The front lawn has views of the Golden Gate and the back lawn has views of Alcatraz. The hostel drops straight down into Ghirardelli Square - home of the most disgustingly good sundaes ever. And it's cold! Yes! It's down to the low 20s, maybe below. I can finally
Fort Mason Park
Down the hill from the hostel sleep again! We've taken too many photos of Alcatraz and that bridge. Way too many. And the squirrels. Too many of them too.
We noticed on the hostel noticeboard that on Sunday there was the 26th Annual SF Comedy Day at Golden Gate Park. So we went, intending to enjoy an hour of standup, and then going off to see some of the gardens and the de Young art museum. So four and one half hours of comedy later, including the infamous Greg Proops from WLiiA and some of the best liberal, racial, anti-Dubya, anti-Republican comedy ever, we...ummm.....gave up and went back to the Hostel. :P It was a great gig though, and since we seem to have missed so much, it was great to see this one. We wandered down to Fisherman's Wharf in the evening and it was horrid. The guidebook said it should be avoided. The guidebook is right. It had it's moments, but mostly it was awful. The highlight was a private art dealer with a magnificent collection of Dali sketches and a series by Marc Chagall for sale. Prices unlisted, which means we couldn't afford it.
Monday dawned a cold, overcast Wellington, I
mean San Francisco day. We wandered down to the wharf and jumped a cable car. What a hoot. There's something to be said for screaming up the middle of a 45 degree slope hanging off the side of a vibrating, rattling contraption. Tee hee. We stopped at the top of Lombard Street - you all know the windy one -and walked down into the valley below, quietly mocking the fools who walked up. We caught another cable car up into Nob Hill, once the domain of SFs rich and richer. Due to the quake in 1906, the mansions are gone, but they've been replaced by the kind of hotels with doormen and celebrity chefs. We ambled down into Chinatown, which is much like pretty much any other Chinatown anywhere with it's interesting architecture, some cool streetlamps and shop after shop of monumental tat. Having escaped the touristy awefulness, we walked into North Beach - SFs Italian heartland and stopped at a tiny little Italian place - Cinecitta - for some of the best pizza I've ever eaten, served by an odd little Italian American. Fun. We climbed the nearby Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower - a 9 story edifice that
doesn't really do anything, but offers magnificent views of the whole city and bay. Worth the $4.50 entry fee. Finished the day with a walk in Golden Gate Park's Japanese tea garden. Very pleasant way to wind up a fairly hectic and tiring day. Oh, and the squirrels. Who could forget the damnably cute little vermin?
Today we returned again to Golden Gate Park. Every day, people, every day. 😊 We wandered through the Conservatory of Flowers which was holding a butterfly exhibition - they were just flutterby-ing around the greenhouse. It was quite incredible. Just up the road we visited the de Young art museum, complete with bag search. (Last time we did this, we went onto a Naval Base. Work that one out.) It's a terrible building, but the art collections were impressive. They had a magnificent exhibition of Mesoamerican art, including frescoes and friezes from Teotehuacan and one of those really wicked Olmec giant stone heads. And it was pretty giant. 😊 There was some rather pleasant post 1775 American art, although nothing to write home about, and an interesting collection of what they termed Ethnic Art - African, Polynesian and Melanesian. Some Henry Moore and
a giant safety pin in the sculpture garden and a trip up a 9 storey observation tower (I still have no adequate explanation of why you'd bother) rounded out the visit. Lunch was had in a little part of town called Haight-Ashbury. I'm sure some of you know where it is. It's like Aro on acid - where normal is a decidedly fluid concept and the number of crazy people is.....frightening. Nice little spot, glad I've seen it. Don't need to go back. Jen on the other hand.....We spent the afternoon at the Palace of Fine Arts - a faux-Roman attempt at something. It's pretty hideous, but quite amusing none the less. We visited the Exploratorium for a bit of a laugh - it's an interactive science museum. It's more about playing than anything else and it was a hoot.
To sum up, San Fran is so much like Wellington it's scary. The bay, the hills (oh, how I love the hills!) and the weather combine to leave one reminded very much of what one left behind. It's the little things that make one homesick eh? Even the cable cars and the trolley buses.....It's a completely different city from
Squirrel
Note setting. One of Jen's many many photos of the cute little rodents! the rest of California that we've seen. It's not just that the air is clean, but it's so much more......normal, perhaps? It's not given over to the excesses of LA or the attitude of San Diego. It's a laid-back, comfortable kind of a town. I like it here.
So tomorrow we hit the road for a trip down the Big Sur via Monterrey, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, before meeting a plane to DC to meet up with Pete and Mary. We'll both be glad to see a familiar face, I can tell you.
Will let you know how awesome that drive is as soon as I figure out if this blasted country has a right-of-way rule and what it is. There's something unsettling about coming to a four way stop sign and the rule appears to be 'I got here first so I go first' regardless of who's turning or going straight or what. If it's not, then I must have really upset a lot of people today. *
chortle*
Take care everyone,
Talk soon,
Al and Jen
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