The Streets of San Francisco

Arrived in San Francisco and took the BART (metro) straight from the airport to our hotel. It only took us about 10 minutes to find our hotel but it seemed to take forever as we tried to avoid eye contact with the groups of people hanging round each corner, we soon realised why our hotel was quite a bit cheaper than the rest in San Francisco. Our hotel was in the Tenderloin area and was called Hotel Verona but we sure didn’t feel like no star crossed lovers as the room was very basic with a dodgy carpet and a TV set that was state of the art in 1962. Both of us felt like getting a plane straight back to Houston but we decided to give the place a chance although we seriously thought about checking into another hotel.

We locked up all our important things and headed out for a quick walk down to Union Square (the main shopping area) which was about 10 blocks away. The walk down wasn’t any better with junkies, drunks and assorted mental patients hugging street corners and any wall alongside. As it was getting late we had a quick Burger King (I know, I know) for dinner and then wandered a little bit about around the shops. Is Britain the only place left in the world that all the shops shut at 5:30, it so refreshing to be able to walk into a CD shop at 9:30 and know that you will be able to roam around for at least another half hour. For those readers worried about Chris’ CD addiction well I can say he’s almost cured with only one purchase in the first 5 months out of old blighty, but he has developed a nasty twitch every time we pass any emporiums of audio recordings.

We got up early on Saturday and managed to have breakfast….a donut and a coffee!! Healthy eating at it’s best. We then headed out bright and early expecting the streets around the hotel to be quiet but to no avail the locals were out this early rehearsing their parts from the next Zombie flick. After about two blocks they seemed to thin out so we decided to do the China town and north beach walking tours in the Lonely Planet book. We passed the place where they made the first fortune cookie’s and many other sights of china town which is quite similar to Garnet Hill in Glasgow apart from the cable cars whizzing past. North Beach had loads of cafés, cool bars and bookshops and was also a famous hang out of the beat writers from the 50’s and early 60’s. We also manged to get some pictures of San Francisco highest builing the The Pyramid.


We then headed up through Washington Square park where they where setting up for some music later on so first we went up to the Coit Tower. This gave great views of the city and we had our first sighting of the Golden Gate Bridge which was fairly impressive with the mist hanging eerily over the top and bottom and looking like it was suspended in mid air. We could also see Alcatraz but this was as close as we got to the famous penitentiary as the trips were all booked up for weeks in advance.


We walked back down through the park and had a nosey at some of the stalls. We then wandered about and stumbled upon the Cable Car Museum, which gave the history of the cable cars in San Francisco and how they worked. It was also possible at the museum to see the large wheels and machinery that pulls the underground cables that power the trolleys around the city. The museum is free and well worth some of your time if you find your self in San Francisco.


While we were checking some guide books in the North Beach library an old lady came over and recommended a local museum which had a large Diego Rivera mural. So we went to the San Francisco Arts Institute and checked out the mural and some of the other exhibits. We were both impressed by the work of an artist we hadn’t heard of before called Chris Ballantyne. At this point we were fairly near the Lombard Street the famous winding street and we stood and watched all the cars going down at 5 miles per hour!! We had to walked up a really steep hill to get to the top of it, San Francisco seems to have all the hills that Houston lost out on. We then headed down to Fisherman’s Wharf where they have some large ships (one of which was built in Glasgow) and loads of really tacky shops selling all the usual tat.

At night we went back to China town and to the “House of Nanking” restaurant which we had to queue up to get inside and whilst waiting we got chatting to a guy called Cecil Brown a lecturer in film studies at Berkley who had been at this place once before when it was filmed by his friend Phil Kaufman for a documentary called “China - The Wild East“. At first I wasn’t sure if this guy was 100% especially when he started telling us he was in a scene with Sean Connery in the film “Rising Sun”. We managed to skip the queue with Cecil and once inside the owner came out and started speaking to Cecil and said he would arrange some food for us. The food was excellent and we sat and chatted about many different things with Cecil who was also very interested in our travels and about the different dialects in Scotland. After dinner we said goodbye to Cecil and headed to North Beach and a dark and dingy beat pub called Vesuvio which we had passed during the day. To be honest we were both stuffed from our dinner and we only had one beer before the dreaded running of the Tenderloin gauntlet back to the hotel. We also started using our pedometer that we had bought in Houston and despite us not doing any walking in Houston we managed to do over 20kms on first full day in San Francisco.


On Sunday we missed our healthy breakfast and decided to walk to the Golden Gate Bridge. On the way we spotted a really strange looking building and decided to do a short detour, this was a massive concrete building and turned out to be St Mary of the Assumption Chapel. We couldn’t believe it!! Inside was almost as impressive as the outside building and if we had only done similar things in our churches back home you wouldn’t have minded being in this! There was a huge silver futuristic mobile suspended from the ceiling and a huge pipe organ, then one of those strange things that seem to be happening a lot on this trip a whole Japanese tourist bus arrives and head to the front of the altar with a conductor and give us a rendition of Ave Maria in perfect harmony. The acoustics in this place were amazing and the choir weren’t too bad either, we couldn’t have timed our visit better if we tried.


We continued our walk through Japan Town and Fillmore districts(which reminded us of the West End with all it‘s coffee and organic veg shops) before reaching the Golden Gate Bridge. The sky was grey and the bridge was completely covered in mist so we decided we would go back the following day. We then done a u-turn and took the long walk towards Haight Ashbury the birth place of the hippies, which now has a Benny & Jerry‘s at the intersection. We wandered around some of the funky shops for a while before heading back towards the hotel. About 2 miles from the hotel we stumbled upon a strange Freak show which was in aid of a community centre. There was a roller disco….and I would have been up there until I saw the roller granny (I kid you not!) she was rolling her stuff in style and would have put me to shame. Huge Hoola Hoops, guys and girls in strange outfits on stilts and lots lots more.


We had bought a couple of second-hand DVDs and decided to have a night in after all our walking over the last few days. We wandered out and bought an 18inch pizza from the New York Pizza Co - it was humongous and we also sneaked in some chocolate for later. We weren’t disappointed in the pizza and had a bonus as we were given the wrong DVD so we watch De-lovely and took it back the next day for the real one we bought. After our huge pizza we had a peanut chocolate M&M bar all - I can say is they were delicious and I want one now!!

It was our last day in San Francisco so we headed to the SFMOMA where we saw a great photographic exhibition. We also walked back to the Golden Gate Bridge stopping off at the Museum Fine Arts Palace on the way.


As we got to the bridge there was only a little mist in the centre. We walked all the way to bridge and walked across to the middle of it and as we walked along the mist lifted to reveal a glorious blue sky.....only for us eh?? It was freezing on the bridge and the clouds were whizzing by overhead at some speed. We could see Alcatraz in the distance and the buildings of San Francisco. It was starting to get colder and the sun was going down so we didn’t walk completely over the bridge and headed back to town.


As we had walked for miles again our feet were killing us and we couldn’t face a long walk for food (or another huge pizza) so we decided to walk across the road for a cheap Indian curry which was great.

Then it was off to LA on Tuesday.