San Francisco

Thursday 18 July

San Francisco

Slept like a log last night, so tired, stirred a couple of times, but finally woke around 5.30am, which is a pretty normal time for me to wake up.  My first thought was, why can't I post the blog that I wrote yesterday, I tried everything,  even used roaming on my iphone and set up a hot spot in case it was the weak wifi link in the hotel, but to no avail.  So as David was also awake I tried again at this early hour and decided to delete the photos from the blog and try again, which seemed to work.

We went down to breakfast and had bacon and eggs sunny side up and of course the inevitable fried breakfast potatoes.  All very nice.

We were picked up by the bus for our tour of the city and went down to the collection point at Fisherman's Wharf.  We were on a big red double decker bus, just about full to capacity and were issued with the regulation earphones for the running commentary.  Our driver was hilarious, he kept stopping the commentary so that he could regale us with his own fund of knowledge, which was good except that he had the strongest Russian accent I've heard since watching 'the Day of the Jackal', I could hardly understand a word he said!

So, my impressions, firstly it is a fascinating city, a very checkered history where people of all nations (including 4 Russians, Gorbachov and his wife, and of course the bus driver and his wife, he didn't think much of Gorbachov!) have lived and worked together, a big contingent of Chinese who have been responsible for developing and building many parts of the city, including the botanical gardens and Chinese tea gardens.  This inspite of the Chinese being rounded up after Pearl Harbour and kept in detention camps as enemy aliens. There is a large area which is populated mostly by gays and people in IT (go figure!) and of course much is made of their 'Mardi Gras' each year.  He stressed that SF has always been governed by very liberal thinkers, this includes not harassing beggars (11,000 of them), who apparently also get a chq from the government each week! Oh and he was kidding about Gorbachov -there are only two Russians!

The city is quite well defined with a centralised shopping area, Civic centre, parks and market squares,  surrounded by four steep hills, in fact similar to Wellington in its makeup.  The housing varies greatly, high on the hills there are block upon block of standard high rises some of which are quite nice and others which are boring and in some cases dirty and in need of maintenance. As you get further into the city there is a mix of fabulous Victorian villas, modern terraced housing and the usual downmarket tenement accommodation.  The earthquakes in 1906 and 1989 decimated the city and has had a big influence on the architecture.

Down at the wharf the Americas Cup has a big display and flags flying everywhere, souvenir shops, etc, didn't have time to stop.....  But as we were going over the Golden Gate Bridge we saw the 'Prada' practicing racing in the harbour.   The GG bridge is very impressive, but unfortunately the top part was still covered in fog, which is pretty standard for summer weather in SF.  So the bus dropped us off at Fisherman's Wharf and we wandered over to board our 'Blue and Gold' boat for a cruise around the harbour.  We keep disbelieving the length of queues, surely this one winding around the length of the harbour can't be ours???  How will we all fit on, no, David goes to find OUR queue while I keep our place...... just in case!  So he arrives back with a couple of hot dogs for lunch and it doesn't take too long for us to get on.   We enjoyed the trip - under the bridge this time, and then a 

close look at Alcatraz.

When we got off we decided to get the cable car up the hill and walk back to our hotel on 7th Street from there.  So we had a nice walk along Fisherman's Wharf looking at all the ethnic restaurants and fish shops, crab is a speciality, people sitting outside eating a crab sandwich, which seemed to be a huge bun cut in two accompanied by a whole crab, which you then broke up and sucked the meat out?  Kind of messy to eat!  The cable  car was at the end of the wharf - but there was this queue winding round the corner and up the steps, surely.... So when David came back and confirmed that it was, we worked out that if the cable car goes every 15 minutes and holds 50 people max, then if there were at least 200 ahead of us, we should walk!

So we did.  You may have seen Hollywood car chases where they barrell down the hills at a great rate, well we walked up.  It made for a great photo opportunity, and also worked off a big breakfast and a hot dog, so now we can have a guilt free 'Custom Burger' for dinner tonight.