San Francisco...a place that I had been desperate to visit for a very long time so a great starting place for exploring the west coast. Somehow, Frida and I managed to meet up in the humungous airport and make our way into the city. We ended up dragging our suitcases to our hostel in the downtown shopping area at half past midnight. It didn't feel that nice a neighbourhood then and it didn't get much better in the morning. We were really shocked by just how many homeless people there were on the streets. It seemed like everywhere you looked there was someone else looking truly pathetic, shaking a plastic cup or pushing a heap of dirty things on a trolley. We were definitely faced with a LOT of human misery and it wasn't what I expected.
Once outside the shopping downtown area, we saw the SF of the postcards. The incredibly high hills, the beautiful houses and Fisherman's wharf (the latter being incredibly tacky). We spent our first day exploring on foot, visiting Lombard Street, the world's crookedest street, along with 9000 other tourists...they actually had to have police guided tourists on foot and those hanging out of their sunroof filming their descent in a vehicle...crazy!
On day 2, we set off on bicycles to conquer the Golden Gate Bridge. Off we wobbled, quickly realizing that Frida's bike was rubbish, but stupidly not turning back.
Up over the bridge we went, having a very windy lunch by the water in beautiful Sausalito before pedalling on to see some Redwoods and finally the little seaside port of Tiburon. At one point, Frida got scared by this man shouting at her from his car window and gesticulating wildly. He actually stopped further on and was very well meaning...he told us how to change gear as he thought Frida had clearly never been on a bike before. We politely explained that we weren't as dim as we looked and then Frida struggled on (I did offer to switch, honest). Obviously, after all the hardship endured, we were desperate for an icecream. In what looked like a very unpromising cafe, we discovered the most wonderful flavours and the loveliest proprieter who let us taste several before making our final choice, lemon cookie and chocolate orange being mine...mmmm! Thankfully there was also a ferry waiting to take us back across the bay to the city - cycling back wasn't an option we wanted to contemplate.
On our last full day in the city, we went to the Museum of Modern Art and were a little disappointed, then headed to Buena Vista Park for...a buena vista. By this time, Frida's knee was protesting from the exertions of a rubbish bike so we tried out public transport. It was so crowded that we couldn't get on at the front and therefore avoided payment. We then repeated this (again unintentionally) on our only cable car journey. We felt it was only right to take a trip on one but had been given the tip of taking one actually used by commuters rather than just tourists. We hopped on, I clung on to the pole and rode the running board and before we knew it we needed to hop off. The man with the tickets hadn't made it to us yet and so we had a free ride.
Oh well, Karma bit us on the bum the following day when it came time to pick up our camper van...but that's a whole other story!
No comments:
Post a Comment