San Francisco and Area Trip Diary, Part 1, Part 2

Added 17 October 2009. Pictures and stories from our trip to San Francisco and area, from September 26 to October 4, 2009. Part 1

Wednesday, September 30 — Finding our way to San Francisco

After breakfast and a straightforward checkout (we had prepaid), we headed to San Francisco. Jean thought it would be interesting to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge, so he programmed the GPS to take us that route—it's not the most direct way. I had to be the photographer, since Jean was driving, so I did some practicing on the way. I think I managed to get some OK shots of the famous bridge.

Then we had to find our way to the airport to return the car. A bit tricky with the Golden Gate detour, but the GPS did get us there, though we then missed the turn-off to car rental return and had to find our way back to it. At the Avis parking lot, there seemed to be a lot of people returning their vehicles and it was a bit chaotic. This would prove an issue later on.

But the next part was pretty smooth. Right from the car rental place, we took the BART—Bay Area Rapid Transit—pretty much right to our hotel. It was Hotel Whitcomb, in the Arts district, very close to the Orpheum Theatre where Wicked was playing. And it had a much fancier lobby than we were expecting. Our sixth-floor room was on the small side (as we were expecting), but nice, with a really big closet. So we unpacked everything.

Once again, we were pretty hungry, so we headed into Chinatown. Which meant hiking up some of the famous hills nearly right away. But all Chinatowns are in some ways the same, eh? The crowds, the food stalls, the jewelry stores... Anyway, we did find our way to a dim sum place. It was on the late side though, around 2:00, so dim sum was definitely winding down. We ended up ordering the last few items from a menu as there weren't enough carts circulating anymore. And we overdid it; we were really full by the end.

We then took a walk down Powell Street, and got a look at the famous cable cars.

Our next stop was Rasputin Records, which sold used and new CDs and DVDs. I was excited; Jean was looking around desperately for someplace else to shop. But there wasn't too much else of great interest to thim. So we both ended up in Rasputin, and I promised not to take too long.

The first floor was all punk and rap—just nothing I was after. A climb up to the second floor brought me to jazz and blues, which wasn't quite it either. I eventually found a directory that said rock was on the fourth floor. And with a bit more searching, figured out that there were no stairs up—just access via an old elevator, painted in funky colors.

There was indeed some good selection and decent prices, though it took me a while to locate the used vs. new—used obviously being better priced. I ended up with Who By Numbers, Roger Daltrey Best of Ballads and Rockers, Queen's A Night at the Opera in remastered CD and DVD DTS versions (only the third format I've bought that particular recording in; not so bad), and Elvis Costello's first album, My Aim Is True, in a double-CD release.

Jean, meanwhile, kept himself busy taking some photos of the store posters.

Next, we tried to locate some art galleries, guided by the Lonely Planet book. We did locate Catherine Clark's gallery, which was presenting an Afghanistan-related exhibit. One artist took words from the Koran and painted them along with scenes from modern American life. If you had the patience to read the verse, it was really interesting. More charitable to women than you might think, but with lots of focus on faith and belief in God being key. There was also a movie cobbled together from John Wayne and Ronald Reagan westerns with a more modern movie (no idea which) about Afghanistan.

The next gallery we tried to get into was closed, and it was getting later in the day. But we somehow found our way to Union Square, which is a nice part of San Francisco. Though all the chi-chi stores in that area were closed at this point.

We stopped off at the hotel for a bit, where we realized a couple things:

1. We were tired of trying to eat dinner when we weren't really that hungry, so we would just go out for drinks to start.
2. We didn't have one of our cameras. We had left it in the car rental.

Now fortunately, the missing camera was not the main one Jean had been using, so it's not like we'd lost a bunch of actual photos. But still, it was a camera we both liked and we wanted it back. But a call to Avis only indicated that their Lost and Found was closed for the day. We'd have to resolve it during business hours.

Off, then, to Cav Wine Bar, just down the street from our hotel, a recommendation of our Lonely Planet guide. They offered many different wines by the glass or half-glass, including many not from California. Though this caused some argument at the time (too much wine! I said), we ended up both starting with a set of four half-glasses of white wine: a German 1996 Riesling that was just outstanding; a couple French wines; and an Italian one. All interesting and very different from each other.

Thinking that a moderate amount of food might be OK, we ordered a cheese plate and a side of mini baked potatoes.

And, we tried some reds: A French syrah, and two Italians, one a gamay. And another cheese plate. It was fairly quiet in there that night so we got quite good service, with recommendations for what to order (and not directing us to all the most expensive ones). All in all, a nice way to spend the first evening in San Francisco.

That night, before bed, we spent a bit of time preparing for our trip to Alcatraz.

Thursday, October 1 — Fisherman's Wharf

That much wine was not really conducive to deep sleep, but at least it wasn't so hard to get up at 7:30. We had prebought tickets to an Alcatraz tour leaving at 10:00 am. Breakfast was not included in the hotel package, and the hotel restaurant seemed a little expensive, so we ate in the diner across the street. It was pretty good. I had French toast (I'm so daring), while Jean stuck with eggs. We both took the fruit instead of potatoes option.

Then, we had to deal with the camera business, so we called Avis again. It did take a while on hold, but they were able to confirm that they had our camera. Since we were going back there (to the airport) on Sunday, albeit very early, we got a confirmation that we'd be able to pick it up then from the desk.

That set, we went to catch the tram. The stop was just outside the hotel and it went all the way to Pier 33, where we had to catch the boat to Alcatraz. However... that turned out to be a lot of stops on the way. And we'd been delayed with the Avis. So we kept looking at our watch, and though neither of us fretted out loud, we were both thinking we were literally going to miss the boat. I was hoping they might let us switch our tickets for a later departure.

However... We actually made it! And it meant no waiting. Just arrive and get right on the boat.

Beautiful day again. The boat ride over was shorter than we expected, and gave nice views of Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco shoreline. And Alcatraz Island itself, of course.

Alcatraz is now a national park. At our mandatory orientation on the island, we learned that it had started as a military fortress, then became a military prison, then became the notorious federal prison, before being closed and becoming a park. With a little blip whereupon natives occupied the island for a while.

Once there, we learned we could stay as long as we wanted—up to the last boat of the day, anyway. We started by watching a documentary about the island, by Discovery Channel, which was pretty good. We then went for our included audiotour of the prison itself. It was very well done, taking you through the cells where prisoners were initially brought, the larger solitary cells, the notorious “hole” where misbehaving prisoners were kept in dark, barren cells.

And we saw the kitchen, and the warden's office, the showers, the visitor's area, the yard, the gardens, and the regular cells for the longer-term prisoners. There were stories about some of the more notorious inmates, and about incidents such as the escape attempt from the Clint Eastwood movie, and the riots in which two prison guards were killed. Definitely a recommended tour.

Afterward, we walked through the garden area on our own, then took the boat back to the Wharf area.

We were hungry, so we headed toward a restaurant first: the Blue Mermaid, which proved to be a little bit of a hike. They had a nice patio to eat at. We each started with a cup of creamy chowder, then I had the linguine in clam sauce while Jean went with trout and green beans. It wasn't the best seafood ever, but it was decent. We also each had a glass of white wine.

Then we headed back to Pier 39, the most touristy part of San Francisco. But it's kind of nice touristy. We'd heard about all these sea lions they had, and wanted to see them. Well, they weren't hard to find— they're loud! And so many of them!

Then we paid to go into the Aquarium. It's interesting in that it's built into the water, so you have the various fish swimming above and around you.

They also had some tanks of non-native species, like tropical fish. The jellyfish made for good photos.

We got to see them feed the fish, which certainly causes a stir in the tank! On the upper levels, they had some land animals like turtles, snakes, lizards, chinchillas, and miniature hedgehogs.

Once we felt we were done with the Fisherman Wharf area, we went to the cable car stop to take that back. We had to wait in line for a bit, but did get on eventually. And then somehow never ended up paying for the ride, which was a bonus.

We'd read that the SFMOMA (modern art gallery) was half-price on Thursday evenings, so after resting at the hotel a bit, we decided to head there next. But there was a mondo lineup. We concluded it wasn't worth the savings, so decided to find a restaurant for dinner instead.

We settled on a Thai place. We each started with a cocktail (just seems a Thai thing to do), then shared a couple tuna appetizers. They were good. Jean also had a spicy soup. As mains, we shared honey duck and scallops in coconut sauce. Service was super-fast, though; we couldn't believe how quickly we were done.

In fact, that kind of left us with a dilemma for what to do, as it was a bit early for bed. We thought of going to see Wicked; unfortunately, that occurred to us a bit too late to actually get tickets. We considered taking the tram to the Castro, but that was kind of far, so we weren't convinced it was the best idea. Finally, we just walked around Union Square a bit before retiring to some TV and such.

Friday, October 2 — Financial District, SFMOMA, and the Castro

After another breakfast at Sam's Diner, at which we both had French toast, we took the tram into the Financial District for a free walking tour called “City Scapes and Public Spaces”. The city of San Francisco offers hundreds of free walking tours, all run by volunteers, and this was one we'd picked out from a fairly bare listing we'd printed from the Internet.

It turned out to be very interesting. It took us inside a number of lovely bank and financial institution buildings, which you don't typically get into, as a tourist. And it showed us all these public, park-like spaces tucked into the nooks and crannies of all the tall buildings: on roofs, in inside atriums, in small areas around back. Earlier ones were put in place as a gesture of goodwill on behalf of the companies, in response to concern about more tall buildings dotting the San Francisco landscape. Later on, these spaces were mandated as part of the building requirement, and had to be open to the public, not just people working there. The idea was that people needed to see fountains, trees, plants, art, and other signs of nature and creativity amidst all this concrete. One downside of the tour, though, is that few pictures were permitted.

The tour was 2 hours, from 10:00 to noon, so then we headed into Chinatown again, thinking about lunch. We got distracted by a jewelry store on the way, where I tried on some pearls. I was actually surprised how nice a triple set of good-quality pearls looked on me, but I really hadn't been planning to buy a $250 necklace on the trip (though maybe that it is a great price—I wouldn't know). So I ended up with a wire chain of smaller, floating pearls in several colors. Pretty, but certainly not the statement piece the other was.

And ultimately, we weren't convinced we wanted Chinese food for lunch, so we went back to the Financial District and just stopped into this Jamba Juice place. This had to have been our smallest, healthiest lunch of the trip: We each had a fruit smoothie, and I had a chicken wrap, while Jean had a warm vegetarian flat bread. Both pretty good, but didn't leave us in any danger of being too full for dinner.

And now we decided to try the SFMOMA. They were having a special exhibit of Richard Avedon photographs, and we happened to arrive just in time for a guided tour of that. It was good; Jean in particular was considerably more impressed than he expected to be. (I knew of Avedon before from his celebrity photographs.) The exhibit was somewhat chronological, showing his start in creative, dynamic fashion photography, then moving to his portrait photography of celebrities. One photo, of an assemblage of members of Andy Warhol's Factory, filled an entire wall. (The naked Candy Darling was certainly the most striking of the subjects.)

Another rooms was devoted to the series he did of ordinary people in Texas, perhaps most famously, a bee keeper. After the tour, we spent more time at the exhibit on our own, looking more closely at the photos that hadn't been highlighted.

We got a little separated at one point, but when we regrouped, we spent a bit of time watching a five-screen film called Motherhood that assembled scenes from five Hollywood movies: Kramer vs. Kramer, The Good Mother, Terms of Endearment, Mommie Dearest, and a Julia Roberts movie, such that it seemed the lead actresses from each were talking with each other about the nature of motherhood. Pretty interesting.

Our next stop was the permanent collection called Matisse and beyond, which did give a nice overview of modern painting and sculpture, with a nice balance of works by Pollack, Picasso, Kahlo, Diego, Miron, and so on. Then we went up to the fifth floor where recent acquisitions were on display. Quite a range—some large, kind of bizarre installations of objects, some intricate and lovely paintings.

And then we had a cappuccino on the sunny public space at the top.

We then took advantage of the fact that a tram ticket can be used for up to 50 minutes after you purchase to zip back to the hotel and freshen up before tram-ing back to the Castro, the last stop on the line.

Though this had been a fairly gritty neighborhood before, famous as the main gay district of San Francisco, we'd read that it had gone pretty upscale since then, making it a nice, safe place to walk around in the evening. (Whereas our hotel was actually pretty close to the dodgiest part of town—said part being surprisingly close to some of the main tourist spots—so our walks home typically involved going by homeless people mumbling to themselves and such.) And this was true. There isn't so much to see from a tourist attraction level—there's Harvey Milk Plaza, the old (still operating) Castro Theatre, the somewhat famous Different Light bookstore—but it's just kind of nice to walk around in.

But our first stop was dinner. We had picked out a place called Sumi which was supposed to have a very talented chef producing creative California cuisine at reasonable prices. We found Sumi at the expected location, but the menu was completely unexpected: It was apparently under new ownership now, and was a sushi place! Of course, we like sushi, so once we'd mentally adjusted, all was good. We had lovely trout sashimi to start, and our mains came with miso soup and Japanese salad, both tasting a little better than the usual. Jean had a plate of sushi rolls, while I tried the (cooked) seafood trio of salmon and two types of white fish. The miso-coated fish was particularly delicious. I also had the dessert of the day, which involved cookies and chocolate.

We walked around the neighborhood a bit more before heading back. The main area was a smaller than we'd expected; didn't take too long to cover the whole thing. It was still pretty early, but we didn't see anything too wild going on. At one point we had to stop in at another bar, because I simply had to use the facilities. But no stories from that, either.

Saturday, October 3 — Russian Hill and Lovelution

We planned to take another free City Tour today, this time at the Russian Hill area, the hilliest habitated part of San Francisco. It wasn't the easiest part of town to get to, but we thought we'd figured out which bus we needed to take to get there. But then we were stymied by Sam's Diner which, for some reason, was really slow for us on this day: slow to take our order, slow to bring the food. When we finally wolfed that down and paid up, we weren't too sure the bus would get us there on time.

So instead, we flagged down a cab. And boy, did that replace our concern about getting there on time with concern about just surviving the trip. We felt that we were flying through those hills! So in the end, we were there a bit early. We took the time to look at the “crookedest street in America”—along with a bunch of other tourists. It certainly is a windy one.

Then we joined the tour, which began with the point that Russian Hill is still not very easy to get to, and that developing it over the years has been a challenge because of the topography. And that this was perhaps the most strenuous of the walks offered, because you do go up and down all these hills and stairways. The focus was generally on the architecture—the few Victorians that had survived the fires of 1911, and the later styles that had come into vogue. One of the bigger thrills was that a flock of wild parrots were sort of following us along for the first hour; we'd read that it was pretty rare to actually get to see these parrots.

And we also saw some lovely gardens, and of course, got some pretty good views.

After that two-hour tour, we decided to walk into the North Beach area, as we'd heard that was a nice place to hang out. Jean became quite smitten with the place, figuring that might be where we'd try to stay if we came back. It certainly did have a nice, comfortable vibe. After a cappuccino stop at a diner, because we needed to use the facilities, we went for a proper lunch at a restaurant called Trattoria Pinocchio. They had, it has to be remarked, a really beautiful blond hostess who made Jean smile every time she walked by. I suppose some payback for the blonde yoga-looking dude I'd been ogling in Russian Hill.

Food was quite good here. We started just with some marinated olives, then we each had a type of ravioli: pomodoro and aragosta. And some red wine. The pasta was all made in-house, the sauces nicely flavored, and the portions quite reasonable size. Once again we sat outside on the patio; I don't think we've ever done that so much on any other trip. But what weather.

Our next destination was a chocolate shop I'd read about, called Truffles. We bought a box of chocolates there, then had a cappuccino (me) and hot chocolate (Jean), which entitled us to three more samples of chocolate. Which were very good. They were being made right in front of us, so the freshness was apparent. We sat outside that shop and drank our beverages.

Then we decided to walk back to our hotel. As we got closer, we noticed more and more people. Young people. Sparkly people. People wearing not that many clothes, though the wind was really starting to pick up. This might have startled us normally, but we were actually fore-armed with knowledge: Lovelution Festival was on. And headquarters were at the Civic Center, right by our hotel.

So of course, things also spread into our hotel, where some of the kids were staying, and many others were trying to sneak in and borrow some facilities. We freshened up a bit and thought we'd go check things a bit closer. You know, for the experience.

It was, mainly, very crowded. (Except around the completely naked, not-quite-so-young guy, who was being given a wide berth.) I wasn't really sure what we were trying to get to. There were a few stages with bands and DJ's, playing techno music. Earlier, there had a big parade. We took it in for a while, then concluded we were too old, too Canadian, and too clothed to really get it, so we headed back to pack for the trip home.

But first... One more dinner. We settled on Cav Wine Bar again, but this time, with an actual meal. We were a little concerned that it might be full due to all the Lovelution people, but that didn't seem to be their kind of place. It was quite busy, but more with the theatre crowd, who was more our age. It was a very nice meal (and we were recognized from our last visit, which was nice). The menu was small but each thing seemed to be well-prepared. I started with salad, Jean with scallops. I then had a dorade (fish) dinner while Jean had the gnocchi. And we shared cheese for dessert. And we had a few glasses of wine, of course.

We were a little concerned that the youthful presence at the hotel and in the neighborhood would prevent us sleeping, but it didn't turn out that bad. There was some very loud organizing going on in the hallway around 10:00, but we weren't actually trying to sleep that early. And then I think they basically went out dancing all night. As for outside sounds, they were mostly drowned out by the wind, which had really developed in strength starting late afternoon.

Sunday, October 4 — Home, home again. It's good to be there, in the end.

An 8:00 AM flight doesn't seem so early until you factor in getting there two hours ahead, plus getting to the airport, and now we had to add stopping at the car rental place for our camera. Sigh. Though the good part was that it kind of put us back on Eastern time, and it actually wasn't as hard to get up as I'd expected.

We had investigated the night before and learned that the BART didn't run that early Sunday morning, so we'd asked the hotel to get us a cab. There was a bit of confusion around that in the morning, but ultimately, the cab was there on time. He was a really friendly guy, talking about the insane and all the crazy Lovelution driving he'd done the night before. Though he said that was no comparison to the Folsom Festival (gay leather) the weekend before.

At Avis, they were unable to find our camera at the Lost and Found. Their system showed it was there, but they couldn't put their hands on it. They said they would send it to us, so we gave all our information. We'll see. It hasn't arrived so far, but it can take a while from the States.

Next, Air Canada. Unlike Toronto, where they have tons of agents, they were maybe three counters for at least two flights—one to Toronto, one to Montreal. It actually moved reasonably quickly, but it was quite the lineup.

And then, one of our bags was too heavy. This wasn't a big surprise, given the wine, but we'd hoped we'd be OK given that the other bag was actually quite light. But that's not how it works. (So, for future reference, you're better off buying a second bag to put the extra in, to make sure each individual bag is under the weight limit.) So we had to pay an overweight fee.

Then we had a bit of time to get some breakfast, though the options weren't too inspiring.

But, the flight did leave on time, and actually ended up arriving early. To while away some time enroute, we watched The Proposal, a fairly diverting romantic comedy.

And we got through customs in what seemed liked record time. We honestly reported that we had 8 bottles of wine, and had carefully recorded how much we'd spent on stuff (well under what we were allowed to spend).

The wait for a luggage seemed a bit long (usually there's none since customs takes forever) and then it was time to hand in our customs from. He looked at it and waved us through anyway. Yay!

Then no issues getting the car or finding our way home. House was pretty cold when we arrived, though, 16C! We immediately got the heat going... Good thing the cats have fur.

Also see: California Dreamin' (blog post)

And: San Francisco Picassa album (these photos and more)