Sanfrancisco day 4 a few more pics

A few more pics of the Japanese Garden

Sanfrancisco day 4

Day 4 saw us heading to the Asian Art museum. On the way there we ran into a small street fair that can be best described only as a Persian bazaar. We checked out the bazaar, Kathy bought an orange dress so she could look like a hippy local, and we proceeded on our way towards the museum. It was about what you could expect out of any museum with the exception that it was all slanted towards ancient China, Japan, and other Eastern/Middle Eastern countries. The big exception to the everyday happenings of a museum was the special Samauri exhibit. There were several Samauri coats of armor on display as well as swords and other artifacts in a few special rooms. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in that section and had to pay extra to get to it. It was worth it though. After the museum I decided that I wanted to head over to Golden Gate Park and take a look at the Japanese Garden there and hopefully find the Japanese tea house. We had lunch at Munch Haven (our new favorite restaurant and a local hangout) then jumped on a street car after I worked out the logistics of the next destination. We had no sooner got on the street car when Kathy realized that she had forgotten her camera at Munchies (I started calling it Munchies instead of Munch Haven because I like that name better). We argued and fussed for a couple of stops then jumped off the street car to hoof it back to Munchies in what I was positive was a futile attempt to recover her camera. I told her over and over that it was gone and that was that. Well, when she dashed in there after it the guy who waited on us had it behind the camera and already was getting it out when she walked in. Very nice people in that town. I was amazed that it hadn’t grown legs and walked right out of there.

Onward to Golden Gate Park we grabbed the next street car and got off at the entrance. Golden Gate Park is a mighty big piece of real estate and it was getting sort of late afternoonish on us. We had some serious hiking to do so we put it in high gear and proceeded to march our way thru it in search of the elusive Japanese garden. We finally got to it after what seemed to be a couple of miles walk. What do you know; they charged admission. Another chance to clip a poor tourist. $10 got us both in. It is a very nice place. The pictures will tell the story. We found the tea house too. It was small and pretty Spartan. I really liked it. We sat down outside on the edge of the seating area and ordered tea for two. A tiny Japanese girl dressed in a kimono and those wooden, cloggy, looking Japanese shoes brought us a pot of tea. I found out that in Sanfrancisco, the Japanese made the best tea overall, at least as far as restaurants are concerned. I can’t compare their tea to the tea we had in Chinatown at the tea shop, but then again, that was the best tea I had ever had in my life. $700/lb tea is wonderful tea and it had better be for that price. Anyway, we also got some Japanese snacks with our tea. I would have fell in love with this little tea house if it weren’t for the fact that it was packed to the brim with people. I doubt most of them truly understood what tea was all about. They were too busy stuffing themselves full of those snacks. I was looking for a very quiet place to enjoy the scenery and relax. The tea was supposed to just be the final, perfect, accompaniment to my enjoyment. The surprise at the end of the tea house fantasy was a bill for $8.25. Yikes. If I were to calculate out how much tea they put in that pot I bet it would come out to be $400/lb anyway. Oh well, I’m not going to have tea in a Japanese tea house like this back home so I sucked it up and forked over the cash.

By this time we had seen everything in the Japanese garden and decided to get out of the park before dark. I had read scary things about the park after dark and I didn’t want to find out how true they were. We grabbed another bus and headed out for our next adventure. On the way to the park we went right thru the Haight Ashbury district. We wanted to get some T-shirts for family so we got off on the main drag and proceeded to go shopping, possibly hoping to get a glimpse of either a real hippie or maybe Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead (that would have been a miracle since Jerry has passed away but hey, this was where he was from). We didn’t see any hippies to speak of but we saw all manner of touristy, hippie wannabe shops. It was 1965 and it was all for sale. The 60’s stuff was vastly overpriced junk that didn’t impress either of us. We tried a few stores and didn’t see anything that turned us on until we wound up in a T shirt shop. Kathy bought two T shirts for the princely sum of $56. I nearly lost it and the shop owner had to have heard me complaining about the exhorbitant cost. I walked out of the shop, knowing no good was going to come out of my bitching and decided to see if I could tell where this mythical Haight Ashbury corner was. After about 5 whole minutes of puzzling, I realized that I was standing on the very corner of Haight and Ashbury itself. Pretty neat. People were taking pictures of the street sign and everything. And we even got some authentic T shirts to commemorate the occasion. Further down the street we encountered a “Hemp shop”. Everything in the place was made out of hemp. There was a sign when you first walked in warning you not to ask if they sold dope, pot, mary jane, weed, marijuana, and a dozen other names for it. I got a kick out of that. I spotted a wallet (also made out of hemp) for $12 and bought it. This same wallet was $18 at the Persion bazaar and I prided myself on actually getting one over on some touristy vendor thief during our stay. I came to within a nickel of buying that wallet at the bazaar. I had seen them on the internet and they looked like they would hold up well so I was glad I got it.

Another hop on Sanfrancisco’s famous MUNI public transportation system and we found ourselves once again in the hustle and bustle of Union Square. If I had to do this trip again, I would not stay downtown. I think I would stay in Japantown which is where we journeyed to the very next day.

Sanfrancisco vacation day 3 a few more pics

Sanfrancisco vacation day 3

Wine tour

Day 3 was our day to take the wine tour. It was going to be great. They would pick us up in front of the hotel and drive us around all day and if we had too much wine, well it just didn’t matter. I picked out a company that only took out small numbers of people. Our group was only about a baker’s dozen and we all fit just fine in the touring van. The tour guide was friendly and chatted all the way to the Napa and Sonoma valleys, pointing out sights and attractions that we would have easily missed if we had gone up there ourselves. The other couples that were with us were a pretty diversified bunch. We had people from London, South Africa, Canada, Georgia, Mexico, and of course us from Alabama.

It is only a short drive from downtown to wine country. Very rural with grapes growing on every hillside. It was also quiet and the weather was warmer than in the city. We pulled up to the first winery and they immediately started pouring wine down us. There were 5 different ones to try at this place and I bellied right up to the bar to get my share. The hostess told us that the type of wine we would be having had a real “smokey” taste to it. When I tried it I changed “smokey” to “aged in a rubber tire”. Yuck. It was Sangeovese wine and I had never had it. I hated it and told the hostess that it tasted weird. I wanted to say it tasted like it had been made in an old inner tube but just barely managed to keep my mouth shut. She didn’t like my comment and pretty much gave me the cold shoulder after that. As I get older, I have learned to keep my mouth shut. The problem is that I don’t yet have the ability. Oh well, at least I told her the truth. I didn’t care for this winery and decided that they were just trying to sell us a bunch of overpriced tire fodder. The area was very nice and it was easy to get caught up in the wine making business, seeing that it was such nice scenery and looked to be a very laid back, quiet way to make a living. We pushed on to the second winery and everything was a little different. We were all seated at a large table together instead of a bar. The hostess poured everyone’s wine then described to us what we would be tasting. She said the first one tasted like grapefruit. It did. Very good stuff. The next one was supposed to taste like cherries and it did. Loved it. The others were pretty much a spot on to what she described we would be tasting. The name of the winery was Jacuzzi, just like the Jacuzzi bath tubs. The winery was owned by the same people who invented the Jacuzzi, thus the name. Neat. I’ve seen Jacuzzi wine in the store and said to myself that I would never buy something just for it’s silly name. I went looking for it the other day and couldn’t find any. I’ll turn some up one of these days.

The last winery was one that was more of a large production outfit. Our tour group was combined with two others from the same company and we all went on a complete tour of the facility. The guide was well versed in his job and described the process in great detail. At the end of the tour we had our wine tasting. The wine that they made was sparkling wine, which is like champaign but can’t be called that because it does not come from the Champaign region of France. I didn’t care, it was very good. He told us what we would taste, and like the other winery, his description was right on the money. After the tasting, people were allowed to ask questions. One question in particular caught my attention. There was a couple who were trying to decide what alloy of stainless steel the wine vats were made out of. He asked the guide if it was 304 or 316. The guide said that the answer to that question was beyond his scope of knowledge but since he was a former machinist, he knew what they were talking about. I thought it was a really dumb question and figured that the people who had asked it probably owned a machine shop in Michigan and that was their only point of reference. Oh well, some people. Also kind of made me wonder what a machinist was doing at a winery conducting tours. I figured he got laid off during the downturn in the economy.

We had lunch in a very small café that was in a tiny town in the Napa valley. The name of the town was Sonoma, not to be confused with the Sonoma valley which was pointed out to us. The food was very upscale and we enjoyed it. After lunch we were allowed to walk around town for about 45 minutes and we had fun looking in all the small shops. It was a pretty touristy place, like just about everywhere we had been while in the city but we enjoyed poking around and exploring none the less. The town didn’t look to be more than a few square blocks in size. I really love those tiny cafes, some of them had seating outdoors and it was really nice to just enjoy the lovely weather with a meal.

We were the last ones to be dropped off at the end of the day. I didn’t care for the reminders to tip the host but I gave her a pretty good amount anyway.

Sanfrancisco vacation day 2

Chinatown!

Day two saw us heading to Chinatown. We started off our day by walking down market street, threading our way thru the homeless people to a little café called Munch Haven. Breakfast was wonderful but expensive. This little place was really neat. Tiny, and inhabited by locals, it wasn’t too busy. We felt like we had found a place that wasn’t touristy. We were in a section of the city known as “The Tenderloin”. I had read horror stories about the Tenderloin and even early in the morning, I knew they weren’t kidding about it.

Back up Market street we got in line to ride a cable car for Chinatown. It was early so there wasn’t a big line. The conductor was calling for people who were going to work to get in the front of the line. The tourists would have to wait. The cable car ride was slow but fun, nothing I would ride unless I needed to really get somewhere. We jumped off and walked several blocks to Chinatown.

Right at the Chinatown gate we strolled in and found out that we were a little early. It was dead in the water. All the stores had not opened yet. Not to worry, I had been studying up on Chinatown and I knew that the REAL Chinatown was on Stockton street a block over. We hiked up the hill to Stockton just as it was awakening. The open air markets are a real blast to your eyes, ears, and nose. Especially your nose. I smelled things and had no idea what they could possibly be. I’m not taking wonderful smells either. It was pretty funky. Kind of a fishy, herby, weird sort of thing. There were lots of shops selling herbal remedies that were dried roots, fungus, mushrooms, and God knows what else. The idea is to tell the doctor at the counter what is ailing you then he prepares a concoction of these dried mysteries and you go home and brew a tea out of it. Drink the tea and hope that it doesn’t kill you in the process, then you are cured. I didn’t buy any. There were lots of Chinese people, mostly elderly, buying groceries and meat at the open markets. We strolled thru and saw butchers cutting up fresh pork, fish markets where the fish were laying out in the open and still wiggling, and even saw an old woman who had a large fish in a cardboard box that she was trying to sell to everyone who walked by. Sort of a miniature yard sale. It was cut up in weird sections and looked a little scary. There was no behind the scenes food preparation going on either. Everything was done right in front of you. The butcher shop was really something. All those people hacking away at the carcasses right in the open. The little shops had just about everything imaginable for sale and it was pretty hard to negotiate the narrow isles. I really enjoyed the Chinese restaurant supply places and wanted to buy everything I touched but there was no way I would have been able to pack it for the trip home. I will get these things on the internet one of these days. One item that I really wanted to bring home was a teapot to remember the occasion. I’m becoming sort of a collector of these silly things and have amassed about a dozen or so. I only really need a couple to brew just about any kind of tea. I must have looked at over 1,000 teapots of all sizes and shapes. I saw teapots that would hold over 5 gallons of tea to tiny ones that would hold only about 1 ounce. I just couldn’t find one that was really “me” though. Towards the end of the day I told Kathy that I thought I would try getting a tea pot in Japantown another day instead. After buzzing thru the area I began to notice that the majority of the stores were either grocery/vegetable markets, restaurants, herb stores, or junk shops. There wasn’t a large variety. We did notice a pet shop in the area but it had went out of business. I won’t try and spin a joke about Chinese restaurants and pet shops but it’s tempting. We were pretty tired from running around looking in all of the shops and decided we would try our luck at lunch. Kathy picked out a dim sum house that looked pretty nice and it turned out to be yummy. We were seated at a very large table that could have held a dozen people. There were others at our table and they must have thought we looked pretty out of place in there since we were the only two white folks in the place. It was packed too. I took that to be a good sign. The food was really good and we ate our fill. After a while, an elderly lady at our table struck up a conversation with us. She was friendly, like all the people in the city, but her English was only slightly better than our Chinese. Anyway, Kathy enjoyed talking with her. She asked how much our bill was and we told her around $20. She said we got out of there pretty good. The dim sum was a little different than what I was used to but it was great. I had some Chinese broccoli that was wonderful. We also had pot stickers, custard muffins, and other things that I can’t even name. The best thing about this place was that you didn’t ask for tea, they just put down a pot right in front of you. I was disappointed that it came in that ugly stainless steel pot just like at home but I guess that is the North American standard for Chinese restaurant tea pots. One lady who was bringing the dim sum out in carts would get right behind me and yell what she had in Chinese. I didn’t know what her game was but she made me jump more than once. Once out of the restaurant we continued on our way to discover new treasures.

The very next place we came to was an authentic tea shop. It was tiny and we were the only people in there. The entire shop was about the size of an average bedroom. We sat down at the little counter and talked with the owner for about an hour about tea. He served us several varieties and we all had a great time sipping tea and talking about everything. We came out of there with over $150 worth of tea and that was for only two 8 ounce bags. This stuff was EXPENSIVE. It was also very good. He let us sample a very high grade of tea that sold for $700 a pound. I have never had tea that good. The taste was unlike any other tea I have ever had and to say the least, it was incredible. I learned a lot about tea that day. The owner’s wife also gave us a couple of small bags of tea as gifts. The tea shop visit turned out to be one of the most rewarding aspects of the day.

We wandered around for a couple more hours and saw a little more of the real thing. We went past the Hang ah tea room and I told Kathy we would come back another day for tea. I will discuss the merits of the Hang ah tea room in a future blog. Right past this place (we were in a small alley) we peered into a room that was filled with people playing Mah Jong. No way we were getting in there (it was packed) but I felt like this was part of real Chinatown life. Kathy was afraid we were going to get mugged in the alley so we pressed on. We also found a lovely park that was full of Chinese people playing a game that I think is called “Go”. It kind of looks like checkers but the playing pieces are placed on the intersections of the squares and not in the square itself. It was a very popular game and there would be two guys playing and about a dozen watching them. It could have been the national championships for all we knew. Kathy asked a man if she could take his picture but he pointed to some others. I told her that people don’t always like to have their picture taken. Could have been that there was just a little bit of gambling going on and I figured that they didn’t want to advertise themselves.

Back on the street, we plowed our way thru the rest of Chinatown. I wanted to find the fortune cookie factory but never could locate it. Try as I might, it eluded us for the entire visit. Kathy wasn’t as enthusiastic about finding it as I was but it really wasn’t a “holy grail” type of thing for me anyway. I just wanted to see how they made the stupid things. Chinatown is really “tinsely”, brightly lit, and full of tourists on the main drag and we ended our trip where we started. At the end of the day I told Kathy that I was in “sensory overload” and couldn’t take it anymore. It was just too much to see.

As far as I could tell, we pretty much covered nearly every square inch of Chinatown except for that stupid fortune cookie factory. We even got to the outer limits and saw some of North Beach. This area is Italian and we switched from ducks and pieces of barbequed pork hanging in the windows to the smell of coffee and garlic. We didn’t take too many pictures in Chinatown. I was so intent on seeing everything that I just dragged my poor wife around at high speed and wouldn’t hardly let her stop long enough to snap many pictures. She took nearly all of the pictures on the trip and did a great job with them.

Sanfrancisco vacation day 1

Last fall I asked my blushing bride of some 24 years where she would like to go for our 25^th wedding anniversary and she said, “I’d really like to go to Sanfrancisco”. So for about 10 months or so we talked about it, studied up about it on the internet, and mapped it all out. The following series of 7 blogs will document our trip in words and Kathy’s pictures. I’ll try not to bore anyone with details, instead focusing on highlights and interest.

We arrived at the Sanfrancisco airport easily enough after being packed like sardines for the day in 2 different airplanes. Air travel is not the comfortable, luxuriant, travel option it used to be. Gone are the days of free meals, free baggage check, and generally, free anything. I’m famous for my stingy, cheap, outlook on my wallet so I’m going to be mentioning (whining) about how expensive everything was. $7 for an airline salad that consisted of some lettuce and a few pieces of chicken ain’t a good value in my book. This after paying $60 to check my luggage. After the plane ride it was time for the train. We took the BART (Bay area regional transportation?) train and got off at the stop I thought was ours. I spent weeks studying the city transportation system and my notes indicated it was only a short walk to the hotel. Slight problem was that the short walk had to be in the right direction and I had a little trouble with that. So we humped our luggage through the downtown area like a couple of lost Sherpas in our attempt to find the holy land known as the Parc 55 hotel. Sanfranciscan’s are famous for their friendliness and we found over and over how true this was during our stay. We asked for directions to the hotel and were delighted at how helpful the person was. However; there is one niche of city society that aren’t so friendly. More on “them” later.

After finding the hotel we both collapsed on the beds and unwound for a while. I later suggested we go for a walk and try and get our bearings so we ventured out for a big walk around the hotel (1 square block). Walking is the other big thing about Sanfrancisco and we did a ton of it. I lost 5 pounds after only 1 week in this town but I suspect that I’ll find it when we return to good old fatty Alabama. We got a little bolder after the 1 square block jaunt and thought we would expand our horizons slightly so we crossed the street. Well, what do you know, in about 2 seconds we were approached by one of “them”: street people. Homeless, luckless, toothless, nasty, vermon. “Rodney” wanted to sell us a map of the city. It seems that he worked for a homeless shelter for orphaned children and the money was going to be put to good use. The map was only $.25 cents and contained lots of discounts on all kinds of city attractions. Well, he wasn’t getting my quarter. Uh oh. I turned around and there she was, kind hearted and nearly in tears, Kathy was searching thru her purse for the quarter that was going to save all of those dear homeless orphans that “Rodney” was caring for. As soon as he saw her purse come open, he immediately announced that a dollar would be better. Well, how about that. He wound up clipping her for about $1.50. “God bless you Mame, you have saved their lives”, he preached. I later found out that the maps were free anyway. We overheard him running the same story to a lady behind us. She wasn’t having any of it. His response to her was to spit a string of the most venom laden 4 letter words that we had ever heard. That cured Kathy of her generosity towards the street people. We were hit on all week by all manner of scary looking, foul smelling, people that barely passed for humanity.

We snuck into a really neat diner that had a 50’s motif for a bite. It was decorated with all kinds of 50’s memorabilia. There was an Indian motorcycle hanging from the ceiling, a VW microbus half stuck out of a wall, pictures of betty boop, neat stuff. The food was fantastic and the price was right up there in the clouds. Oh well, we’re on vacation!