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!