Sanfrancisco day 7

Fisherman’s wharf

Our last full day in Sanfrancisco and all we had left to do was to take a tour of the bay. I was a little worried that we had run out of things to do. The guide book that I bought said to avoid the wharf because it was too touristy and did not capture the real feel of the city. At the end of the day I was in disagreement with the tour book about the wharf. It turned out that we had all kinds of things to do and see. We started out on the tour boat. It was a little hokey; what with our “tour guide” being Captain Nemo and some other silly characters. It was informative though, and the cruise around the bay was very nice. If I had another day I think we would have sailed across the bay to the tiny town of Salsilito. It was recommended by Captain Nemo as a fun place to spend the day shopping and looking around. We saw Alcatraz island. Pretty creepy even from just the boat. Here again, the tour book said it wasn’t worth going to but I think I would have liked to walked around on it anyway. We got to sail right underneath the golden gate bridge, then turned around and headed back. I think the whole tour was something less than 2 hours. I’ve left a few pics here of sights from the boat and one of Kathy in her scarf. She now looked just like the rest of the local Sanfrancisco hens. A good many of them were wearing scarfs. I bought that one for her in Chinatown, of course.

Back from the tour boat we walked along the waterfront and took in all the sights. The famous walruses on Pier 39 were there. I wasn’t impressed. I had more fun looking at all of the boats along the way. There were quite a few fishing boats there of all sizes and shapes. They were in varying degrees of seaworthiness too. A couple looked like they were about to sink right there at the pier. We came upon the very last of the Liberty ships from WWII that was on display. We didn’t go on it. There was a submarine from WWII there as well. I’ve been on a couple of these before so we didn’t take the tour. We did tour several boats that were moored along another pier though. There was a very large sailboat named the Balclutha that we spent a couple of hours on. Very neat ship. It was used to haul timber to Australia then used to haul salmon from Alaska. It was huge. There was also a large steam powered tugboat named Hercules that we walked thru. The tours were fun.

For lunch we stopped at a large bar with very lousy service but pretty good food. Then it was more sight seeing. There were all kinds of shops and street vendors selling mostly jewelry and portrait painting. The guide book said that the food along the waterfront was way overpriced. I disagreed again. I felt like it was way overpriced in the whole city. We never did get a bargain on any food.

At the opposite end of the wharf is what is known as the Ferry building. We looked around in it for awhile and what do you know, there was a tea shop there. Imperial Tea Court. (Okay, I knew about it already but I wasn’t letting on). We had tea in what I figured was the closest thing to an authentic Chinese tea house as could be had on the North American continent. The tea was served in gaiwans, which is a Chinese cup with a lid and a saucer, not the tea pot most are accustomed to. We enjoyed it as best we could but considering we were a little hot from the long walk, it would have been better to have something cold instead of hot tea. Oh well, I had to do everything and time was really running out on us. I picked up a tea decanter while we were there and actually restrained myself from buying any more tea. I had already shelled out over $150 for about ½ pound of the stuff in Chinatown a few days earlier.

The street car ride back to the hotel was interesting. We were packed in that thing like sardines. This was the same line that had passed us a day or two ago and left us to hoof it back thru North Beach.

We did some shopping and looking around in a huge mall when we got back to Union square. The mall must have had 10 floors. I gave up and gave out after about 5. We saw so much that we just couldn’t take it anymore. We even ran into another tea shop. It was about that time that I had had all I could take. A slick talking salesgirl tried to sell us some hand lotion or something that was supposed to be the fountain of youth but we managed to get out of there without buying any. She wasted about 45 minutes of our time too. I wasn’t too happy about that but she wouldn’t let us go and Kathy isn’t the type to just walk away like me. There was a leather shop that we wandered into that was having a fashion show. We were invited to stay for it and were even offered champaigne but when I saw the prices on that stuff, we beat a trail out of there. Way out of my price range. The girl that spoke to us looked like a plastic surgeon’s worst nightmare. She had every plastic surgery operation you could think of and they all turned out the same: terrible. She didn’t even look human but at least she was very friendly to us. This place had a couple of young girls at the entrance standing around looking pretty with next to nothing on too. The things they will do to separate you from your money. Unbelievable.

That evening finished our adventure. The next morning we packed and headed over to the bagel shop for breakfast and a packed lunch then it was time to wag all of those suitcases around until we got to the airport. I have never been so happy to be able to dump those things off. I humped them from the hotel to the train thru downtown Union Square, then thru the airport terminal to the tram, and finally to the ticket counter at the airline. I couldn’t believe that we managed to fit all of the junk we had bought into those suitcases. It’s a shame that you have to bring your own food onto the plane but air travel just isn’t the experience it used to be. It’s horrible and I doubt it will ever get any better.

Well, seven fun days of shopping and sight seeing complete! Our 25^th wedding anniversary gift to each other was little more than a dream fantasy two years ago when we first started talking about it and I’m glad that we saw it thru. We started planning for this about 9 or 10 months prior to leaving. I also never thought that we would actually go. When it was getting close to time to be making reservations I threw out the idea of Plan B to Florida instead but Kathy really wanted Sanfrancisco. A couple of days after getting back, I asked her if she would like to do it again and she said “Hell no!” I think I might have walked her too much. She was a trooper though, never complained a bit the entire time, even when I screwed up the streetcar schedule a few times.

Sanfrancisco day 6

The Sanfrancisco Zoo and the Hang Ah tea room.

Day 6 of our adventure saw us heading to the zoo. I had high hopes for it since SF is such a large city and the bigger cities usually have the better zoos. Well, it turned out to be less than stellar. It wasn’t really much better than any other zoo I had ever been to. I’ll post a few pictures just for fun anyway. On the way there, I started to get a little cocky with the transit system and nearly had us going in the opposite direction that we should have gone. Lucky for me, we were saved by yet another local resident who pointed us in the right direction. I just love those locals. They have got to be the friendliest people on the planet. The zoo is a long ride from where we were staying so we got to see quite a few sites on the way to it. Mostly, it was “how the other half lived”. We went thru a few areas that looked pretty grim. I was glad the train didn’t stop at any of the scary places.

As I said, there isn’t much to report about the zoo. The pictures tell the story well enough. When we got back to our room I wanted to take another crack at Chinatown and specifically, the Hang Ah tea room. I told Kathy I wanted to head over there to get some dim sum since the last time we were there all we had was tea. While there, another local mentioned to us that the Hang ah had the very best dim sum in all of Chinatown. A pretty big boast since there had to be at least 500 Chinese restaurants in the city but I had started to put a lot of trust in the locals and if he said it was the best, then that was good enough for me. We headed out with my assurance that we wouldn’t have to do a lot of walking since we were both tired from hoofing it around all day at the zoo. My perceived familiarality of the MUNI transit system was faulty again. The street I wanted to go up didn’t have the street car line I thought it did so I told her we would just have to walk a little bit to the next bus stop. Trouble was there wasn’t a next bus stop. We got to within eyesight of the Chinatown gate and I said we might just as well walk it in. The road was steep and we had already gone many blocks and Kathy was winded. Then something else hit me. Just where had I seen this place? I wasn’t sure. We walked around while I tried to find a landmark to get my bearings but it wasn’t happening. Further and further and no dim sum. It was very late on Sunday afternoon and I was getting worried that they would shut Chinatown down on us before we had a chance to eat. I was getting pretty worried about Kathy so I resorted to leaving her in one spot where she could rest while I ran up ahead and scouted around for our destination. I eventually found it and dragged her up one last steep hill before we got to the alley where it was located. In we went, panting and red-faced, for the prize at the end of the line.

The Hang Ah isn’t known for its décor. Inside it is all plastic dinnerware and colors. The white walls are trimmed in green and orange. By green and orange I mean bright, plastic green and bright, plastic orange. It is tiny. The dining room couldn’t have been much bigger than two typical bedrooms. We got the same waitress as last time and she was really happy to see us. A Chinese girl (imagine that in Chinatown), and had come over from China to get work. She was from Guangdong, I think. We chatted with her the entire time we were there. She had no concept of America from a geographical standpoint. She didn’t know where Alabama was and I don’t believe she had ever looked at an atlas of the country. I guess I am just more interested in geography than the average bear. I encountered the same thing with a guy I met on the wine tour who was from South Africa. He didn’t know anything geographic about the United States. He didn’t even know where Florida was and this guy was studying to get his PHD. Heck, at least a hick like me knows where Cape Town is.

Dim sum at the Hang Ah is a little different that what is considered traditional. You order what you want, and then they bring it to you instead of wheeling it up on a cart and tossing it out at you. Everything we tried was fantastic. The rabbit shaped dumplings were the best. They looked just like little bunnies right down to the ears and tiny eyes. Almost too good to eat. I had read that this place was the first dim sum house in Chinatown and had been in existence since the 20’s, I think. There were even pictures of Chinatown beauty pageants from years ago hung on the walls. I was disappointed in the tea. It was served in that all too familiar, stainless steel pot that is the epitome of Chinese restaurant tea. I have eaten in hundreds of Chinese places, from crummy, run-down hole in the walls, to really fancy ones and except for one place, they all have that same sad looking disgrace of a tea pot. Lucky for me that my favorite place back home serves me tea on a nice ceramic one like God and Buddha intended. We stuffed ourselves then said goodbye to the waitress. If I ever get back to Sanfrancisco, I believe this place will be my first stop.

For the ride home, we caught what appeared to be the last street car out of Chinatown. It was getting late and they were starting to roll up the sidewalks. I finally got my directions right and found the original car line I had wanted to use so the walk was quite short. It was barely 6:30 in the evening and Chinatown was getting very quite and dark. Kind of fitting to see it this way since we would not be coming back for the rest of our stay.

Sanfrancisco day 5

Japantown

Day 5 of our big vacation and today was destination Japantown. We headed out on the MUNI transit system and got off waaaay too soon. I must have misfigured our stop off point and we had to walk for a while to get there. This area was very nice. I found out later that Japantown is bordered by Pacific Heights which is one of the most upscale areas in Sanfrancisco. We hiked on in and I was taken back a bit with the area. It was pretty demure compared to Chinatown with all it’s glitz and tinsel. There were no throngs of tourists. No mobs of Japanese people going to the market to get the best deal on fish. It was pretty quiet. We poked around in a few places and didn’t see much until we came to the Soko hardware store. Oh my, this was my kind of place. They had tons of woodworking tools and many of them were Japanese tools. I picked over everything 3 times before going downstairs and getting overwhelmed all over again with all of the kitchen wares they had for sale. Nothing touristy about this place. They just had a lot of Japanese stuff. We looked around and I told Kathy we would come back to pick up some goodies I had my eye on.

We nosed around a little more, into a couple of small shops and a grocery store but we were mainly looking for the Japanese mall. When we found it, it wasn’t like what you would expect from a mall. There was not really any parking and it looked like it was tiny. Once we got inside, we found out that it was fairly good sized. Every store in this place was Japanese, right down to the Japanese dollar store. That place was hilarious. We looked thru furniture stores, antique stores, even a drug store. I started to blow off the drugstore as a waste of time but the more I looked, the more interested I became. There were literally tons of items in there for sale that you would never get in any regular drug store. The antiques were amazing, and the prices matched. I didn’t even know what half of that stuff was but it was expensive. In the tour guide I had bought there was a couple of sentences about a restaurant in Japantown that was one of the most authentic ones in all of Sanfrancisco. I didn’t have much faith that we would find it but we ran right into it. It was in the mall and had to be the smallest restaurant I have ever seen. It was more like a café and only had about a dozen tables, half of which were out in the walk area of the mall. I showed the small write-up about the place to the waitress and she took it back to the kitchen for them to see it as well. I asked her to have them sign my book but they refused, stating that they couldn’t duplicate the owner’s signature. I felt bad about that but I guess it was some sort of Japanese thing. While we were there an older gentleman struck up a conversation with us (the typical friendly as heck Sanfranciscan). He asked us why we were there and we told him we were celebrating our 25^th wedding anniversary. He was impressed and said that it was unusual to find anyone that had been married for that long anymore. He said that he and his husband had been married for 20 years themselves and …………….????? (insert loud record needle scratching across the entire album here). Well, we both smiled kind of sheepishly and said that was “great” that they had been together for that long and prayed there would be no more details on the “marriage”. He caught us totally off guard because he just talked and acted so normal. His “husband” came prancing over a while later and we knew who wore the pants in the family at that point. He had been haggling for a piece of expensive jewelry next door and was a giddy as a little school girl about it. It was only going to cost $1,000 and he had been working on the owner (a friend of his) for quite a while to get it to that price. The older guy said that he had all of his money tied up in jewelry since he was afraid to invest in anything else. Evidentally, the guy was quite wealthy. I’d be wealthy too if I never had any kids. Anyway, the conversation was pleasant and entertaining, especially watching the faggy one skip back and forth from the jewelry store. He wasn’t the least bit interested in eating his lunch and left his “husband” to fend for himself. Oh well. We left the little café, after having completely enjoyed our wonderful lunch, and spent a couple more hours exploring the mall. I stuck my head in a sushi restaurant where the food goes around a huge table in little boats. The smell nearly knocked me over but I would have tried it anyway. That mall turned out to be bigger than I could guess and we took in every bit of it. There were many Japanese restaurants. If I ever go back to Sanfrancisco, I just might stay in Japantown. It was really neat. Out of the mall and back to Soko hardware for my goodies. I bought two Japanese chisels and a Japanese saw. I also bought my souvinear tea pot. It was so different that I couldn’t resist. I had looked at easily over 500 tea pots and bought one from a hardware store, of all places. This one was unusual because of it’s texture and color. I like the shape too. Kind of small and really rough on the outside.

The guy we were talking to at the café told us to head over a few streets to Filmore because the shopping was supposed to be real good. We went the opposite of what I think he really suggested and ended up in a not so nice part of town. It felt like we were in the “hood” and we weren’t liking it so we went back. My plans to take a certain MUNI bus line were foiled when I found out that the street only went one way. I would have to find another route back. No matter, there was a little park just up the road that I wanted to see. The traveler’s guide said it was nice even though the guy at the restaurant said it wasn’t worth looking at and there wasn’t anything up there.

The walk up the street started out nicely. Lots of neat little stores to window shop in. Problem was, the street was getting steeper, and steeper, and even steeper. The farther we walked, the more strenuous it became. I knew where the park was, it just seemed to be more out of reach than I had anticipated. I was getting a little worried about my sidekick too. She was trucking along, not complaining a bit, but I knew she was running out of gas. We had to stop to rest many times before we got to this mountain park and I do believe the oxygen up there was a little thinner than down in Japantown. When the edge of the park was in sight, the hill was really steep, so much that I was a little concerned about our chances of making it. We troopered on like a couple of Mt. Everest sherpas and finally made our base camp at the edge of the park. Along the way we stopped and chatted with another local while we caught our breath. Friendly as always, she was pleasant and well spoken. Originally from Pennsylvania and quite happy to have that state in her rear view mirror to boot. At the park entrance, the steps were nearly straight up and looked to be about 2 stories high. This was beginning to get to be more trouble than it was worth but I was going all the way regardless. We trogged up the stairs and scaled our way to what I initially thought was the summit of this place. Turns out there was another area that was even higher but first we had a nice rest on a park bench.

In front of the park benches was a children’s playground. There was a small birthday party being held for a little girl. She looked to be about 5 or 6 years old, in a pretty dress that could have been a ball room gown, barefoot, with long blonde hair that was tangled from the wind. There were 4 or 5 of them in all, running around and laughing, taking a bite of cake that their mother was holding for them when they got the notion, then racing off for more fun. I watched them while I was still panting from our hiking ordeal, figuring that the steep streets didn’t even affect the locals, and amazed that these little kids had so much energy and joy. The whole scene didn’t look right to me. It was windy, a little cold, and the air was wet with a slight fog. Looking around it was obvious that we were on one of the highest points in the city. The view of Sanfrancisco bay was ours at a glance. And right in the middle of it there were these little munchkins, racing around barefoot in their fancy dresses, as the birthday party drew to a close. There was some cake left and I was wondering if they would offer any to us. We weren’t too close to the party but I wanted some cake and some more Sanfranciscan conversation. The little ones were rounded up while a couple of parents exchanged contact information. Everyone was thin. I couldn’t imagine being overweight in this part of town. In the city a car is not really necessary but even with a great public transportation system, there is going to be a vast amount of walking. The party faded off and we began to notice another curiosity in the park; there were several really nice looking dogs being walked by their owners. It was a dog show. Petigreed and neatly groomed, we watched all manner of fancy pets paraded thru the area. I wanted to make the final assault on this mountain park in order to reach the highest point, so after a 30 minute rest we continued on. It wasn’t too bad to the top. There was a small forest up there with some huge trees. We walked around and admired the view, a little curious about the young couple snuggled together on the ground all wrapped up in a blanket in a never ending embrace. After a while we decided to head out of the park but we kept hearing very funny noises from the trees. They sounded like monkeys, or at least something we had never heard before. After several minutes of puzzling, the mystery was solved when a dozen birds flew out of the trees. They were some sort of parrot or cockatiel that was native to the area, told to us by a lady we ran into down the path. There was a large hawk way up high in a tree that would just sit there and never fly off. The other birds were not happy with the situation and were squalking loudly. The lady told us that the hawk was part of a mated pair that had a nest and tried to raise babies. The babies died and one of the hawks flew away. The other one had been sitting in the very top of a tree, preening itself for days without flying. She was worried that it wasn’t eating and was going to die. She had been watching the hawks for a long time. We chatted with this lady for over 30 minutes before finally leaving the park. It was a steep downhill walk but certainly was easier than it was going up. My plan was to head to the waterfront and maybe check out the Ferry building before it got too late. We walked several blocks and admired the architecture along the way. There were some large, spectacular houses in this area. Halfway down the mountain we spotted a cable car and jumped on and rode it all the way to the end of the line. From there we looked around the waterfront and Ferry building a little and decided to get home since it was getting late. I was getting pretty cocky with the street car system by now so we headed to a stop and waited for one to pick us up. About the time we saw one coming, it was already passing us by! The stupid driver even waved at us. I couldn’t believe it. That line would have dropped us right off next to the hotel and here we were, stranded. I thought that maybe it only stopped at that place at certain times of the day so it was time to start hoofing it back. That was going to be quite a bit of hoofing too. We walked (uphill again) for several blocks to try and find another street car line that would take us home. I had a general idea of where we were but didn’t realize it was that far to the hotel. Before we knew it, we were right in the middle of the red light district. Hoochie coochie bars and adult night clubs everywhere. By shear luck, we also ran right into a restaurant that was supposed to have really good Italian food. It was called “A Tu Tu Qua”. The wine country tour guide had told us about this place a couple of days before. We went in and had supper. Two appetizers, a small pizza, and two glasses of wine for $70. Jeez. I felt like my wallet had been molested. Anyway, the food was very good and it was unique. The pizza didn’t even have sauce on it. I made a new plan for our trip back to the hotel and it looked like it was going to take us thru Chinatown again. I realized that we had landed in North Beach which borders Chinatown on the North side. Just outside the restaurant was an all Chinese band. They were playing Chinese instruments that had that funny kazoo/whiny sound. The band was pretty large with about 12 people in all. They weren’t half bad and drew a pretty decent crowd. Kathy got right up next to them and admired their weird looking instruments. Some of them only had 1 or 2 strings. A little farther along Chinatown and we managed to catch a street car back home. This was by far our most adventurous day and was my favorite. We slept good that night since I guessed we must have walked several miles in all that day.