Month: December 2013

After a cruisey get up time and a late breakfast (we had to do laundry!), we headed off to Dylan’s Tours again, as with the Famous Tour, you get a free day hire of a bicycle!   We rocked up about 11am and picked up our cycles.  They come with helmets, and little satchels on the front, that have a bike lock in them, and place to put your bits.   They were weird at first, as they are cheap road bikes, no suspension, and you sit quite upright on them, which I wasn’t used to.  The gears were also a little temperamental sometimes, and you had to be gentle changing them.   The worst bit was my bell didn’t work properly.  Priorities!

We headed off North, up to Fishermans Wharf, then headed west, along the waterfront.  There is a nice little bike/walking track, that runs along the coast for ages, and is away from most of the cars.  Tons of people along them, walking themselves, walking their dogs, and lots of tourists like us, biking.   A lot of serious bikers too, all in their skintight gear, and zooming around.    We also saw a couple of kiters out on the bay, zooming around on their foil boards.

 

It was exceptionally pleasant to bike along the waterfront, the sun was shining (again), with clear blue skies.  We didn’t see the turn off, and ended up right under the bridge, where we found a fort, a big concrete thing, where they used to defend the edge of the harbour with cannons.  It was about four stories high, with super thick brick and concrete walls, and you could peer over the top to see the tide rushing past below.  We watched a video on the making of the Golden Gate Bridge, and it was quite informative.  Quite a feat.  Took the guy who designed it 3 years just to come up with a plan.     At the top of the Fort, you could look up to the underneath workings of the bridge, massive steel girders, and what looked like thousands of rivets (I think there were something like 600,000 rivets in each tower, so who knows how many they used all up.  A lot).

After leaving the Fort, we made our way up a short hill to the bridge, and then crossing below the road, got onto the west platform, which was reserved for bikers today.   There were tons of people, both walking across and biking across, and as it was a weekend, they made the bikers and walkers go separate.  Probably a good thing, considering how many bikers there were, and how fast some of them went.

 

We stopped at the first tower to have a look around without biking into a wall   It made me a bit nervous looking over the edge, as it was quite high above the water, and the tide was rushing past.   Apparently lots of unhappy people like to jump off the bridge, and most don’t survive, mostly because the very strong currents around the bridge get them.  There was also a phone with a sign saying, ’emergency or distress helpline, please call us’.

We stopped to take pictures, and admire the lovely orange-red, and the height of tower, and width of the cables.  I probably couldn’t have wrapped my arms around the top cables, I think they said the amount of wire used, if laid end to end, would go around the earth 3 times.  Instead, they cabled and wrapped it into massive cables to hold the bridge up.  It looks pretty sturdy.
It took quite a while to go over the bridge, and it was really quite noisy, with cars constantly going past, and having to keep right, and look out for oncoming cyclists.  We reached the other side, had a photo, then started back.  Back seemed much easier, a bit like going downhill, but I don’t think it actually is.  We did have a tail wind.

Once we were done with the bridge, we had a sad hour or so, while we biked around, absolutely starving, trying to find somewhere to eat.  It was about 2pm by this time, and it was a sad state of affairs until we found some food, in a little cafe, somewhere between the Presidio and the Golden Gate Bridge.  Much restored after lunch, we felt we could go on, and headed down to the Golden Gate Park.  Apparently is is a park built from scratch, as the land there was just kind of sandy dunes, and they decided to have a park.  It is quite lovely, with paths throughout, and heaps of things to do.  We spent a while looking at a big black bird, that kept cawing at me, trying to decide if it was a raven or a crow.   Still don’t really know, but I didn’t know if we would find Ravens in town.  Anyway, we biked through the eastern part of the park, and it was quite lovely, if getting a little cold, as the sun was starting to go down.  Didn’t see any squirrels though, which is sad.

Biked past the Painted Ladies, the houses that are pretty much the same, apart from the colours.  We then decided it would be great to bike down the crookedest street, Lombard street, on our way back.   A great idea, but did mean climbing to the top of the street first, which, I have to say, was quite steep.  Totally worth the hike though, it was a very crooked street, and very steep, but pretty, and very fun to bike down.

 

The brakes on my bike decided that was the last straw, and started making metal grating noises by the bottom of the hill, luckily it wasn’t far on to the bike shop to return our bikes.  It was close to 6, and pretty much full dark by the time we gave them back.

To finish some of the last things I wanted to do, we walked back to the end of Fishermans Wharf, and got in line to catch the Cable Car.  A big line.  Was there for over half an hour.  But we managed to get on one eventually, the number 13, christmas decorated one, which was pleasing.  It was much more fun to ride the hills by cable car, than bike, and we rode it all the way down to Union Square.  Once there, we found a restaurant and bakery called the Cheesecake Factory, which was really quite popular, judging by the people all clustered around waiting for a table.  Probably expensive.  We just bought a piece of cheesecake to share, and sat in Union Square to eat it.  It was a super duper oreo cheesecake, was ridiculously rich, we ate half sitting in teh square, and then could barely finish the other half, later on after dinner.

We walked back up Chinatown, and found a deishuz vegetarian restaurant to eat in.   After sitting down and having jasmine tea delivered, we realised we only had about 14$ in cash, so might not be able to do dinner.  The waitress saved us though, and we had a lovely meal of tofu and mushrooms in a spicy sauce, with rice.  Eftpos is not a big thing in the states, so many places do cash only/mostly.
As we hadn’t walked the requisite hundreds of kilometers for the day, we walked even further to Safeway, to get food for the next day, as we are doing the Yosemite Tour!  Excited!

My phone power button decided at that moment to die, so we will have to get that fixed before we leave SF, as otherwise the phone is fine, and super annoying not to have a working button.
Tonight might be our first night without roomies, which will be great, as they have a tendency to come and go at ridiculous hours, and do things like sleep on teh floor, and hold very long whispered conversations at 3am.  Who knows why.

We awoke bright and early, to a guy asleep on the bunk above, and a guy sleeping under a blanket on the floor, right in front of my pack, with his head pillowed on my shoes.  Awkward.    By the time we had breakfasted (on bagels, again), and showered, he had moved off my shoes, so luckily I didn’t have to wake him to get them out.

Today we were doing the Dylan’s Famous tour – a bus tour of the city in a minivan.  It was pretty amazing, we got to see all the main sights of San Francisco, and the guy had an amazing amount of knowledge about the city, and he talked throughout most of the driving bits of the trip.  We started at Union Square, then headed straight into the Tenderloin, probably one of the lesser parts of the city, and the only part he advised us to be careful in.  It has a lot of homeless, soup kitchens etc.   Drove past the town hall area.

Next we went to the Mission district, that has undergone a lot of changes.  It has a large Latino population, and in many of the shops are both english and spanish translations.  The mission district used to be quite run down, but more recently has become a place of the hip and cool, and there are a lot of good food places, we saw a line of maybe 10-15 people waiting to get in to a corner cafe.  We stopped in an alleyway, where people had done a lot of graffiti art, and there was a whole history behind it – something along the lines of a run down part of town, artists move in, practice on the walls, make it pretty, more ‘well-off’ people start moving in, voila!  Gentrification of an area.   The street art was pretty amazing and detailed, and much of it has a deeper message, or reflects on society and particular views.

Dolores Park, which overlooks the city, and is often full to the brim in spring and summer good days.

Twin Peaks, the top of a hill overlooking the San Fran skyline.  You can look straight up Market Street, and all around, out to the Golden Gate Bridge and furthur.

Castro district, home to gay pride.  Lots of guys, rainbow flags, people walking their dogs.

 

Haight and Ashbury, home to the hippies in the 60s and 70s.  Lots of famous names like  Janice Joplyn, The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix.  We got icecream from a Ben and Jerrys on the corner, with riduculous flavours, while a homeless* guy on the corner gave an empassioned speech while dancing over the road.  (*probably homeless, probably on some sort of drugs/weed, who knows!).  The Hells Angels also used to live in the area, and often went around with the Grateful Dead, acting as bodyguards.

 

 

Pacific Heights, and the millionaires/billionaires row, a range of massive houses on top of a hill, with commanding views of the bay.  One of the residents was setting up for a party and had closed the road.  Crazy decorations and setting up going on.

The painted ladies, a group of houses pretty much exactly the same, that survived the 1906 earthquake.  A lot of that type of housing was destroyed, the old Victorian type houses.

We drove through the Presidio, a lovely park/suburb area, that is being held in trust in case the army ever want it back.  You can rent properties and live there, but you can’t buy properties or land.

Over the Golden Gate Bridge, to Muir Woods, a national monument, a valley of massive and really old redwoods.  We saw a squirrel and an owl.  It was pretty cool, the trees were massive and old, but there seemed to be a lot of people there, even though Dylan told us it was pretty quiet in terms of people.   I wouldn’t want to go on a busy day.

 

 

Back to the bridge via saulsilito, and the headlands to the north of the bridge for some amazing photos, then back down to town.  Apparently the Marina District is built mostly on reclaimed land, filed in with, among other things, abandoned boats from the 49ers, the people who arrived en masse to pan for gold.

Overall it was a great trip, and I would definitely recommend it for anyone interested in a snapshot of SanFran.

A quick walk back to the hostel, amidst a large amount of santa clauses, apparently it is SantaCon today, and everyone likes to dress as Santa, and then do a pub crawl.  Some had started at 11am this morning, we saw some way back in Dolores Park, just before lunch.  Walking home tonight, they were just everywhere, and a little bit startling.

When we went out for dinner it was a bit of a struggle, on two accounts.
First, as we had spent quite a lot on dinner the night before, we wanted to take it easy.  Pizza slices were ideal, but finding vegetarian was a pain in the butt.  Only at the takeaway places, restaurants and cafes are usually great.
Second, there were santas, EVERYWHERE.  It was ridiculous and a wee bit scary.  Some restaurants had a ‘no santas’ policy.  I would have liked to go to one of those, but they were the expensive ones.

It was weird, one night we spent $70 on nice meals and drinks, and the next we spent $12 on pizza slices.  Nowhere near as good, or as good for you, but quite a difference.

 

**Disclaimer: There may be many squirrel pictures in this post**

Today we woke up bright and early.  Dale went off to do his thing, and I passed the morning watching movies and reading.  In the afternoon I went for a walk around near the water.  There was a golf course and a wetlands.   Didn’t see much wetlands wildlife, but did finally find some squirrels.  I couldn’t figure out at first if they were squirrels or chipmunks, as they kept zipping into underground burrows, but a quick google search turned up that they were likely Californian Ground Squirrels, as I thought they were larger and less stripey than chipmunks.  They had heaps of burrows, and they would all zip into them if you came too close.  they also had little hollows in the ground, that they would run to and press themselves in if they were too far from the burrow.

They all move very quickly but suddenly;  they will stay really still for a bit, then dart to the next place, and pause, motionless, then zip around again.  After the ground squirrels, I found a few black squirrels, and one grey fluffy squirrel.

It was wonderful, they are all so cute and fluffy and I just want to pat them.  However, they don’t like that.  The tree squirrels do the same pause then darty movements, but they do it up the tree.  They dart onto the tree trunk, then pause, then dart a bit farthur up.  They also don’t seem to mind if they are facing up, down, or sideways when they do this.  Also, if you try and follow them to take pictures, they go up the tree in a circular way, so you end up walking around and around the tree to see them, and eventually have to look down so you don’t fall over, then they disappear.

After my squirrel hunting, I heard what sounded like an eagle, but it might have just been a hawk.  I saw quite a few geese, probably Canadian Geese?  They were noisy.  And a whole mass of black waterbirds, in a similar shape to a Pukeko, but with shorter legs, and a bit smaller, which I think are Coots.

I also found a bit of history, in the form of an old house, built in 1867, by a settler who had a lot of influence in the area.

Meeting back with Dale, we headed back out onto the freeway towards the coast, but traffic was a pain, so we took a random way to the Golden Gate Bridge, which we drove over, and stopped on the other side.   We took a couple of photos, but they ddn’t really come out.  The view of the bridge and the city was very pretty, all sparkly.

On the way back to  drop off the rental care, we stopped for petrol, had a minor issue with which one to use, and how to work the pump, but got there in the end.

Decided to go to the Stinking Rose for dinner, just down the road.  It is a garlic themed restaurant, and they claim that they serve food with their garlic.  We can attest to that, there was so much garlic in the bread spread that it made your tongue tingly.  But the food otherwise was delishuz, and definitely worth going.  There was a bit of a wait, and they have a ton of tables, but I think we only waited about 15mins for a table.  They had a waiting list that was quite long.

After dinner, it was bed, and being woken up a lot by our silly room-mates, who liked to come and go at all hours of the night, and make the room stink like smoke.

 

Today I got to sleep in late.  Even so, still massively tired.  Checked out of our room, sorted our luggage for the day, then headed off into town.   We walked down via a Starbucks (there are about 10 of them within a 5 or so block radius near Market Street) then continued all the way down through Chinatown, to check out the gate.

 

 

We then picked up our rental car and proceeded to drive through town, and get on the freeway!    One of the freeways.  There are a few of them.  There are not many large bridge freeways through the middle of town, due to earthquakes (most of the people that died in the last earthquake, were on collapsed freeways), but they are still big and 4-6 lanes and tons of cars.   A bit scary, but Dale drove and I navigated, and we managed well.  The freeway was huge and went for ages.  Also, they all drive on the wrong side of the road.  Part of my navigation, was advising to turn into the right hand side of the road, and stay to the right.

We are staying in Sunnyvale the night, near Mountain View.   There didn’t seem to be much distinction between each city though, buildings and cars are just everywhere, just constant from San Fran to Mountain View and furthur.

We checked in to our hotel, then wandered down the road to find some food.   Much wider out here, definitely not a place for walking.  Everything is so spread out, and the roads are long and straight, and so much traffic.  There was a jobless guy at the intersection, one side if his sign was imploring for a job, the other side read ” my name is ….  Yes i am single.

We ate at Panda Express, a lovely typical fast food restaurant, where the drink sizes were huge, as were the portions.  Neither of us finished our dinners, but I did manage to find a whole pile of veges.  The smallest drink size looks to be a cup of approx 750ml.

 

We went for a brief run around the ‘burbs, which was interesting in being quite dark, but many houses had christmas lights, which was cool.    Then had dinner at Wendys, definitely an American fast food day.

 

We had to get up early today, ate a bagel on the way, and walked down to Pier 33 to catch a ferry.   We went to see Alcatraz Island, well known as a scary prison type place.

 

 

We got to watch a video, wander around most of the island, and take the guided audio tour of the cell blocks.  They gave each of us a headset and remove that hung around our neck, and then you could play and stop it as you wished, but it talked you as it guided you to walk through the cellblock.

We got to look in the cells, see the ones they tried to escape out of, hear stories of people who were incarcerated there, and the tour was narrated by some of the previous wardens.   It was quite interesting.  The audio tour was neat, you could take it at your own pace, and it gave you heaps of information about the place, and talked a bit about life in the prison, and some of the escape attempts.

 

Was very cold though, out on the water.  After Alcatraz, we walked further along to Pier 39 again, where Dale had chowder in a sour dough bowl, and I had the special – half a sandwich and a soup in a sourdough bowl… Their whole sandwiches must have been huge though, coz I couldn’t finish half my lunch.

 

We stopped at the seals again, still being noisy, boisterous or lazy, then walked back to our backpackers for a restful afternoon, before heading out to the Valencia area in the evening.

I stopped at Safeway (supermarket), and spent ages wandering, just comparing the different things they have here.    Like the amazing amount of icecream flavours; the weird milks, what on earth is half and half?  Why not just have full cream milk???  and their cheeses are weird.  And their biscuits are weird, and nothing I recognised.  None of their chocolate seems to be as good as Whittakers (Boo), however they love cookie dough flavour things (yay).  Muesli is granola.  Fruit is the same, but weights are in pounds and stuff, who knows what that is ><

Dale’s friend Tobias took us walking around the Mission district, where we happened across the Mission San Francisco de Asís, which is the oldest surviving structure in San Francisco, built in around 1791.  It has since survived earthquakes, and many homeless people sleeping around it.

Tobias then took us for dinner at a cute ramen place, somewhere along 16th street.   The food was delishuz, and Tobias gave us some tips for our travels.  We are getting good at the train, but haven’t attempted buses yet.

Other things:

People seem really nice here, especially in the main parts of town…If I’m walking with a map, and look even a little lost, someone usually stops to ask if they can help.  Has happened a few times now.  I must look like a tourist.

The money is a bit of an issue… not the notes, they are easy to figure out, even if they look like toy money. It’s the coins: they have a quarter, 25c, easy.  Then a 10c dime, 5c nickel, and 1c penny.  Why name them different things? And their $1 are notes.  So don’t bother looking through your wallet for dollar coins.

We have walked. A lot. All over San Fran.  Was totally worth buying the shoes we got on the first day, I think I have already go to my money’s worth of walking out of them.

There are fire hydrants everywhere, just sticking up.  And they have pipe outlets in the walls, for getting water up the tall buildings.

Crosswalks are weird, there is no noise to tell you to go, so if you’re me, and staring at everything else, you have a tendency to miss your crossings.  Also, the cars are going the wrong way.  I have to look both ways, multiple times.

So far it has been sunny.  And sunny.  Albeit a winter sun, but sun all day nonetheless.

The light switches are the wrong way!  How confusing.

 

 

We also stopped at the sea lions, which were pretty damn noisy, barking at everyone and everything  They have a set of rafts in the harbour, where they relax in the sun, and have play fights, pushing each other off into the water.  Apparently they came to shore on the wharf soon after the last major earthquake, decided they liked it, and some have been there ever since.  To get them off the wharf and away from everyone, they set up rafts for them to use, with a  viewing platform nearby for people.  They are amazingly noisy, later in the day, when we climbed Telegraph Hill, we could hear them faintly from the top.  Still barking.

 

We wandered further along to the Fishermans Wharf, and then stopped in a tiny cafe in the middle of nowhere for lunch.   We stopped at the library for a while then, and man, it was nice to sit down.

 

 

 

There are a lot of homeless people, it is sad to see, but I’m not sure what to do about it.  You want to be helpful, but if you tried to help every one that you saw, you would end up with nothing pretty quick.  They seem to manage themselves well, for having no home.   many have trolleys and blankets they carry around with them, and we even saw a couple with pet dogs.

 

Later on we made our way back towards home, with a brief detour to climb Telegraph Hill.  The Coit Tower is unfortunately closed, but we happened to be on the hill at sunset, so got to see some lovely colours over San Fran and Bay.

After that, was a quick walk back down the hill to our Hostel.
Dinner was at a greek/Italian restaurant around the corner, for a lovely cheap price, and we chatted to someone from New York, and from Argentina.

 

 

The lead up to leaving:

We spent a day or so cleaning the house and packing the car. It was a mission.  The house looked amazingly clean when we left.  We drove up to Rotorua with Panda, and spent a week there with my parents.
Dad drove us up to Auckland, where we stayed with Alana and Martin in Meremere, and Alana drove us to the airport on Monday afternoon.  Mariana met us at the airport, and once we had checked in and dumped our bags, we hung out with her in the food section.  After saying goodbye, we queued, went though security, and boarded our plane. It was very full and we were near the back.

 

 

Took off pretty much on time, Left New Zealand, directly away from the sun, and soon it was dark. There was a lovely sunset, and the sky to the west was a brilliant red for ages.   Dinner, a  movie, then an uncomfortable 6 hours sleep in a leaning position.  I don’t recommend it.  I was excited, as it was my first long flight, but after the first couple of hours, I didn’t enjoy it that much.  Sleeping in a chair is not my idea of fun.

 

Was woken up by the attendants bringing us breakfast, which was cooked, then gently lifting the window shade to see the bright, bright sun outside.

It was clear and sunny landing in San Francisco, although the air temperature was about 8-9degrees C, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.   A gentle landing, a rush to get off, then an hour or so wait in the customs line.  Once through that, grabbed our bag, through the next gate, then we were free.   It was quite thoroughly painless, apart from the waiting, even though I had heard many stories of how horrible it can be.  They didn’t even care about our itinerary or whether or not we had an exit ticket booked.  I was totally expecting more… security and crazy things like searches and taking your shoes off.

Once we escaped customs, we found ourselves in the main part of the airport, where we sat down and had a Starbucks (don’t judge, we were thirsty/tired/it was the only thing around), where the smallest size was about the size of a large in NZ.   They do have delishuz christmas flavours, like salted caramel mocha and chocolate chai latte.

Then it was a matter of finding our way to the train, and getting all our gear on that.  It was our first time dealing with US money, and I was confused by the train ticket things, as they were different.  It was a half hour train ride from the airport to our stop, at Montgomery St.

We almost missed our stop,  as we were underground – !! undergroiund subway trains! – and had to suddenly jump up and drag our bags back off.   Exiting the subway was exciting, suddenly we were in downtown San Fran, with people bustling everywhere, and a pale winter sun, not quite reaching the footpath between the tall buildings.

We walked up to our backpackers, which was quite a few blocks, but it seems to be lovely, it is called the Green Tortoise, they want to feed us and give us free wifi, so theres that.

After finding our room, we set off for some food.  A wee wander down some side streets of China Town found us some cheap as steamed buns, for 80c usd.  Delishuz.  It was in Blossom Cafe, and was filled with old Chinese men speaking Chinese.   Means it has to be a good/cheap place, if all the locals are eating there.  Probably couldn’t find it again,

After that we wandered down Market Road, looking for a supermarket and a shoe shop.  We found Union Square Park instead, which had a skating rink, and a massive Christmas Tree.  Macy’s is all decorated, with wreaths and stuff in the windows.

 

While at the square, we found our shoe shop, and managed to get some cheap shoes (half the price of NZ).  Dale promptly put his on, then threw his old pair out, as they were rather holey.

It was dark coming out of the shoe shop, but still hordes of people around.  We walked most of the way up Market Steet, mavelling at all things American:  Fire hydrants on the road, water pipes on the buildings, Cops swaggering around, tiny little three wheeled security cars, Traffic people directing traffic, cars on the wrong side….I always look the wrong way!

We managed to come across the Parrot flock of SF, who were roositng in some trees in Sue Bierman Park.  We noticed them as they were super noisy, squawking away for ages before they settled.  We also found some little chipmunks playing in the bushes, but they kept hiding.  There seem to be lots of little parks/squares everywhere, and most have xmas decorations.

 

We found a Safeway supermarket, and managed to escape with only a few cookies, and not vast amounts of candy.  Then headed back to Backpackers, where they provided a free dinner, of mexican design, with tortillas, rice, beans, guacamole and salads.  It was delishuz!