I am typing this from the comfort of our ‘glamping’ tent in Yosemite Bug. We have just driven 250 miles from San Francisco on the right side of the road. It was a battle switching our brains over to ‘opposite world’. For the first few minutes, every time a car came around the corner on our left, an impulse would shoot through your brain to swerve to avoid it ... luckily our reflexes are not as fast as our instinct and we stayed on the road each time. More on the beginning of our road trip later ...
Now to catch you up on our San Francisco adventure.
We arrived at the San Francisco international airport on Wednesday at 7:30 pm. We had a slow wait in line to get through immigration. While waiting in line we were entertained, or dazzled - I’m not sure what they were going for - by an infomercial on the greatest of the American nation. People of all races welcomed us with a friendly hello. We were shown the majesty of the wild, the cosmopolitan urbanscape and the super happy children that are apparently everywhere. It made us feel like we had stepped into a satirical television show making fun of the over enthusiasm of Americans. But, as we have learned already, everyone is actually super friendly and polite. It is actually a strange thing to get used to. Australians are very friendly, but Americans seem to take a genuine interest in where you are from and what you are doing, and of course, wishing you “a good day, ya hear”.
Once our friendly conversation was over with a super-nice immigration officer, we were through and officially in America. We jumped in a cab - a prius (awesome!) - and directed our driver to our first destination. 417 Stockton Street, San Francisco (94108) - the Crescent Hotel. The cab drive was enough to have us mouth-opened, stare-out-of-the-window-awed by the size of the city. So many pretty lights!
We arrived at the hotel and checked in. The lobby of the hotel was clean and white with antique, refurbished chairs littered around. It had a turn of the century style, blended with a modern, crisp vibe. The ride up in the elevator was tight, but the novelty of manually opening a door to get in made it feel like we were stepping onto the set of an old time movie (remember
Thoroughly Modern Millie? The elevator wasn’t that old fashioned, but I did feel like I should have started dancing to get it moving a couple of times). As we stepped out of the elevator and into the hallway, one word popped into my head - “REDRUM”.
The hallway seemed to be an exact reproduction from the film
The Shining. The vibe was at first a little disconcerting - our room was right at the end of the hall, next to the ominous, velvet curtain. But, as soon as we opened the door to our room, the white beaming off the walls created a safe and cosy space. The room was cute and clean and welcoming. The sink was in the bedroom ... but other than that, it was perfect.
By the time we got settled and started thinking about dinner it was 9pm - which was 2pm the next day ... ???? We went for a wander outside and found a Starbucks - conveniently located on any corner that you can think of. Our dinner was a simple muesli cup. We ate, we stared out of the window with a zombie look and then staggered back to the hotel, again, zombie style. After a refreshing shower, we crashed.
The next day we wandered down to the breakfast/dining room for bagels and cream cheese - so American! Paired with a coffee, we were set to go.
The original plan for day one was to take it easy, exploring the neighborhood and getting used to the time difference. It turned into a much bigger day. First thing in the morning we tracked down the bookstore where I had ordered a book for Marty before we left Australia. Fields Bookstore was easy to find - but not open until 11am ... most shops do not open until then ... leaving us with 2 hours to kill until we could pick up the book. We wandering down to a local - and independently owed - coffee shop and ordered organic lattes.
The guy serving us gave us a funny look when we gave him our order ... “Are you from out of town?” he asked with one eye squinting just a bit in a quizzical fashion.
“Yes, we are from Australia,” Marty replied.
“Oooohhhhh. Wooooowwwwww. You guys are from out of town. What are you doing here?” he asked in a REAL American accent.
“We are on holiday and plan to take a road trip across the country,” Marty answered.
“Woooowwwww. That is amazing,” the coffee guy said. “Well, have a nice trip. Stay safe.”
We collected our coffee and sat down, pouring through the local media offerings - picked in magazine depositories ... I think they are called ... the boxes you see in movies when people buy a newspaper on the street. This would be a fantastic idea for Brisbane media!
After enjoying the free media and giant coffee, the coffee guy came towards our table, casually stopping at a few tables near us to wipe down clean surfaces. We got the impression he wanted to say something. We looked in his direction and were immediately given some ideas of where to hang out in the city, from his personal collection of favourite locales. Again, I will point out how SUPER-FRIENDLY Americans seem to be.
We finished our coffee, looked at the time and realised how much longer we still had to go until the bookstore was open. So we set off towards our second place of interest for the day - a health food chain called Whole Foods. Stepping into the store as vegetarians was like children stepping into Willy Wonkas’ chocolate factory. Oh, the amazing things we saw. Aisle after aisle of healthy food!!! Organic, vegetarian, vegan, the latest fad ingredient - Kombucha by the way - everything you could ever want as a vegetarian was in this store!
... INSERT BEATLE’S-LIKE MONTAGE OF US DANCING THROUGH THE STORE, BEING AMAZED BY WHOLE FOODS ...
After spending about an hour dancing around the store, wishing that we had this exact shop in Brisbane, we purchased a few snacks, some magazines and a punnet of delicious organic raspberries, vowing to return as soon as we had picked up the rental car and could load up the boot with treasures found in Whole Foods.
It was now finally 11am. We headed to the bookstore. This turned out to be another wonderland - this time for yogis. It was a bookstore devoted to spiritual books covering all topics. The yoga section alone was amazing. Marty picked up his book, How to Know God, and I bought Geeta Iyenga’s yoga book for women. Our easy going plans for the day were finished and it was only 11:20 am.
After a quick stop at our hotel, we decided to head to Fishermans Wharf. We decided to walk down to Union Square from our hotel - an easy meander down a hill, unlike the other UP hills we had walked so far - and catch the cable car. That’s right - “clang, clang, clang went the trolley, ding, ding, ding went the bell, zing, zing, zing went my heart strings ...” - thank you
Meet me in St Louis.
As we waited for the trolley to arrive at our stop, we watched it slowly making its way up the hill. With now actual cable in site and the trolley itself looking 100 years old, we weren’t quite sure how it would work or how we would even get to our destination, which, looking to our right, was up a massive and straight hill/mountain. The cable car arrived. The cable car driver - I’ll call him Joe - yelled for everyone to get on. There didn’t appear to be any seats available which made us confused at his definite belief that we could indeed hop on the cable car. Then Joe barks - in a classic American accent of course - “Harp arn .. I got rooom for two mawe right ova ‘ere,” he says pointing to a step and a vertical pole. Seeing other people jump on and begin to position themselves in the sturdiest way possible on this tiny edge/pole area, we jump on. Me right at the front, Marty just a step behind me. Joe rings the bell, “ding, ding,” the cable car lurches forward, we hang on for dear life.
We start the steep climb up the hills/mountains of San Francisco. Another cable car approaches us from the opposite direction - it is coming down hill and it is moving fast. Joe yells, “waarch out, cable car comin,”. Our eyes meet the travellers on the other car, we share a silent look of “are we too close, are we going to hit each other, surely hanging off this cable was a giant safety issue, thanks a lot Joe!” The car gets closer, all dare devil passengers hanging off the car hug their alloted vertical pole for dear life and feel the breeze of the other car and passengers whooosh past. I might try and paint a picture here of the hanging of the cable car situation - the visual reminds me of a train in India where passengers are sitting on the roof and hanging out of the doors - this is not a widely accepted safe method of travel.
But, as soon as we feel the whoosh of the downward zooming car whoosh past, the adrenalin kicks in. We feel the air in our hair, breezing through the car, catching our shirts, lifting our spirits, soARING LIKE EAGLES!!!!!!! ... sorry, I got a bit carried away.
The cable car ride was like a roller coaster - you know it is safe when you get on it but as soon as it starts, your mind immediately starts questioning your common sense, “what would I know, I’m not an engineer, maybe the actual engineer missed something, maybe they have lost the passion for the job, maybe that rust over there is all through the ride, maybe the dripping water means we’re all going to diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ... wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!! ... that was the best ride of my life!!! Let’s do it again!”
As soon as we jumped off the cable car, we were greeted with a sparkling, blue bay of water. We wandered down and saw a variety of historical displays setup throughout the area - giant anchors, ship knots, boat thingies ...
Before we were going to be overcome with the amazement of old rope ... really ... lunch was going to have to happen!
We wandered up the street and found a bunch of restaurants that had opened in what used to be a massive cannery. The building was beautiful old brick and felt warm and welcoming in the afternoon sunshine.
NOTE: the sun had been shining all day, there was a cool breeze, and it was our first day of holidays, sans hats - see what’s coming?
We found a mexican restaurant and ate our first protein rich meal of the holiday - burritos!
After a very satisfying lunch we stumbled upon a bike hire shop. We rented, got training (I don’t know why), and had a rubber band placed on our right ankle ... ? Apparently this was to prevent our pants from getting caught on the bike spokes. I’m not sure what kind of customer they usually get, but all of this definitely felt over the top. Then, surprisingly, we were not required to wear helmets. There is nothing more freeing than riding a bike without wearing a helmet. Refer to cable car paragraph i.e. wind in hair, exhilaration etc.
Our route was given to us via a pointer presentation - giant map, mono tone sales girl, wooden pointer. The presentation, and what seemed to be our only directions sounded like this, “First you start here (
whhhhap - pointer hitting map), then you ride here -
whhhhap - you can then turn around here, touch your toes and head in this direction backwards -
whhhhap - don’t forget the most important thing that is you have to
whhhhap whhhhap whhhhap whhhhap whhhhap. Enjoy your trip ... ferry ticket.”
... ok ...
So we jumped on the bikes and headed towards the Golden Gate Bridge, bright orange art deco wonder of the world.
It was smooth sailing for the first 2 minutes -
riding along on my push bike honey etc - and then we hit our first hill. Even the lowest gear was not low enough. The vertical angle of the hill made riding near impossible. After making the embarrassing walk to the top of the hill - being overtaken by an 80 year old riding a mountain bike - we reached the top. Hurrah.
After a very quick but delightful cruise to the bottom of the hill, we reached the “sand plains” - or dog park - a long stretch of dirt/gravel road topped with 200km winds blowing right into our faces. There was no wind assistance, there were no more pleasant downhill cruises. The rest of the way was against a gale force wind and then up a giant road - where we were again overtaken, this time by a computer guided mini motorbike for two. After a long time in the sun, battling the elements - again refer to the story note for exposure theme - we had made it to the top of a massive hill and were looking at the glorious Bridge. The next phase of our “quick ride” was to go over the bridge, the very high bridge, the very old, very high bridge.
We began the ride. I can’t really tell you too much about this part as I kept my eyes on the path, only occasionally reading the pleas to jumpers to make a call to operators who were on the line now ready to council them and then to also glance at the water below, thinking that it didn’t seem too far down ... ooh, look at that cute toy boat ... oh my god, this is really high ... footpath, eyes down.
Once we were off the bridge, I could breath again. Marty seemed fine and wanted to hang out on the bridge for a bit longer. Maybe something in my face told him I couldn’t possible do that.
After paying a quarter to look through an old school set of binoculars, we set off down another massive hill towards the waiting ferry - having vaguely heard the bike hire lady mention the words “ferry ... suburb name ... back to beginning.”
The cruise down the hill was nice, easy, enjoyable ... and then we took a wrong turn and ended up in an old army fort, no where near a ferry. The unintentional detour turned out to be quite beautiful. We saw an old army base featuring classic buildings and beautiful trees. We headed back up the hill, now on the correct path towards the awaiting ferry.
We jumped on the ferry, placing our bikes in the hull - I think that is the correct nautical term, so says my intense knowledge on the subject - and proceeded onto the upper deck. The ferry ride was relaxing. We cruised the bay, sailing past - that’s right, awesome nautical knowledge right here - famous Alcatraz. After jumping off the ferry, and riding even more kilometers, our legs were sore, we felt the sunburn starting and our behinds were tender. We finally found the bike rental shop, dropped the bikes off and started marveling in the simple joy of walking again.
During this final push to the summit ... we had ridden past two things of interest. The first was a penny arcade featuring playable old time games and toys - remember the movie
Big and the old gypsy machine that predicted the future/made wishes come true etc?) which we vowed to return to, and did, once we got our walking privileges back. The second was an encounter with the police ... the happy police. We were given a ticket for not smiling enough (come on! It was hour 6 on our supposed 1.5 hour bike ride), and Marty was charged with not hugging me enough. $10 donation and a few smiles later we were two stickers better off than we had been at the beginning of the day.
Sore, burnt and cold, we made our way back to the hotel room. One long line, a cold hanging off the side of the cable car cable car ride and a slow walk back to the hotel and we were back inside and warm.
A quick dinner of vegetarian Thai and then we were down. Despite waking up during the night with the occasion burn sweat, it was lovely being horizontal.
Day one done.
