{"id":813,"date":"2012-05-28T23:53:53","date_gmt":"2012-05-29T04:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/?p=813"},"modified":"2012-05-28T23:53:53","modified_gmt":"2012-05-29T04:53:53","slug":"vacation-day-6-hello-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/?p=813","title":{"rendered":"Vacation Day 6: Hello, San Francisco!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rich woke up again this morning. It’s a great day for a vacation.<\/p>\n

The guys tried to sleep in this morning. I let them go until 8:00, but we needed to\u00a0hit the road.\u00a0\u00a0Today, we\u00a0were driving into San Francisco.\u00a0\u00a0The drive was only a couple of hours, but I\u00a0felt like we had a lot to do when we got there. So they grumbled a lot and crawled out of bed.<\/p>\n

After breakfast, we made a stop at Target because someone forgot their body wash.\u00a0 I know, I know.\u00a0 I had it on the counter, but it never\u00a0made it to the bag with the bath stuff. I had a small bottle in my cosmetic bag, but that ran out with this morning’s shower.\u00a0 After that, we finally hit the road.<\/p>\n

Driving the expressway for a while, it all came back to me on\u00a0driving in California.\u00a0 I hadn’t really been here since 1990.\u00a0\u00a0If you strung all the time together that I spent in California over the\u00a0years, I had lived here for almost a year. Back when I was here in 1989, I\u00a0got to love the place.\u00a0 Not\u00a0many places\u00a0where you could Christmas shop in shorts and flip flops.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before we got\u00a0to Oakland, we stopped at the rest area and overlook.\u00a0 You could kind of see the city,\u00a0but it was still pretty far out there.\u00a0 You could really see the valley where everything sprawled out in front of you though.<\/p>\n

We\u00a0had to go through the toll to get on to the Bay\u00a0Bridge that took\u00a0you from Oakland into San Francisco proper.\u00a0 The lines were long and everyone kept\u00a0jumping lanes in front of people. Finally, we paid our money and started over the bridge.\u00a0 This was the bridge that fell from the top deck to the bottom deck during the 1989 earthquake.\u00a0 That was a horrible thing to see.<\/p>\n

The GPS took\u00a0us off the expressway and right into the heart of downtown.\u00a0 I had been worried about getting into the\u00a0city streets, but it was\u00a0quite easy and things flowed well.\u00a0 We got out to the Embarcadero and moved around the outside of the city.\u00a0 There you could see the landmarks and the people.<\/p>\n

The Transamerica building is still in the skyline.\u00a0 You could see the Coit Tower standing on\u00a0its hilltop.\u00a0 We saw a naked guy riding his bike\u00a0along the piers.\u00a0 Yep, totally naked as a bluejay and nothing covered. We went by the Get In Here! diner.\u00a0 I think it had another name, but that’s all I could see on the side.<\/p>\n

We finally got around to Beach Street and made our way to Mason Street.\u00a0 Our hotel for the next days\u00a0was on the corner.\u00a0 The Wharf Inn is an older hotel, but it had free parking and was right there with Fisherman’s Wharf. I didn’t think it turned out too bad.\u00a0 We pulled in and talked to the guy at the front desk.\u00a0\u00a0We were three hours early for check in, but he let us park and sign in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We went out to Fisherman’s Wharf to start our tour.\u00a0 We’d only gone\u00a0a block when we came across Dave Earl, sitting on his stool, at the corner of one street.\u00a0 He was playing R&B and Blues.\u00a0 He had a wonderful steel guitar and he\u00a0made the music sound so good.\u00a0 Rick and I moved on, not realizing the Rich wasn’t with us.\u00a0 He soon caught up.<\/p>\n

We walked out to the end of one pier and looked at Alcatraz and the sea lions.\u00a0 You could hear the barking from the lions, but not have to experience the smell.\u00a0 We started back to the sidewalk, but Rich wanted to go back and see Dave.\u00a0 We backtracked a bit and listened to him play.\u00a0 Dave had a very nice handlebar mustache that was properly waxed into place.\u00a0 Rich wanted a CD, along with several other people.\u00a0 Dave commented on Rich’s Mr. Handy’s Blues Hall t-shirt.\u00a0 Rich picked out a\u00a0CD and we were on our way again.<\/p>\n

Pier 39 is\u00a0a large, open air mall with small shops, restaurants, and cart vendors selling all kind of things.\u00a0 We wondered along the bottom and then moved to the upper level.\u00a0 I found an interesting crystal shop and saw a ring that I liked.\u00a0 I knew Rich didn’t like to shop, so I thought I’d better move on.\u00a0 But we couldn’t find him.\u00a0 Turns out, there was the Beer 39 store around the corner.\u00a0 Rich was standing in front of the bar eyeing the list.\u00a0 I told him if he wanted to drink I had some things to look at.\u00a0 He was delighted and found a seat at the bar.<\/p>\n

So I went back to the shop with Rick.\u00a0 We looked through things and I found a ring I liked.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Rich had finished 2 of a 4 beer sampler.\u00a0 So we left him to finish that while we went on to a couple of more shops.\u00a0 In the Enlightenment store,\u00a0 Rick found a Chinese jacket he liked and bought.\u00a0 We went into the Forever Ireland store, but found nothing we had to have.\u00a0 We returned to find Rich had a half of a full pint in front of him.\u00a0 I was beginning to think he was enjoying his afternoon too much.<\/p>\n

Rick had noticed a young sailor in uniform standing by the doorway to Beer 39.\u00a0 Apparently, a couple of young Russian guys stopped him and asked to take their pictures with him.\u00a0 He seemed surprised but flattered.\u00a0 Not long after, a couple from somewhere else wanted to take their picture with him.\u00a0 He seemed surprised to be so popular.<\/p>\n

Getting Rich out of Beer 39, we went to eat a late lunch at the Eagle Cafe.\u00a0 This cafe has been in this location since 1928.\u00a0 The food was excellent.\u00a0 Rich and I got a plate of oysters.\u00a0 They tasted great, but the shucker wasn’t very expert and there were shell pieces in them.\u00a0 Rich had no trouble finishing them off.\u00a0 Rich had a Pyramid Hefeweizen.\u00a0 I had an apricot ale.<\/p>\n

We hit the street again.\u00a0 With no real direction, I decided to head for Chinatown.\u00a0 We took one of the roads headed in that direction.\u00a0 Soon, the street was going straight up.\u00a0 We continued to climb until it crested somewhere about Lombard Street.\u00a0 From there, it went downhill.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the beginning of Chinatown, there was an orchestra of traditional Chinese musicians outside of a Hong Kong restaurant.\u00a0 The music was very interesting.\u00a0 I just didn’t see how they got all of those sounds out of 2 strings!\u00a0 The street was very crowded with people and some of the stores had their wares out in front.\u00a0 It was all very colorful with so much variety.<\/p>\n

One of us had to stop for a bathroom.\u00a0 We were told to go to the park where the public restrooms were located.\u00a0 The park was full for Chinese people of all ages.\u00a0 The children were running around chasing each other.\u00a0 The older people were playing cards and some other traditional games.\u00a0 Some kids were sneaking up behind pigeons and throwing snappers at them.\u00a0 Of course, I jumped everytime one hit the ground.<\/p>\n

I talked Rich into getting a good luck cat for his bar.\u00a0 He agreed and we went off in search of some place to buy one.\u00a0 This is one of those cats in Chinese restaurants that waves its paw, like a ticking clock.\u00a0 He found a squat, fat, white cat that was a little different from the normal ones you see.\u00a0 I guess if it’s right paw is waving, it is for the home and the left paw is for a business.<\/p>\n

Time to start back to the hotel.\u00a0 Unfortunately, Rich had a headache.\u00a0 Probably from all of the wine he had to drink the night before with Larry and Fran.\u00a0 Looking at the map, we determined that taking the\u00a0diagonal street would get us to Mason\u00a0Street faster.\u00a0 Turns out, the diagonal street also had no hills on it.\u00a0 We passed Lombard Street again and could see the part of the street that had the switchbacks.\u00a0 There were a line of cars driving down from the top.<\/p>\n

At the hotel, we got our key and loaded up our stuff to take upstairs.\u00a0 Finding a home for everything\u00a0for the next two days, Rich and\u00a0Rick decided to rest a while.\u00a0 I sat down to start this blog.\u00a0 We’ll have to go out later for dinner and look around some more.<\/p>\n

Sorry, no pictures of the naked guy, but we take\u00a0pictures of\u00a0some other sites.<\/p>\n

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Rich and I doing a double Rose pose with Alcatraz in the background.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Standing on the top deck of Pier 39, you can see all of the sea lions on their floating piers and the tourists.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Everyone lines up to drive down the switchbacks at the top of Lombard Street.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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You can ride one of the Rocket boats that zooms around the bay, for a price.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Rich woke up again this morning. It’s a great day for a vacation. The guys tried to sleep in this morning. I let them go until 8:00, but we needed to\u00a0hit the road.\u00a0\u00a0Today, we\u00a0were driving into San Francisco.\u00a0\u00a0The drive was only a couple of hours, but I\u00a0felt like we had a lot to do when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}