Keep Your Hands and Arms Inside the Car

I hate to admit failure (and disappoint my fans) but I fear that my San Francisco Photo Safari was not a rousing success. It's not that the city is any less colorful...oh no--to the contrary! The city abounds in mimes, skinny old winos who will trade street directions for coin, and free-thinkers of every stripe. But in making my plans, I failed to take into account the very specific personality of my travelling companion.

Bill likes to do his sightseeing sitting down. I am just fine with skirting the sketchier parts of town to go in search of interesting people, places and things. Bill, however, prefers to find a comfortable seat, either on a conveyance of some sort, or on a bench near a refillable soft drink station and wait for interesting subjects to come to him. This method does not yield many interesting results... unless you are looking for German tourists in inappropriately short shorts (the men) or mid-westerners taking pictures of seagulls.

I should have remembered that Bill's favorite ride at Disneyland is the train. He will get on and loop it around and around until he and the conductor have exchanged home addresses and a promise to be bffs 4 ever.

On Tuesday we took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) from Pleasanton to the Powell St. station in San Francisco. From there, we walked about a block up the street where we caught the electric trolley. Not to be confused with the cable cars--the trolleys were all built in the 40s and are kind of fun and funky. But they are enclosed and it is hard to snap a photo from inside as you whiz past all the fun on the sidewalk. We got off at Pier 39 where Bill parked himself on a bench. We sat there until the cold wind, rolling fog and lowering temps dictated that I move or freeze solid. ***It has been said that Mark Twain once remarked that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. He didn't say it but he should have.***

My plan was to walk about half a mile to Ghirardelli Square, an area known for its "robot dancers" and the "bush man." We made it as far as Pier 42 with a stop along the way at the Boudin Bakery--the birthplace of San Francisco Sourdough where we enjoyed a bread bowl with clam chowder. As I was reminding Bill that we needed to cross the street and turn up to get to the square, the electric trolley stopped right in front of us (almost like fate) and before I knew it, I was being hustled on board. We rode the trolley to the end of the line which was not where we needed to be. Sensing a fellow lover of seated sightseeing, some Scandinavians asked us if we wanted their day-long cable car passes. They were good until midnight for as much cable car riding as we wanted to do. Almost giddy with excitement, Bill grabbed my hand and hurried me over to the cable car stop. There are two cable car lines. We traded off between the two, riding with no set destination until dark, when we made our way back to Powell St. to catch the BART back to our hotel.

It wasn't what I had planned, but it was fun. We saw a lot of interesting neighborhoods and wonderful old buildings. I remembered a lot of trips to the city when I was a kid growing up and it reminded my why I have always loved San Francisco.

We continued the walk down memory lane on Tuesday evening. We made the short drive over to Fremont, where I lived from the age of 6 until I graduated from high school. With the help of Nancy, our trusty GPS, we found my old high school and the two homes where we lived in Fremont.

We were treated very well at the Marriott (Bill's new home away from home) and I enjoyed walking over to the mall on Tuesday morning to look around. All in all, it was a fun trip. Enjoy a little slide show of the photos I WAS able to get: