San Francisco, July 5th - 11th, 2006

A real highlight of our California trip and one that I planned very carefully was of course our stay in San Francisco.  We left Lodi on the morning of July 5th in our rented car with MapQuest directions firmly held in my hot little hand and headed west.  We weren't long on the road when we got stuck in a horrific traffic jam and it was half an hour at least until we emerged, but there was no stress because we basically had all day to get to the city if we needed it.  At some point we got hungry and although I panicked a little at the thought of abandoning our instructions and leaving the freeway even for a minute - would we ever find our way back? - we randomly chose an exit and then looked for a place to eat.  On the recommendation of the woman who ran the local bookstore we went to an Italian place just across the street from her shop and had one of the best pizzas I've had in recent years.  In typical California fashion these pizzas were definitely avant-garde, at least by the standards of "Old Europe"; ours was with broccoli and goat's cheese and to die for.  We managed to return to the freeway and in another hour we arrived in the city and - MapQuest be thanked - found our hotel with no difficulty.  Luckily the Hertz rental return was just up the street from our hotel, although the wrong direction on a one-way street.  Even this I had foreseen and had directions printed out.  (A pat on the back for me here.)  After checking in we returned our car and walked the short distance back to the hotel. 

I had chosen the Hotel Bijou on Mason Street before I became addicted to Trip Advisor, because someone whose blog I read said she always stayed there when she had cases to try in San Francisco.  It was a good choice, first because the location was excellent and second because the staff was very friendly and tremendously helpful.  It's a small hotel with a cinema theme.  There is a little movie theater right off of the lobby and every evening they show two films that have some connection to San Francisco.  Every room in the hotel has a movie title on the door.  On ours was "Play it again, Sam"  but the room across from us had "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" on the door.  I'm not so sure I would have wanted to sleep there!

Since I didn't know exactly when we would arrive, the only plans I made for Wednesday were for dinner.  We had reservations at Greens Restaurant, which as the name implies serves vegetarian food.  It was the first gourmet vegetarian restaurant in the U.S. and I was intrigued when I heard about it - again on the internet.  We had plenty of time so we decided to walk down Market Street and take the street car at some point.  One of the most negative things about San Francisco is the number of homeless people who are everywhere.  They didn't usually bother us except to ask for money, but it was very sad to see so many people in that situation and I have to admit that I didn't really feel comfortable walking on my own, although I did it a number of times.  In the end we walked all the way to Fort Mason where Greens is.  (It was a very long walk!)  We had a little trouble finding it but the tenth or so person we asked pointed the way.  It's right on the bay and we sat at the window looking out over the Marina to the Golden Gate Bridge, watching the sun set.  Beautiful!  And the food was fantastic!  I only wish we had had the time to go there again (and again).  I would have liked to start at the top of their menu and (over a period of time of course) work my way through everything they offer.  The only problem being they change their menu so often I would never finish!  I had a delicious bean soup for an appetizer and enchiladas for the entrée.  Frank had a red curry and loved it.  They made it extra spicy for him.  I would have loved to try one of their desserts but I was incapable of eating another bite.

After the meal we took a taxi back to the hotel and the driver was a little scary.  When he heard we live in Germany he started ranting about Hitler and the Jews, but his (oriental) accent was so strong we could only guess what the point was he was trying to make.  If we understood correctly, he was at the opposite end of the political spectrum from us, but like I said maybe we misunderstood.

For Thursday morning I had booked a tour of Chinatown with Linda Lee which I had read about on Trip Advisor.  This was one of the highlights of our whole vacation!  We met at 10:00 in front of Old St. Mary's Cathedral and there were nine of us in the group.  Linda took us all through Chinatown and told us what it was like growing up there. 

The first place we saw was the United Commercial Bank, which looks very interesting but the story behind it is even more so.  For many years beginning in 1894 it was the phone exchange for Chinatown and all calls made were processed here by a handful of very smart Chinese women.  Smart because for many years the Chinese didn't use phone numbers but asked for everyone by name, in five different dialects and sometimes even English.  It was finally closed in 1949 when rotary dial telephones were introduced and an era ended.

Of course we had to visit a fortune cookie factory.  What is more essentially Chinese than a fortune cookie, which of course was not invented in China at all but in California. 

The "factory" was actually a little shop with a few people sitting at a rotating assembly line that brought them what looked like little pancakes.  They were still hot and could be formed so they took one of the fortunes written on little slips of paper and wrapped the cookie around it.  You could buy whole bags of fortune cookies and of course they ship them all over the world.  I have to say they taste a lot better warm.

One of the most unusual and quintessentially Chinese places we visited was this little shop which was full of objects made of paper or cardboard.  See the golden Mercedes in front of the refrigerator or the red brick house on the top shelf?  These objects are specially created for burning at the graves of deceased family members in order to honor them and maybe placate them a little too.  Nothing comes cheap either, because that would displease the spirits.  And if you can't decide what your mother-in-law might like, you can always buy a $1,000 bill.  (It comes at a steep discount.)

Grocery shopping is a daily affair for the typical Chinese housewife and they come from all over the Bay area to Chinatown because they can get what they are used to and it's much cheaper than anywhere else.  There are lots of vegetables I could not identify, not to even mention the myriad packages of unknown content.

If it's poultry you would like for dinner, you can take it home alive and slaughter it at your leisure.

Or maybe you would prefer a nice bullfrog?  Guaranteed absolutely fresh!

As Linda explained to us the Chinese like to eat very economically, which means using all the parts of an animal.  As an example she showed us some pigs' ears in a butcher shop window and asked us if anyone would like to try one.  Several of us said we would, so she bought some (for about a dollar) and I was brave and tried it.  It was crunchy like cartilege or gristle but with a layer of wobbly fat and tasted absolutely awful.

The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, also known as the Chinese Six Companies, was founded in 1882 in San Francisco to represent the Chinese population in America and to organize life in Chinatown.  It remains very influential to this day and Chinese children are expected to attend language school there to perfect their Chinese.  Linda told us how horribly boring she found it and how she finally managed to be excluded from lessons when she was about nine or ten.    

We visited a Chinese pharmacy and watched the pharmacist fill a prescription.  Those little piles of strange objects on the counter are a day's dose of medicine.  They are wrapped in gauze and must be boiled in a pot of water until there is only a liter of water left.  The resulting liquid must be drunk during the day.  Linda claimed it was always the most bitter taste imaginable, but of course very effective.

We also went to a Buddhist temple and saw the shrine where people come to meditate. There were several Buddhist nuns who would have been happy to talk to us about our spiritual lives, but in typical Western fashion we had no time to linger.

At the end of our tour we all went to a restaurant together and had a dim sum meal.  Dim sum are little dumplings filled with a wide variety of things - meat, vegetables, fish or fruit.  Some of them were delicious and some not so much, but it was a very interesting meal and a lovely end to a fascinating tour.

After lunch we had a look around Union Square - a very swanky place.  In the picture you can see Saks Fifth Avenue right next to Tiffany's. 

We weren't far from the hotel so I went back to rest and Frank went to the Museum of Modern Art for a while.  He didn't have much time because we had booked a tour of Alcatraz for that evening.

                                The view of Alcatraz from Telegraph Hill.

Alcatraz was great fun and I had read on TripAdvisor that the least crowded time was in the evening.  That's because there are only two boat trips there after 4:15, one at 6:20 and one at 7:05.  I had booked the 6:20 trip weeks in advance and when I saw the lines waiting to get on the boat I was glad I had.

We had gorgeous weather, not a hint of fog and it was quite warm.  And of course at the beginning of July it doesn't get dark until very late.  We didn't actually have the feeling of being on a night tour at all, but it was nice that there were relatively few people on the island.

After leaving the boat a park warden - Alcatraz is now a National Park - walked our group up the hill to the prison and talked about the history of the island and the exciting events that had taken place there.  He asked us what we thought the rope was for that was hanging from the guard tower and no one guessed correctly.  You'll have to take the tour to find out the answer!

Once we had climbed the (very!) steep hill to the top we were handed audio devices and were free to walk around on our own and listen to the story of Alcatraz while looking at the actual sites. 

I found the cells extremely small and depressing.  You couldn't even walk around in them.  However, there were even worse cells for those prisoners who misbehaved where there was no light at all.

The trip to Alcatraz was another real highlight of our trip and it would have been worth it just for the fabulous views of San Francisco on the boat ride over.

This is the view of Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill taken while we were standing in line waiting to board the boat.

We got back from Alcatraz at around 9:00.  We could have stayed another 45 minutes, but we had seen almost everything.  I hadn't made any plans for dinner knowing that we would have had a big meal at lunch and not knowing exactly when we would be back, so we had a look around and almost immediately found the Boudin Bakery at the Wharf which I had read about and was eager to try.  Frank had their clam chowder in a bread bowl and I had a soup and sandwich.  It was very informal but good tasting, and as I realized later there is a restaurant upstairs which we might have tried if we had seen it.  Maybe next time.

It was fairly late after we had taken a walk along the wharf so Frank hailed a taxi to take us back to the hotel.  Again we had a very strange taxi driver who muttered to himself the whole time we were in the car.  It didn't seem to be a good omen that Gnarls Barkley's song Crazy was playing on the radio!

We had eaten breakfast at the hotel on Thursday morning and it was free but very basic and predominantly sweet - nothing for a German to get excited about anyway.  Friday morning we decided to go somewhere else for breakfast and it just happened that the one place I really wanted to try - another TripAdvisor tip - was just around the corner, Dottie's True Blue Café.  This little diner, and I do mean little, is a San Francisco institution and very popular.  There is always a line to get in and on weekends we were told the line is very long.  We were lucky because our wait was less than half an hour.  Frank was not especially happy about waiting in line for breakfast but I insisted it would be worth it - and it was!  Even he said so.  I had a buttermilk pancake that was as good as the ones I make - I wonder if they have the same recipe - and a fresh fruit salad with the best blueberries I have ever tasted.  Frank had a Southwestern Omelet with lots of things in it and very spicy so he was happy.   

After breakfast we had to choose what to do.  We only had about half a day and so many things we hadn't seen yet.  In the end our choice fell on Coit Tower for the view, but really more for the murals that are on display there.  We hopped on a bus and had to change once but it took us right into the parking lot of the tower. 

The view from Telegraph hill is fantastic and we didn't even bother going to the top of the tower.  This photo is towards Lombard Street which is on the right.  In the distance Lombard becomes very crooked, winding back and forth.  Many years ago my roommate drove me down the street and that was enough.  I didn't need to go there again.

These murals were painted by local artists during the Depression and depict life in California at that time.  There is a whole series of them all around the ground floor of the tower and as they are all by different artists the style and quality varies, but they are all interesting as insights into that period of history.  Wine making was not a big business yet!

Of course farming played a huge role in California, especially citrus crops.

But there was city life too and I took this picture especially for Frank because it depicts a group of lawyers mulling over some legal problem.

When we left the tower we walked downhill to the wharf area and Pier 39 because there was a shop I wanted to see called Only in San Francisco.  They have only souvenirs of San Francisco and although you can buy souvenirs all over the city, here you could see them all and find exactly what you wanted.  We bought the boys some t-shirts and Frank picked out one for himself.  We then walked to a music store where Frank browsed for a while and I sat and rested.  By now it was the middle of the afternoon and we had plans for the evening so we decided to return to the hotel.

I have to say here that Frank wanted to take a taxi and I didn't because our experiences with taxi drivers so far had been pretty rotten.  After a long wait a bus finally came and we got on.  The female bus driver was as unfriendly as all the employees of the public transport system seemed to be and she was without a doubt the worst bus driver I have ever experienced.  We rode along Mason, which is one of the streets that are really hilly and I worried a little about the workout the brakes got every day, especially the way she was driving.  At first the bus wasn't full, but when we stopped in Chinatown it was suddenly packed.  When we got up to make our way to the door to get off, we had to hold on because the bus was rocking back and forth so hard.  When we finally got off the bus I looked down at my pocketbook and saw with horror that it was open.  Yes, I had been pickpocketed and the worst thing was that my passport was in my wallet, along with our cash, my credit cards, driver's license, our new-fangled American Express Traveler's Check Card and various other items.  I felt stripped and the worst part of it was that it was at least partly my fault.  I should have been more careful and not carried  everything around with me.

Back in the hotel the staff were wonderful and did everything they could to help me.  Unfortunately, there was evidently nothing anybody could do on a Friday afternoon.  The earliest possible time I could get a new passport was Monday.  However, I had absolutely no identification.  How was I going to get a passport?

We had made arrangements to meet my cousin Diana and her husband Bill that evening for dinner.  I hadn't seen Diana for at least 35 years and didn't want to cancel.  There was nothing to be done on Friday evening anyway except maybe cry and I didn't want to do that.  So at 7:00 we met them at Boulevard, a restaurant I had chosen weeks before that had intrigued me. 

It was great to see Diana and meet Bill and we had a lovely evening together that took my mind off my problem, at least for short periods of time.  Diana and Bill immediately offered to have me stay with them, but I really needed to be in San Francisco where I hoped I could get a new passport.  (They live an hour south.)

The food was quite good, although my salmon entree wasn't as good as I had hoped.  The appetizer was excellent and the dessert was to die for.  The main thing I didn't like about the restaurant was that it was very crowded and very loud.  The noise really got on my admittedly high strung nerves.  After dinner we took a short walk together and then Bill and Diana drove us back to the hotel.  We said good bye with promises to see each other again much sooner than this time.

In the meantime we had decided that Frank would take the flight home on Saturday so that he could fax me the documents I needed.  I would continue to stay in the hotel - luckily not a problem - and do my best to get a new passport on Monday.  Saturday morning I went with Frank to the airport, said good bye and immediately felt a little lost.  So I decided to go shopping and buy a new wallet, which I did.  (Frank left me his AmEx card to use.  I hope I can't be prosecuted!  I did see how easy it is to buy things with someone else's credit card.)  That evening I didn't want to go out on my own so I watched a movie in the hotel.  It was really bad but it took my mind off of everything. 

The next day was Sunday and I decided to go to the Museum of Modern Art.  It was a really brilliant idea and I had a great time.  Once you pay to get in the tours are free and I went on three 45- minute tours and then had a nice meal in their café.  It was just what I needed to appreciate some of the art shown there because I don't pretend to understand modern art.  The tours guides were very competent and enjoyable.  It was just the thing.

I won't go into all I had to do to get a new passport.  Suffice it to say that it took all day but I managed to hold one in my hands at about 5:00 pm and was able to fly back to Frankfurt the next day.  Sitting at the window on the plane I had a stupendous view of San Francisco.  We flew very close to Alcatraz looking towards the city and I could see many of the places we had visited.  It was a treat that I hadn't expected and I vowed to return soon and simply forget the negative aspects of our stay.