Our trip got off to a good start. We arrived at the airport early, and found the flight delayed an hour due to conditions in San Francisco. We boarded and discovered that we were on a brand new A330, with the new-plane smell and everything. The thrill of that realization wore off the second the captain came on the intercom to tell us that they weren’t quite ready to fly yet; there was still some paperwork that needed completing before SFO would allow them to land. A while later, he told us they were awaiting an engine check: they had to run the engines, shut them down, check for oil, and then start them up again. It would probably take another hour or so. People on the plane got a little uptight about that, but we were trapped. And I was a little concerned maybe they had just assembled the airplane right on the tarmac, and which case it hadn’t even been checked for airworthiness yet.

We passed the time arguing about whether the airplane left the planet when it flew. She said that the atmosphere was part of the planet, so technically no. I maintained that she was full of crap. An hour and a half later, we were flying. They passed out headphones and switched on the back-of-seat entertainment for free, to quell our collective crabbiness. Stephanie announced, ‘Dude! They totally pimped this ride!’ and started watching The Notebook, even though I told her I’d make fun of her if she started bawling over that movie again.

I didn’t want to be in-seat entertained because I was knitting, but I did switch on the map. Man, that map is awesome. It told me where I was flying. Like South Dakota and the corner of Wyoming and Utah. Finally California. It told me we were averaging 550mph, how far we had come, how far we had to go, and that it was -60 degrees outside. And then all of that again in metric, as if I cared. It showed the entire western hemisphere, in case we got hijacked to Venezuela. If it involved the Middle East, we were on our own.

We arrived in SF around noon, and took the AirTrain to the BART. Being the awesome travel planner that I am, our hotel was located about 20 steps from the BART station at Powell Street. We checked in and then wandered through the Metreon and Yerba Buena Gardens on our way to find us some Pad Thai.

After lunch, we took the trolley to Fisherman’s Wharf. I was so less-than-charmed with Fisherman’s Wharf the last time I was there than I had missed the sea lions, so I was on a mission to see them. They were awesome, as long as their smell wasn’t wafting in our direction. They reminded me of my cats. I even made a movie of them.

We wandered through Fisherman’s Wharf, down to Ghirardelli Square. I don’t really get the whole chocolate empire thing, but it seemed to be a big draw. For some reason, we had already managed to do a ton of walking, even though I swore I was going to lay off and take public transport as much as possible (I was still having trouble with my ankle from the 3day in September). So we hobbled over to the cable-car turnaround nearby and waited to go up Russian Hill, one of the steepest in the city. Last year, I climbed it. This year, I was riding.

We dismounted at Powell Street and walked through Chinatown on the way back to the hotel. It was getting cold, possibly even colder than in Minnesota. On the way back, we discovered that the hotel strike has just begun. The sound of bullhorns, whistles, and banging on overturned buckets was to become the soundtrack to our stay there, together with the much-more-charming ‘dingding!’ of the cable cars.

Back at the hotel, we put on warmer clothes and headed over to meet Jay for dinner at the ‘fake-meat Chinese place’ in the Tenderloin. The tamarind beef was so good, I considered replacing my usual fantasies with memories of dinner. Tired as hell, we made our way back to the hotel, weaving our way through street people and hotel strikers. I promptly passed out because I can sleep through anything; my sister stayed awake most of the night listening to cable cars (we were right above the Powell St turnaround), the resident street preacher, and sirens.

On our trip, I promised Stephanie she could sleep til 8. Saturday morning, I couldn’t sleep past 6, so I got up and went for coffee. I chose The Barbary Coast, figuring one couldn’t go wrong with a pirate-themed coffee shop. I was actually very wrong; there was nothing pirate about it but the prices.

I went back to the hotel to pester her awake, and we jumped on a bus to Haight-Ashbury, for breakfast at The Pork Store. How could a vegetarian not like the idea of a restaurant called The Pork Store? We got there early enough to avoid the lines at the un-greasy spoon. The server girls were awesome. So was the food; we split a veggie scramble with salsa and biscuits and veggie-gravy. Also, it must be noted that I love eating with people like my sister, who is not vegetarian but doesn’t mind eating that way at all.

After breakfast, the shops had not yet opened, so we went to wander around Golden Gate Park. We figured we’d go see the Japanese Tea Garden and the buffalo herd. But our map, it wasn’t quite accurate. It said that the scale changed past Divisadero, but didn’t say how much it changed. After walking what felt like 20 miles, we found a map that told us we were not even close to those sights, which were located near the other end of the park. Like, by the ocean. So we turned around and went back, and by the time we reached Haight Street and wove our way through the street people sleeping in the park, the shops had opened.

I found a Buddhist jewelry store and got myself a spinning prayer ring for my thumb. It had my favorite mantra on it, although I admit that reading Sanskrit is a personal failing. We stopped at one of my favorite stores in the world, no, the universe: Kidrobot. I fell in love with gloomy bears, although the last thing I need is a new collection. The girl behind the counter was so enthusiastic and loveable it was hard to leave. She told us to check out the reggae festival in the park (which we had wandered past on our trek), and the Love Parade.

Only SF could have an event called the Love Parade.

We went to more shops. The guy at Yak Pak insisted we go to the Love Parade. We said OK! in that we’re-totally-lying-just-to-make-you-happy kinda way. And bought our stuff and left.

With really good intentions about not walking so damn much and taking buses instead, we walked up and down the hills of Haight Street towards the Store for Working Pirates. We stopped at Flax Art, which is also on my top-ten list of best! stores! ever! We were both trying very hard to not spend a million dollars on our trip, being all newly budget-conscious and responsible (at least, that was my excuse). It was a huge challenge. I think we both did pretty well.

Though 826 Valencia was only 8 blocks away, they were eight of the longest blocks possible. We stopped for lunch at a taqueria with the magic word on the front: I yelled, ‘HEY! HEALTHY!’ and that was enough for me. But holy crap! It was good. Healthy Mexican food is a near-impossibility in the friendly midwest.

Refreshed, we made it to the pirate store. They were selling way more pirate-themed merchandise than before, which was both gratifying and goofy. I was hoping Dave Eggers’ new book was out, but no. So I lusted over McSweeney’s books, and then we left.

We got on a bus and rode up to Japantown. Because apparently, Saturday was all about my favorite places to shop. I’m not thrilled with Chinatown in San Francisco, but Japantown is the best. I could spend weeks in the bookstore alone, spending all my hard-earned cash, as well as some future savings. I bought a ‘tofu: the better white meat’ tshirt, which means my vegetarian tshirt collection has reached ridiculous proportions (I have three). I also added to my ridiculously-cute stationery collection at the paper store. And got the required netsuke and such. All good.

We took the bus back to the hotelish part of town. Powell and Market is near all the expensive boring shopping, like Nordstrom and Armani and crap. For some reason, Powell Street was insane that time of day, crawling with shoppers and strikers and people carrying signs that meant something to someone, I’m sure. The preacher at the cable car turnaround was on a roll, and would continue until late into the night.

We went upstairs and Stephanie laid down for a nap. I was going to scribble in my notebook (it’s like analog blogging) and knit, but I ended up dozing off and drooling on the bed for 20 minutes. Then I got up and speed-walked to two different Starbucks, as the first one had a line out the door. Since there were 10 of them within a three-block radius, it was pretty easy.

I have to note that I love my tourist-walking in big cities. I think it’s the only way to really get to know a place: walk out the door of your hotel by 7am, walk all day long, and walk back in sometime that night, completely worn out. Do that for a full week, and you might as well have lived there for months. This trip, it wasn’t as possible due to the ankle and the fact I wasn’t traveling alone. Which ended up being really good, too.

I called and pestered Jay for directions, and we set off on the MUNI train to see SBC Park, per Stephanie’s request. She’s not so much a sports enthusiast as a sports freak. The park was very cool, though, and we’d have seen a game there if they were playing. We did, however, get to see the remnants of the Love Parade. All I can say is that San Franciscans like to get either fuzzy or naked. Sometimes both.

We found our way to the California Street cable car and stood, freezing our supposedly cold-prepared asses off waiting. The cable cars like to taunt you by sitting on the opposite side of the street forever, and then creeping very very slowly in your direction. It finally arrived, and we rode over to the other side of Chinatown, to the Dar Bar Indian Restaurant, which I loved so much the first time around. Dinner was great, as expected. And as usual, we should’ve taken the bus, but wandered our way back through the Tenderloin to our hotel instead.

Sunday morning, I got up and did the coffee thing. I wandered around looking for a breakfast place in the neighborhood, but could find nothing good. We decided to ride down to Fisherman’s Wharf, which was a big mistake. An hour later, I was sitting with my head in my hands in a back stairwell because I was too dizzy to stand. Stephanie was on recon for food, while I ate my emergency box of raisins. After 15 minutes, I could walk again, so we went to Starbucks and a found a fruit and cheese thing for a ridiculous amount of cash. It was worth it anyway.

We took the bus up to Coit Tower. It was pretty foggy, and even Christopher Columbus was looking chilly. The elevator music was ‘What a Feeling’ from Flashdance. We giggled the whole way up to the top.

You can hear the sea lions all the way up in the tower! I love that. We wandered around, took lots of photos, and then headed back down the stairs. This time, I managed to not remove the skin from my knuckles and wrist on the way down, so I considered that a huge personal success.

We took the bus back down the giant hill into North Beach, and went for lunch at the same place I visited last year, Cafe Delucchi. The food there was just as good as I remembered. We ate panini and watched a woman eating with her tiny little dog in a tiny little sack strapped to the front of her body. He sat and stared at every forkful longingly, but she seemed not to notice. We decided that a tiny little dog in a tiny little sack was unquestionably a sure sign of a very high-maintenance girl.

More buses! This time to the Presidio. We rode through Cow Hollow, which looked to have amazingly good shops, so we were smart enough to not get off the bus. Our ultimate goal was to get over to the coast, but we had to figure out how to get around the Presidio first, and all we knew about that was that 1) it sounded intimidating and had something to do with the military, and 2) Metallica tried to record an album there. Unsuccessfully. So obviously, the odds were against us.

We walked down and saw the Palace of Fine Arts, the only remaining building from a 1915 expo. It’s attached to the Exploratorium, but the most we saw of that was the bathrooms.

After wandering around a while longer, we decided there was no way we were going to reach the ocean that day, time and energy levels being what they were. Also, it was cold and foggy. We took a bus through the marina and hopped off to see Lombard Street (the crookedest street in the universe!), then got back on another bus to head back to the hotel. It went down Stockton, right through the middle of Chinatown, and I had never in my life seen such bus insanity. We were already so packed together we couldn’t breathe, and there were a hundred more people cramming in the back doors. The bus driver was yelling at the passengers. Then he stopped and fought with another bus driver, and they switched. I watched him stomping angrily down the street as we drove away.

Back at the hotel, we put on even more clothes, then met up with Jay. He said, ‘What did you do today?’ Stephanie said, ‘Rode buses!’ We hopped on the trolley back to Pier 39. When we got to our tour boat for Alcatraz, there was already a huge crowd waiting in the cold. We couldn’t find seats inside, so we got to enjoy the elements out on the bay.

The night tour of Alcatraz was awesome, though. A guide led us up the hill and told us about the history of the island, then we took an audio tour inside. I have trouble paying attention to audio tours, but it was still good. The prison itself seems to be in pretty good shape; the other buildings on the island are gutted.

We heard a lot of stories as told by prisoners and guards. They talked about a few escapes, and the fact that there are no known successful escapees, but a few prisoners unaccounted-for. We got to go in the cells, including isolation.

We went to hear the presentation about the 1969 Native American occupation, which led us back down the hill in the even-more-painful cold. Stephanie kept wandering off to stare at the bay. I concentrated on the story so as to not notice the lack of feeling in my extremities. I didn’t like the tour guide’s attitude. Not one bit.

We made a point of rushing back to the boat and managed to get seats inside. Back at the pier, we got on the crowded trolley again. At the stop after ours, the driver yelled at a bunch of boarding tourists, ‘Girls up front! Boys in the back! Girls up front! Boys in the back!’ The men confusedly headed for the back door. The women climbed on, and the driver cracked up. He said, ‘I was just messing with you!’ and broke down in hysterics again. I couldn’t stop laughing.

Near our stop, I felt my bag being jostled, so I pulled it around in front of me and saw that it was open. My phone and wallet were still inside, so I figured I had left it open when I put my transit pass away. Then I noticed the shifty-looking dude next to me with his coat over his arm, and I knew I had just almost been pickpocketed. I tried to make eye contact as he moved away from me. A bunch of people got on and Jay ended standing up right in front of him, so I whispered to him to look out. He said afterwards he saw the guy try the same thing on another woman, also unsuccessfully.

Near-pickpocketing! I was excited. More excited than I’d have been if he had actually gotten my wallet.

We had dinner at a Thai noodle restaurant in the Tenderloin, because I guess Jay seemed to think it was funny to make us walk through that neighborhood every night. Their pad thai was great, and the house music was amusing. We left there late, full and tired, and dragged ourselves one more time back to our hotel in the cold.

I got up, did my usual coffee-rushing, and we got food at Le Cafe Powell (which can only be said with a ridiculous French accent). We boarded the N train to Ocean Beach, because we were determined to see the coast before we left.

The train took an hour, but we made it. It dropped us right at the beach bathrooms, which were scary but also necessary. It wasn’t as cold at the beach as we expected.

We walked a long ways along the water. I was searching for whole sand dollars and beach glass, both of which are usually hard to find but seemed in abundance there. Stephanie was freaking out over the jellyfish, especially when we found a huge one laying there, still quivering. We tried to decide whether it was still alive, and whether it made sense to try to push it back into the ocean. It washed back out anyway, and by now has probably stung an unsuspecting surfer.

My favorite find was the mini-pumpkin with ‘ADDICTION’ scrawled on it in Sharpie marker. What did that mean? Was it some kind of therapy? Write your issue on a gourd and toss it into the ocean? I found it fascinating. I threw it back, on the off chance it might help the victim somehow.

We walked up to the corner of Golden Gate Park, by the weird giant windmill, and caught the bus back to Market Street. It’s a mighty pleasant neighborhood a few blocks down, one where you walk fast and don’t, under any circumstances, make eye contact. We picked up our bags, rolled them down to the BART station, and took the train to the airport. We had to walk about 30 miles to the terminal, since apparently Northwest Airlines hasn’t been keeping up with its protection money payments.

After going through security and discovering they had removed all the food from our terminal, we walked 30 miles back to the main one, shopped at the SFMOMA store (since we didn’t get to the real thing), and ate a veggie burger at BJ. Yes, BJ.

When we got back to the gate, we hung out for a while until they announced they had moved our gate. We went to that one and it was packed with tired-looking Minnesotans. They told us the plane was overbooked. I went to ask the desk people about my meal, wanting to switch it from diabetic to vegetarian, which has better odds for me. The guy told me they didn’t do special meals anymore. I asked if that meant it was safe for everyone, and he didn’t know. I bought some trail mix at the shop just in case.

When they served dinner, our choices were salami (which ended up being pepperoni, to Stephanie’s dismay), and turkey sandwiches. I asked the flight attendant if they had a vegetarian meal. She looked at me as if I had just told her I was hijacking the plane to Venezuela. She said, ‘Well! This has mineral water and carrots, and this protein bar thing.’ I took my meal, since she made me feel as if not accepting it could land me in some trouble with the law.

Within an hour, I had run out of knitting. This was a crappy old 757, not the pimped-out A330 that had just the other day been built specially for us, so there was no in-seat chick flick or overdetailed map to enjoy. I read the in-flight magazine with Lily Tomlin on the cover. I perused the gift catalog with immense interest, offering to buy my sister half the useless junk for Christmas. She seemed to enjoy being interrupted from her reading every 5 minutes.

With an hour and a half left to go, I was bored to death. I took photos out the airplane window. I wrote a poem. I wrote down the pattern for the throw pillows I was making, because I just made it up but they were coming out beautifully. I ate some trail mix. I interrupted Stephanie some more. I organized my bag. I kept trying to check the time on my phone, and kept finding it turned off. I peered out the window at South Dakota, and finally Minnesota. And then we were home, and it was even colder than in California.