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.

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 at 7:30 and dragged my clothes down to the laundry. If I arranged my laptop just right, I could pick up a few weak wireless signals from neighboring buildings. They were intermittent, but faster than dialup. Occasionally, I had to open the window and balance my laptop on the windowsill to get a consistent signal. Jay came home and we discussed what I should see in San Francisco. It was very strange to not have any idea, since I usually plan vacations obsessively. I paged through my road trip book. The AAA guide had a walking tour, which I’d had good luck with in other cities, so I decided on that. I had spent so much time driving, all I wanted to do was be outside and get some exercise. I finished my laundry, talked to Heather, did some actual work for my old company, and then headed out.

Halfway between Jay’s and Starbucks, I found Royal Gourmet Coffee. I quickly realized that I had stumbled upon the Holy Grail of the espresso-based beverage: Caffe Extreme. It was like a gigantic cappuccino, only better: 3 shots of espresso, a tiny bit of milk, and the rest regular coffee. It’s like this drink had been engineered especially for me.

I walked down to catch the cable car on California. I could probably have walked to Chinatown quicker (especially after figuring out that it’s much, much easier to just run down the hills in SF than walk them), but riding the cable car at least once in one’s life is obligatory. There was a little Asian man collecting fares from passengers. I heard him instructing a tourist couple not to stand in the 1′ x 1′ yellow square on the floor. They looked down at it suspiciously and the woman asked, “Why? What is it?” He replied, “That’s my office!”

I dismounted the cablecar and headed to Starbucks. To pee. You see, one thing you get good at detecting when you travel as much as I do is good bathrooms. When you find them, you stick with them. It’s restroom loyalty. In exchange for their good bathroom standards, the business gets your patronage. So: Starbucks almost always has good, clean bathrooms (except in NYC); and even though I’d already had enough caffeine to kill the weak or elderly, I got another coffee. I felt obligated.

I folded my walking map, ripped out of the AAA guide, into a tiny square and set off on my tour. I saw the swanky shopping (I was unimpressed, as I live in the land of malls), then the financial district, and ended up back in Chinatown. I resisted shopping there, since I didn’t want to haul crappy souvenirs around all day. I walked down the main street, then turned and went down a smaller street that was more real Chinatown and less touristy. Jay was correct in that I was the tallest person there by at least half a foot. The slow, meandering tourists annoyed me, but, luckily, I’m not afraid to elbow people in the kidneys whenever necessary. I turned down the half-block-long Jack Kerouac Alley and saw the home of the Beat. Then I found myself in North Beach, the Italian neighborhood. I stopped at a place called Cafe Delucci (Corso Cristoforo Columbo and Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd!) and ate the best salad of my entire life. After that, I stopped at Cafe Trieste, the first espresso shop in the country, to get myself a cappuccino. I’m not sure why I hadn’t stroked out at that point, but I was fine.

Heading off towards Coit Tower, I walked up some really steep hills, then climbed stairs. The caffeine must have been helping. I bought my ticket and took the elevator to the top to get my view of San Francisco.

On the way back down the stairs, I brushed the back of my hand against the rough concrete wall and scraped the hell out of it. My knuckles and wrist started bleeding. I subtly tried not to drip blood in the elevator, and went to the bathroom to wash my hand. It was bleeding a lot and I didn’t have anything to wrap it in, so I sat near the base of the tower for 20 minutes, waiting for it to stop. It looked pretty gory.

Finally, I got up and headed back down Lombard, then turned towards Fisherman’s Wharf. I walked past the cablecar turnaround, which was exciting in its oldschoolness. A family from Italy had just disembarked from a cable car, and I marveled that all five of them were dressed completely in denim. Were they fashion-forward or on the Levi’s payroll?

Fisherman’s Wharf didn’t thrill me. It was chock full of tourists and smelled fishy. I know, but still. I pushed my way through the crowds for a while, stopped into a couple crappy stores, and got the obligatory souvenirs. I walked down the Hyde Street Pier, which had a good view of the city and Alcatraz. I listened to a bitchy fashion photographer being a complete asshole to his models. Then I went over the Ghirardelli Square to see what the big deal was. It seemed kind of lame to me, but maybe that’s because I don’t eat chocolate. I started the long climb up Russian Hill. Yes, I could have just taken the cable car, but I felt like I had to do it, because it was ridiculous. At every corner, groups of people stood gasping and leaning against trees. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, not thinking about it. Near the top, I stopped and took pictures of the other end of Lombard Street, ‘the windiest street in America!’ I didn’t feel much like going down and then back up the stairs, so I just stood and watched cars inching their way along it. My walking tour looped back to Chinatown at that point, so I headed off in the direction of Jay’s apartment instead. I called him to see which way to go, and he told me to walk down Polk, because it had good shops. I was walking and talking on the phone as I passed Good Vibrations. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, turned around, and went in. Not only was it the famous Good Vibrations, it was the antique vibrator museum. I saw a bunch of menacing-looking devices, and was grateful for modern technology. I bought many souvenirs, including giant vibrator postcards for all the folks back home.

We went to Whole Foods, then to dinner at The Window down the block right by my new favorite coffeeshop in the entire universe, Royal Gourmet Coffee. I was worn out; apart from lunch in North Beach, I had been walking all day long. I went to bed around midnight, and decided to leave the blinds open. Around 12:30, I saw the fog rolling in, slowly creeping down the street. At 1am, the moon came up. It was unbelievable and perfect.

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random notes from my travel journal:

man. if i didn’t drink so much coffee, i wouldn’t have this constant need to pee. i am not smart.

what would my roadtrip be without injuries? i’m all bloody. really awesome.

on the way back here, i got whistled at by the same construction workers who whistled at me this morning. or maybe it’s the second shift? do they trade off whistling?

i have bright red abrasions on my right hand to match the big blue bruise on my left. badge of honor! it’s proof that i did more than ride a tour bus around all day. man, i totally left dna evidence all over that tower, though.

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