And a big, West End welcome to our newest follower, Jen!
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Loki & Fred say 'howdy Jen!'
Anyways, I know you're all dying to know about our big trip to San Fran - so here goes... it was, in a word: FANTASTIC! Jax loved it - and since I hadn't been in 10 years it was like I was rediscovering it myself after all these years. (god, that makes me sound old, eh?)
I didn't tell Jax where we were going, and she was frantic with worry/excitement the day of the trip. I picked her up at 3pm at the Listel, and she begged to know where we were going. I got her a birthday card, handed it to her, and inside I wrote... I WONDER WHERE WE'RE GOING?? I also put our passports inside, so at least she had an inkling we were going to the states.
She kinda figured that we were going somewhere fun. Her co-workers tried to convince her I might be taking her to Tofino - but we went to Tofino 2 months ago, and although the road trip was kinda fun, Tofino itself was cold, rainy and pretty damn far for a weekend (especially when the driver is a wimp and can't make it past Port Alberni)
Driving to Tofino - loads of fun!
So where was I? Oh yeah, so we got to the airport, and headed to the United Airlines booth - we had to fill in a US Customs form saying where we going, so I made Jacquie close her eyes and voila! I produced the Lonely Planet San Francisco Guide along with the air tickets, and surprised her right there.
Cute pic of Jax... where are we going???
San Fran baby!!
And then... well, we got on the plane. Actually we had a couple of beers at the lounge, the flight left at 7pm and we had a couple of hours to kill. Jax was very excited because she thought maybe we were going to Vegas and was wondering how she'd act surprised/excited about that, because she didn't think Vegas was really 'us' - and I agreed.. thus I didn't buy us tickets to Vegas! (Vegas is fun with a group of people - going down for a wedding or something like that... but even then, it's not really my town- everything done to excess, 24 hours a day. I dunno, it's fun... and suddenly it's not and I have to get the hell out of there) But I digress....
We arrived in San Fran at about 9:30, hopped on the BART (we think that stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit) tickets were $8.10 one way, a little pricey, but it whisked us right downtown, and from there were carted our bags about 4 blocks to our hotel, the Inter-Continental! (see previous blog entry for pictures)
It was a beautiful lobby, and they tried to up sell us to a king bed suite, but we decided against the extra $140 and went up to 1601, our room with two double beds. We're used to sleeping in double beds, with a couple of large fur babies... so that wasn't a huge deal for us!
It didn't have a bath though, a huge concern for Jacquie, and she was thinking an upgrade might be in order. However we decided to go out for a dirty martini and a shot of Jameson's at an Irish pub we saw on the corner, and by the time we crashed out in our (very comfy!!) little double bed, we forgot all about it. *Note to Jax - you don't like dirty martinis.
So the next morning we woke up, went for a great swim in our hotel pool, and by 9am we were showered and dressed and ready to hit the road. Jax had a weird dream involving the old catering manager at the Listel.. and that's all I'm going to say about that....
It wasn't super warm out, maybe 15 degrees, but we've been used to 8 degrees this spring (?!) in Vancouver lately (coldest April on record people!) so it felt almost balmy for us. We headed to the downtown core, not really knowing where anything was, and we passed a Bloomingdales, a Burlington Coat Factory, Forever 21, Sephora, Old Navy etc etc. How do I remember these names? Jax repeated them to me MANY MANY times over the course of the weekend. ;-)
Today, according the coupons I made for Jax, today was the day we were to rent motorized bicycles! This was super exciting for me, but surprisingly Jax was quite concerned and worried, and kept saying things like 'maybe tomorrow we'll go biking' and 'I think I can see everything from just walking... we don't need to spend money on the bikes' - I'm a smart man, I know when my wife doesn't want to do something. I can take a hint! However, I know the distances in San Fran are deceptively long due to the hills, and I really wanted us to cross the Golden Gate Bridge by bike! (I don't know why this is so thrilling... we've neither one of us crossed the Lion's Gate Bridge by bike, despite having lived here most of our lives)
So I just went along with Jax's worrying/fretting about the bikes, and figured we'd just somehow 'find' ourselves at the bike store in the early afternoon, and just see how she felt when she got a look at the bikes. Luckily I have the map, and Jax really isn't interested in navigating when we're somewhere new, so I can steer us in the direction I want and she doesn't know it! (or if she does know, she let's me think I'm tricking her. Either way, fun!)
So we walked over to the cable car turnaround, and it was freakin' PACKED. I'd say 100 people, maybe more, lined up to get on a cable car that took maybe 30.
So rather than wait, we decided to walk to the next station, and then the next one, and the next. Ah the hell with cable cars! These hills aren't so bad!!
Hard to tell maybe in the pics, but these are Craaaazy hills!! And they're everywhere. You climb one, then there's another, and another, and it's not like you can go east-west or south-north and skip the hills, there are loops and valleys and peaks and hills everywhere, in every direction. Sometimes you find yourself in a little gully and the hills go up on all four sides. It can get daunting! But it wasn't daunting that first day... that first day we were dressed in our gym/yoga gear and we were FLYING up and down those suckers.
We just kinda headed in the direction of Fisherman's Wharf, ended up in Chinatown, which was like a huge Vancouver Chinatown... but not overly thrilling to people from Vancouver. Maybe if we were from Nebraska the bloody chicken heads or buckets of spices and fishes and mysterious herbs would be exciting, but for us... meh - seen it.
So we walked until we saw a sign for Telegraph Hill, and we both wanted to climb it because we heard the steps were the craziest steepest steps in the world, and that's just the kind of people we are (and luckily we found each other, because really, who else seeks out the steepest steps in the world to climb for fun??)
Telegraph Hill and the COIT Tower were BEAUTIFUL!!
The hill itself was covered with a thick, lush green carpet of trees, bushes, flowers... gorgeous. I really wanted to see the parrots (I saw a movie, The Parrots of Telegraph Hill about a wild parrot colony that lives there) but alas, no parrots to be found on this day.
The steps WERE crazy steep, but after having lived and ran the hills of White Rock they weren't impossible to climb. Still, they were long, steep and truth be told, lots of fun to climb. (I know, we're almost sadistic)
There were great little gardens and houses along the 'trail' of steps, leading up the hill. Talk about paradise. These would be SO great to live in, especially if you were a cat. No cars, lots of plump colourful birds, occasional tourists coming by to pet you, warm California weather.... that's the life I tell ya!
So we climbed up the hill, then down Filbert Steps, which were even longer and steeper and crazier than the hill we climbed on the other side. We were quite cocky jogging up the other side, but on the Filbert side we realized that THESE were the steps the guide book warned about! We saw other tourists coming up this way, but not many. Most took tour buses up to a parking lot at the base of COIT Tower. Wimps. We didn't bother paying the $5 bucks to go up the tower, we had a great view of the Bay and Bridge from the parking lot.
At the base of the hill and a little walk aways, we came to Fisherman's Wharf. PACKED with tourists eating chowder in sourdough bread bowls, seagulls galore, a Disney-land type wharf of silly overpriced stores and restaurants, but all in all, a fun festive place. Still, it was quite contrived, not at all like the 'real' San Fran, and while this was the place to catch the boats to Alcatraz etc, it really wasn't somewhere we wanted to hang out a long time at. EXCEPT we got to see SEA LIONS here!! WOOHOOO!!
Very exciting.
Jax thrilled to see the Sea Lions! arf arf arf!
Jim, and large marine mammals in the background!
It was now about noon, so we stopped for a pint and a glass of wine at a weird little bar that looked like something out some 50's mafia movie, all red leather seats and dark corners. And then... why... look where we are!! We're at the electric bike rental store!! What a crazy coincidence. So we decided to go in despite jax's trepidation (and to be fair, she doesn't have a driving license so the thought of driving something/anything on the road was scary for her) but these bikes just looked SO FUN! so fun.
Not surprisingly, once Jacquie got to sit on the bike and see that there was a key that you could turn on and off the electric part, she was fine. It's a really cool little system. Basically it's a bike with a battery. it's called 'pedal assist' which really means if you drop below a certain speed, the electricity kicks in and turns your back wheel for you. So the slower you go, the more electricity is used keeping you at a steady speed. When you're on flat land, you can't really feel the assistance. But as SOON as you hit a hill... wow!! It's awesome!
So we hop on our bikes and head out onto the street, and soon we're in the park, with no cars, just bikes, and we're scooting along, chatting and pointing out the seals in the bay, the cool architecture, and we're barely pedaling, and passing EVERYONE! It was awesome.
And when we came to the hills, everyone else (there were bikers everywhere, tons of tourists renting bikes to cross the Golden Gate Bridge) had to get off their bikes and push them, struggling and sweating and getting snippy and cross with one another. Families bitching, kids whining... and we passed 'em all on our dinky little electric bikes!!! and another cool part was you couldn't even really see the batteries, so it just looked like we were in tremendous shape, and everyone was in awe of us, passing them with ease on killer hills!
Cool bikes, cute girl, nice bridge!
Dork on a bike
So after a 10 k easy bike, we were on the bridge! Amazing how beautiful the city is, with Alcatraz sitting just a couple thousand yards off the shore (how far is a yard, anyways?)
babe on a bridge. Don't jump!!
The bridge was packed with tourists (it was Easter Friday) but we managed to maneuver our way around them all, and ended up on the other side on some wicked downhills into the sleepy little tourist town of Sausalito. Like White Rock on beauty steroids. Steep, winding hills with fantastic homes perched atop them, all with a million dollar view of San Fran's skyline. Palm trees and blue ocean, flowers and little shops lined the streets... really, if you look up idyllic in the dictionary, Sausalito would be right up there, except for all the damn tourists.
Jax a little wobbly in Sausilito
Jim finds a friend
So after a very odd lunch with some surly waitresses. (I had a very greasy tuna melt, Jax a much nicer shrimp sandwich) we decided to take the ferry back to the mainland... but when we went to the ferry terminal the line up was huge, and the ferry was still an hour away. So what'd we do? Well, if we had regular bikes we'd have had no choice, the hills back to the Golden Gate Bridge were killer and we'd never make it, but with our handy dandy pedal assist electric bikes, it was no-problemo! So we pedalled the full 15k back over the bridge, along with water, and back to Fisherman's Wharf, and our electric meters were still on full despite over 4 hours of pedalling!
Despite the early trepidation, Jax now totally wants to get one of those bikes, and I have to agree, I think the hills of New Westminster would be AWESOME for those suckers.
So, we were pretty tired, and we had Giants tickets for 7pm that night. It was 4pm.. so what do we do? Do we hop on a cable car or bus? NO! We decide to walk the 7k back to the hotel up and over the hills... which was beautiful! We found beautiful Little Italy! BUT... we exhausted ourselves, and by the time we made it to the hotel is was almost 6pm, and after a quick shower we had to walk 2 more kilometres to the baseball field. Holy crap we were EXHAUSTED by the time we got there.
Giants World Series 2010 Win commerative mural
little woman in little italy
the streets of San Francisco!
As I was saying.... we biked the 30 k to Sausilito and back (true, it was pedal-assisted, but still, a loooong way!) and the 2 x 7 k walks from our hotel to Fisherman's wharf and back. By the time we walked to the stadium at 7pm and found our seats, we were ready to drop.
And let me tell you, baseball is NOT the sport to be watching when you can barely keep your eyes open. The field, AT&T Field, on Willie Mays road, was beautiful, and it was a sell-out of 44,000 +. Kinda weird crowd for a sophisticated town like San Fran. It was like the population of Surrey had been dropped off in the stadium... tough girls in tight jeans, meaty guys with caps on sideways and baggy jeans. Or maybe that was just our section - but I THOUGHT we actually had decent seats. But we didn't. $60 seats doesn't buy you much apparently. We had limited view seats, which meant we could barely see home plate, and if a ball got hit in the air we couldn't see it due to the bleachers above.
It was a fun atmosphere, but the game sucked. 4-1 Atlanta, and nothing really happened. Atlanta scored all their runs in a one inning rally, and their pitcher shut down the Giants except for 3 measly hits. Jax ate a hot dog, I had nachos, and we stared at the little men running around the field like zombies until the ninth inning, when everyone else went home and so we snuck down to the good seats on the 3rd base line! The air was open, we could see everything! What a difference! Instantly I felt more awake, and there were seagulls to watch too as they started swooping and calling to each other, forming a big noisy flock above us. No doubt they were excited to get at all the old peanuts and nachos that were sure to be left behind by the big crowds.
The view (?) from the $60 seats.
the view from the $100 seats. Way better, but really, $100 per person to see a baseball game?
Seagulls!
So the game ended, we dragged our tired toes and aching legs back to the hotel, and fell in an exhausted heap in our little double bed... and sleep like kings and queens with no cats to bug us!!
COMING SOON... DAY 2!
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