A lot of Walking ...

San Francisco – Day 2 (a day of walking!!)

Left the hotel at about 8:00am and walked down the street to catch the cable car to Chinatown. Some history – Chinese immigrants came here during the gold rush to work as miners and railroad builders.  After the destruction in 1906 (earthquake and fire), the area was rebuilt with Chinese-style architecture.  Wondering around these streets is like visiting another city within a city.  San Francisco’s Chinatown is the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere and it puts on festivals honouring its heritage – Chinese New Year in the winter and Autumn Moon Festival in the fall, to name a couple.  There are lots of little shops with all sorts of things to buy – you name it, they have got it, of course all “made in China”.  I enjoyed looking at the architecture as well.

We left there and walked down about 8 blocks (each block is anything between 150 to 250 metres) to another huge center called the Embarcadero Centre.  This is a three block and three storeys high centre with mainly exclusive shops, but, being a Sunday and Easter Sunday at that, it was closed.  Not even a restaurant open, so we had to go to Mc Donalds and have breakfast – not bad and rather quite enjoyable.

We then headed back to Chinatown (yes, we walked up the hills now!) and walked to the Coit Tower (like walking up Inkonka road in Kloof or Dawncliffe in Westville, for about 1km) and then a whole lot of steps to finally get to the top.  Wow, the views were amazing.  It was a clear, sunny day, so we were able to see quite far out.  Some basic history – this tower was built in memory of all the fireman who died in the great fire of 1906.

We left the tower and walked to Lombard Street where the crooked street is.  It is a zig zag street lined with well kept hedges and is the only street of its kind in San Francisco (again this was like walking up Inkonka or Dawncliffe!).  All the streets here are a grid and go up and down the hills, nothing winds like our roads.  From there we caught the cable car down to Fisherman’s Wharf and took a look around Ghirardeli Square.  This is quite a big centre and is where the famous Ghirardeli chocolate used to be made.  There is still a shop there and we ended up having a lovely ice cream - it was so worth the $4 we paid for one scoop!!  We then waited in the queue to catch the cable car back to our hotel, where we were just in time to have tea and sherry. Every afternoon at 4:00pm they serve tea, sherry and cakes, although they said they ran out of cakes and we have been having biscuits.

Relaxed a bit and recharged our batteries as well as those of the cameras and laptops and then headed out for supper.  We decided to go back to Loris Diner again and Dereck had a burger and I had a chicken stirfry.  After that we walked up the hills back to our hotel for some well deserved sleep.

San Francisco – Day 3

Another lovely sunny day.  We walked from our hotel down to the main road to catch a bus to the Golden Gate Park.  We stopped off before the park to look at some of the shops and then headed off through the park to the Californian Academy of Sciences.  This is a natural history and science museum with lots of interactive things happening.  There were quite a few aquariums and places where people could touch things like sea urchins and starfish.  A great place for kids and there were many as it was school break.  On leaving Dereck suggested a short cut through the park and this ended up being longer than we took to get to the park in the first place.  We must have walked for about 40 minutes all round the perimeter!!  Stopped off at Mc Donalds to have something quick to eat and then caught the bus back into town.  Managed to find 2 art and craft shops and got a couple of scrapping things – they did not have any selection at all.  Actually there are no scrapbooking shops here (I checked in the yellow pages!!)

Then we headed back to our hotel, again arriving in time for tea and a sherry and we both collapsed on the bed for a siesta.  We needed it as we walked so much today!!  Took a walk down about 5 blocks to another Loris Diner and had supper – Dereck a dagwood sandwich and I had a Chinese chicken salad.  Then of course was the long haul back up the 5 blocks to our hotel, but not before stopping in at Borders (book shop) to look around.

Hill walkers signing off …..