Day 5 San Francisco pub crawl!

  San Francisco, California, United States
Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Says it all really!

We had a long lie today to let our aching muscles rest (though to be honest they are not as bad as I expected them to be, maybe we are fit after all!) and headed out at 0930. We had intended having breakfasts at The Cheesecake Company above Macy's but Macy's didn't open till 1000, so we wandered around the Financial area to the east of Union Square and went back at 10. Only to discover the Cheesecake Company doesn't open till 11. Oh well. As we were ravenous we went back to Sears Fine foods and had Al's special and the never ending cup of coffee. The queuing time to get in was about 15 minutes, not as bad as usual!

After that, we headed South East looking for JC Penny's that I thought was over there. To get there we walked through the Tenderlion which is one of the more salubrious parts of town. Now I know the locals on TripAdvisor mainly say it's not that bad and is safe enough - which I'm sure it is. But as a visitor it just doesn't "feel" safe. The beggars and homeless are more prominent; there are more sex and massage shops, there is a distinct smell of piss in the doorways!

It does tend to make you walk out of there just that little bit quicker.
 

City Hall

We got to Civic Centre Plaza but couldn't find the store. We asked in the library but got blank looks. As it turned out I had got duff info and there is no JC Penny's in downtown. But at least we had survived our walk through the Tenderloin!

We took the F Line back towards Downtown and went to Bloomingdales instead where Catriona discovered that Clinique products are even cheaper here than in Bangkok.

Cable Car Museum

In the afternoon we went to the Cable car museum. It was very interesting to see the actual machinery that runs the cable cars. There are three sets of continuous loop cables constantly traveling at 9.5MPH. There was a lot of information and photos of what happened after the 1906 earthquake, whole areas of the city were razed to the ground into piles of rubble. There used to be a lot more cable cars but they were closed down and the cars almost all scrapped completely and would have been if it hadn't been for some campaigning by some individuals. I bet the City is glad they kept them now. The museum is free to visit and I can highly recommend it to anyone to visit.

After that we took a tootle to Lombard Street "the crookedest street" walked the 238 steps down, took the touristy photos from the bottom and walked the other 238 back up!

Lombard Street

We then went to the next discerning tourist destination, Ghirardelli Square the home of chocolate - well, where they used to make it, now its touristy shops. We visited Cellar360 and wandered through the shelves of hundreds of bottles of wine. Catriona decided to try and wine tasting ($10 for 4 different wine samples) and practiced her sniffing and sloshing and gushing descriptions such as "ambiance of a late spring evening with hints of pepper and warm vanilla oakiness". I said "hmm tastes red/white". There was no spitting involved! 

We went down the stairs to O'Neill's Irish bar, where we had some Stella. We got chatting to Lyndsey the barmaid. I had three beers and Catriona went onto Captain Morgans when the discovered that they don't do measures in San Francisco - it was a generous measure!

We then headed towards Chinatown for food. We had been going to try Chef Jia's but they were closed as they were on holiday, so we went to the nearby Hunan Homes. It was superb. Even by own normal standards, we ordered FAR too much! Each portion would have done 2-3 people, of course we ordered a couple of portions each! Catrionas order of duck was half a duck and was only $9. We got given Jasmin Tea as soon as we sat down. Highly recommended to visit.

Then onto Maggie McGarry's for the pub quiz. Catriona cleverly switched to drinking just Coke, I wish I had! I had
another beer and a couple of Captain Morgans and coke. The measures were about 80% rum and 20% coke. I remember getting back to the hotel but apparently I collapsed on the bed, I have no recollection :) Oh, and the quiz was tough (well, it wasn't too bad apart from the American questions that we had no clue), I think we came 4th or 5th out of 8 teams.

Finally, back to the room, I remember getting back but apparently I just fell unconsious on the bed - I have no recollection!