Monday, July 13, 2009: San Francisco

We woke up way to early and left our beautiful scummy motel at 7 am. The plan was to meet Francis for coffee so we drove to Davis and followed his very specific directions to find him. See for yourself. This is a direct quote from text messages:

“Go through to lights. Make a left at the stop onto a small street follow it all the way to the end.”

C’mon…’to lights’? Is that two lights or go to the first light? And a small street? What the?! We found Francis without too many troubles thanks to our spectacular translating, but a couple of phones calls were necessary. We managed to squish him into our overcrowded truck; somehow he got the front seat…and drove to an amazing crepe and coffee place. The crepes more than made up for the lack of directions!

Next up was San Francisco! We drove in over the Bay Bridge and through the city and over the Golden Gate Bridge. We stopped and took some pictures at the crowdedest vista point ever and then drove back into the city.



Amazingly we found a parking spot close to Lombard Street so we stopped and walked up and down the crazy crooked street. It was beautiful with all the flowers out and good fun watching all the tourists trying not to wear out their brakes driving down!



We decided to drive a little closer to the Fisherman’s Wharf because we thought that would be a good spot to eat clam chowder in bread bowls for dinner. We picked what had to be the most expensive parking garage in the city and then set off to find bathrooms. Everyone knows that hotels have nice bathrooms so we headed into the closest hotel. This place was pretty smart and made hotel guests use their room keys to get into the lobby bathrooms. We were smarter and loitered near the door until a guest came and then just followed her right in. Brilliant you think? So do we.

Ghirardelli Square seemed like a good place to check out, seeing as we are all chocolate fans. It was a fantastic idea and we even got free chocolate! You will be proud to know that we all resisted buying any, mostly due to the fact it would melt in our car before we could eat any of it. But just think of the calories we are saving, not only ourselves but also you fans out there which could have been recipients of the chocolate. You can thank us anytime or just send monetary thanks…

After grabbing some frozen yogurt, we wandered down to Pier 39 and listened to some awesome, crazy piano guy playing live jazz. The Aquarium was calling out to us so we bought tickets and went in to check out the fishies. You actually take an elevator down to this tunnel under the bay to see the fish so it’s pretty cool!




We got in touch with Francis and Rachel who were planning to meet us downtown for supper. Many texts were sent to Francis about how we didn’t want Chinese food and thought that clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls would be a good local thing to try out. He asked us to meet them at Union Square so we hopped on a bus to get there and looked around at all the shops that we couldn’t even afford to breathe in – Chanel, Prada, Louis Viuton and others. We also discovered that Union Square is very close to Chinatown and very far away from the Fisherman’s Wharf and clam chowder…How convenient for Francis!


Char was starving hungry so we texted Francis about 20 times to see what was taking them so long. Finally met up with Francis and Rachel and stopped to buy Char a snack so she wouldn’t go crazy while we walked to a chowder or Italian restaurant. We walked around Chinatown and somehow ended up smack in front of the Chinese place that Francis had been telling us about all day long. We were so hungry at that point that it was fairly easy to talk us into eating there. Francis sweet talked the hostess into giving us a window table with a fabulous view of the city!


The meal was delicious; we ordered several fabulous things and shared them around. The conversation was witty and stimulating as we talked about road kill and serial killers on the loose in San Francisco campgrounds… Unfortunately Rachel couldn’t be talked into hoping in the car with us for the remainder of the trip. She may have been scared off by stories of the falling Texas beach chair. Martha has many scars and bruises to show for her battles with said chair. And Francis kindly and generously paid for our meal so we forgave him for making us eat Chinese food. Although we are still dreaming about clam chowder and bread bowls.


To work off all that food, we walked all the way back to Ghirardelli Square where Char and Martha had a small water fight in the fountains in which Char won. On our way to our campsite, we gave Francis and Rachel a ride back to their BART stop, Francis kindly drove so we wouldn’t get lost.


Our campsite turned out to be a small strip of grass next to the RV parking lot. The night security guard barely spoke English even though he was also in charge of night check ins. “Office closed. No receipt. No change. Internet if you are lucky to get a signal. No bathrooms unless you find me to unlock them.” He then proceeded to quote us the RV price not the tent price and wouldn’t give us the cash discount because the office was closed. I bet he pocketed the extra cash… After minimal efforts we set up our $30 Target tent and squished into it and slept like little sausages.