We drove downtown SF on Saturday and ran into an Italian festival and THAT was filled with 1000's of people and NO place to park. Talk about traffic! Wow. We ( well - I did) wanted to eat in China Town, but driving a car in SF is for crazy people only, so we headed towards Lombard St. and drove down the crookedest street in the world.
On Monday, we figured that we'd visit Fisherman's Wharf because there would be less people. Wrong. There was a zillion people there too! I know that Kathy was a little disappointed with what she saw. She lived and worked in the city 27 years ago and the changes since she was last here were mind boggling. Fisherman's Wharf is now filled with shops selling T-shirts and coffee mugs on one side of the street and over-priced restaurants selling average food on the other. A draft beer cost $5.00 and a fish sandwich was $14.00. Lunch for two = $55.00. Ridiculous.
Standing in line to take a trolley car - 1 hour.
We took a LOT of pictures, so if you want to see them, click here to view them on line!
Kathy says: So, we spent a week in San Francisco; no surprise to anyone since that's all I talked about on the blog for, well, forever. I wish I could say it was as a great trip, and that everything I imagined it would be. But it wasn't. Nothing was what I remembered it to be like. Also, I have never ever seen so many tourons (tourist + moron = touron) in my life. We made the tactical mistake of getting off the streetcar in the heart of the
touon center at Fisherman's Wharf. I was hoping to see some of the sea lions that used to cover the piers, but all we saw were endless swarms of people, everywhere. We did a couple of tourist things, like Lombard street, which took us almost an hour to get down the one way crookedest
street in the world. We did see some great sights and towns north of the City, in Marin
County. Lots of small, quaint little places. Places where an old tiny cottage would run about $600,000! Lots of places with $14.00 burgers and $2.00 (each) oysters. I told Steve when we get home I will NEVER EVER complain about the prices in restaurants!
On our last trip into San Francisco, we attempted to go see some sights in Golden Gate Park. This was on a Wednesday, so we thought we'd be able to avoid the crowds. Not so. Couldn't find a place to park anywhere near anything in the park we wanted to see. So, we took off for the
beach, and the famous Cliff House. Got some great pics there and then we decided to pack it in and head back up north.
Just goes to show, you just really can't go back again. It had been 27 years since I'd been there. I guess I thought things wouldn't change. I never thought of SF as dirty, but it was. By compare, NYC is SO SO much cleaner, believe it or not. Anyway, my two cents worth. We drove off and I pretty much knew that I will probably not visit SF again. Well, never say never, but that's how I felt that week.
