Driving into the centre of famous steep streets and great looking buildings is like being on a film set of many a high speed car chase, apart from the one way systems and traffic lights.
We stop in a Victorian building building with old style ornate metal doored lifts and views over the streets covered in sun and style. I like this place, a lot.
You can't forget it's still winter but when the sky is clear and the sun is out everything is better and this is what I always thought California was like.
There's clearly not as many homeless here as in Vancouver and the ones that are around don't hassle us. Around Union Square a couple hang around but there's not much there for us anyway. A few tourists are having there photo taken outside Macy's and other non-descript buildings.
Another city, another Chinatown. It's a big one too.
I suppose it's only a few thousand miles across the water to China from here. It's the first Chinatown I've seen that sells souvenirs and t-shirts rather than just food and Chinese trinkets.Those no avoiding those steep streets. It can be a killer walking around all day, which is why so many tourists are on the trams stood on the outside. The trams look cool and add to the whole scene of San Francisco as they traverse the angled streets. Everywhere makes a good photograph here. It's like there was an agreement when all the building were put up that they all had to have a similar yet unique style and colour. There doesn't seem to be any gritty areas either, it all just flows into one beautiful city.
San Francisco is a peninsula so therefore it's surrounded by water on three sides and connecting bridges like the Golden Gate. This can be seen from up at the Coit Tower, which we climb up to for sunset across the bay. Oddly at night the Golden Gate bridge isn't lit up like the long Bay Bridge is and thus doesn't look as good at night. But from Coit Tower you not only can see the hilly streets of San Fran but the former prison island of Alcatraz.
We walk towards Little Italy with the smell of garlic wafting through the air and Italian looking blokes smoking on the street talking in, surprisingly, Italian. Nearby is a leafy green square and good looking white church.
We visit a famous book store, City Lights, that was famous for it's connection to the Beat poet movement of the 60's, of which San Fran was central to. Many a famous poet and musician have visited here as seen by the photos of Bob Dylan stood in the adjacent alleyway. It's a true bookshop full to bursting with scattered books and a floor dedicated to poetry upstairs. They even publish books here too. Practically next door is the bar Vesuvio. Owned and run by poets and drunks, possibly one in the same, this place is scattered with 60's throwback San Fran artefacts and pictures. It's a quintessential American bar. Well, in my mind anyway. The whole area looks good, a huge jazz mural adorns the building across the street and through the upstairs stained glass windows of the bar you can see the mural down the alley.
Across the street in the other direction is a 'flat iron' style building of triangular proportions with a much newer, but no less good looking, pointy skyscraper looming behind.We eat curry and chat to a Nepalese guy who's missing England a lot, 'Even London is cheaper than here!'.
New Years Eve. We walk up to Lombard Street which is home to the 'crookedest street'. This street coming down Russian Hill has been featured in many films and car chases and has many tourists driving down it taking photos whilst hanging out of the window or running down in front of cars. I didn't realise people lived on this street but they do.
We stroll around an upscale shopping district and dive into a decent coffeeshop for a cuppa where a guy leaves a very expensive camera and a bit of equipment next to us, we go to hand it in of course, and he comes back in, 'I've done this a few times now!'. Crikey!
It reminded me of being in Peru and walking up to a cash machine as it asks if I would like another transaction, someone had left their card in and I could've easily wiped out their account. If I was that sort but I'm not so Laura chased the girl down the street and handed her card back. Turns out she'd also done it before but didn't seem to fussed.
New Years Eve was time for Les Claypool the bass genius from Primus. We arrive at the Filmore, one of the most famous music venues in the world and has been home to the biggest names in rock history for decades. From the outside it's unassuming and we walk past it unsure of where it is. Trying to find somewhere to get a drink is more difficult. It's not even that early, around half 7, but out of the 2 or 3 bars nearby only a pizzeria selling beer has anyone inside. It'll do.
Once inside the venue we realise how small the place is, my kind of place really. The walls inside are covered with concert posters from decades gone by including bands like Led Zeppelin, The doors and Jimi Hendrix. The theme is 'Mad hatters' and there's plenty of home made giant hats around. The gig was brilliant, funk-tastic and the band came dressed in various sea related themes, Les was the sailor, the saxophone player had a huge fish head and a a guest vocalist was wearing a giant shark suit. Balloons covered the place on the stroke of New Year as Les played funky bass to a load of American nutters and us. A guy kept walking through the crowd saying, 'mushrooms' in peoples ears. A couple of sea based numbers later and it was all over and we were outside waiting for the bus in the cold clutching our free posters and the t-shirts I'd bought. Definitely one of the best New Years ever.
And with that the next day we headed south, after driving down the crooked Lombard Street for full on tourist experience. We knew that we'd be back to San Fran soon enough.
We hit the beach south of San Fran on New Years day in the sunshine, now that was a pretty damn cool way to start 2008.
I say hit the beach but after about 10 minutes of being outside with my t-shirt on I had to run back to the car freezing! I don't know how those surfers put up with it sometimes.
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