The weekend after Yellowstone was San Francisco! Now I’ll be
honest it ranks near the bottom of my favourite cities list. But the whole
weekend was a bit fun to be honest. I also did San Fran on $40 and $18 of that
went to my train ticket in and out of the city because we were staying in San
Jose.
Now we drove from Salt Lake City to San Jose. It’s an 11 hour and
11 minute drive. And I drove 9 and a half hours of it. I did the over night
haul from Salt Lake to Sacramento! I felt really epic for driving so long and
for driving over the Serra Nevada’s! Well until I realized I’d lost my wallet.
I had stopped at 2 something in the morning to fuel and I had been sure that I
had taken my wallet off the roof of the car… I hadn’t.
Needless to say I was totally freaking out! It legit had
everything in it my ID, my cards, my money. So I had a mini freak out and cried a
bit (I was really fucking tired at that point). I had searched the whole car
when we’d stopped for fuel and to switch drivers in Sacramento when I didn’t find
it and after I had my cry I got in the back seat and took a small nap while
Liam drove the last hour and 55 minutes to the hotel in San Jose.
We check into our hotel and settled down and I was looking up
number so after I napped I could cancel my cards, I wanted to nap so I could avoid crying on the phone. I was just cuddling into
sleep when I got a notification and I thought it was a text from my mum. But it
was an email from a total stranger named Ted. He’d picked up my wallet from the
on ramp in Wells, Nevada. I was like okay well I’ve got some cash in there that
he could use to send me my wallet. I mentioned that I had been driving from
Salt Lake to San Jose over night and he was like of I drive from Salt Lake to
Reno twice a week we can meet up when I’m back next week. I was like okay well
I’m staying with friends just outside of Salt Lake so that’s perfect. Turns out
he lived in the same town I was. Long story short I was out of luck in San Fran
for money shit (I still managed postcards!) but I got it back. My friend Leo
and I met up with Ted and his wife. Apparently he pulled over his
eighteen-wheeler and picked up my wallet! Talk about good Karma points for him!
I had to toss out my wallet and my cards were trashed and only
one worked for the remained of my trip. I’m putting up with my dented license
till it expires in December. But I got my wallet back with everything in it!
Now back to San Francisco. I road tripped out with Liam and his
husband Leo and their friend Nelson. Liam was taking a Tarot class in San Jose but
that wasn’t until the next day. After our naps we met up with another of Liam’s
friends and we headed over to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. It’s apparently
the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts in western North America, if that
counts for anything… But it was really cool. There were a lot of
artifacts and some replicas of things like the code of Hammurabi
Over all though the museum just made me sad. Egyptian things always make me sad. Most museums do. I love being able to see things from countries I
haven’t been to yet but all I can think is that it’s all so far from home.
Especially the mummies…
They’re so far from home and their place of burial….
^It's a bad picture but I promise you those are King Tut's Canopic Jars!^
The exterior of the museum was really cool. It was modeled after
a temple and the gardens around it were pretty too.
So the next day I navigated us into San Francisco. It was easy
we just had to hop a bus to the train station and take the train all the way
in. It was easy and even though I was the youngest in the group I was in charge
of everyone for the day, it was funny to me. It was also really nice because I
got to dictate where we went. The only down side was they were both super slow
walkers and they dawdled and it was like pulling fingernails half the time. The first bit was almost killer to me because I was Coffee deprived. The day really shaped up after I got my coffee and I still got to see
everything that I wanted too because at the end of the day the boys went
clubbing and I finished site seeing before heading back to the hotel on my own.
Now I’ll be honest I’m not too enthused at the idea of giving
you a normal run down of history and all things fun like I normally do. It’s
your lucky day... It’ll be more photos and less facts… and all facts will be
gathered from Wikipedia as I’m not too invested in this who endeavor.
We saw Chinatown
Some churches….
Some cool houses…
Great Views...
Lombard Street.
Lombard Street is known for the one-way block on Russian Hill between Hyde
and Leavenworth Streets, because there are eight sharp turns which are said to
make it the crookedest street in the world.
The design, first suggested by property owner Carl Henry and built
in 1922, was intended to reduce the hill's natural 27% grade, which was too
steep for most vehicles. The crooked block is perhaps 600 feet (180 m)
long (412.5 feet (125.7 m) straightline), is one-way (downhill) and is
paved with red bricks. The sign at the top recommends 5 mph (8 km/h).
Saw some cable cars…
Walked around the Warf…
Saw the Sea Lions. Their full story is HERE. But a fun fact is
they started making Pier 39 their hang out in January 1990. And incase you were
curious how huge these bad boys were….. Male sea lions reach
850 lbs (390 kg) and 7 ft (2.1 m) in length, while females can reach 220 lbs
(110 kg) and up to 6 ft (1.8 m) in length.
It was then that I took stock of the time. And the fact that I
wanted to walk on the Golden Gate Bridge and the website said it closed at 5.
We were an hour and a half walk from the bridge just over 4 miles. So I told
Leo and Nelson that I was walking there and if they wanted to wait somewhere
they could otherwise I was just going to book it over there. so off I started
walking! At break neck speed!
And guess what?!
We walked it in an hour.
I made it!
Well we made it. The boys caught up and we had a
lovely stroll on the Golden Gate Bridge!
I got a good view of Alcatraz. Which I’m still a bit bummed
about not going too. But apparently you’ve got to book pretty far in advance so
I might go back to San Francisco one day just to visit.
We also got some killer shots of the city!
I took tons of pictures!!
Then we walked to the fort that’s under the bridge and got
steller pictures!
And a bit further on I put my feet in the Pacific states side!
Then it was time to make our way back. Liam was coming to pick
the boys up so they could go clubbing! We ended up meeting outside the Palace
of Fine Arts. Originally I was just like wow this is a cool place. And I just
did a little wiki research and it’s actually a pretty cool place. It was originally
constructed for the 1915
Panama-Pacific Exposition in order to exhibit works of art presented
there. One of only a few surviving structures from the Exposition, it is the
only one still situated on its original site. It was rebuilt in 1965, and
renovation of the lagoon, walkways, and a seismic retrofit were
completed in early 2009.
Then it was good bye to the boys and I had almost three hours
before the last train to San Jose left so it was off I went doing my solo
thing. And one of the first things I saw was an American version of the TARDIS…
Sorry nerd moment!
I saw some more churches!
One of which was really ugly!!
I saw more cool houses
Then I was off on the
train. The trains were pretty weird though. They were double deckers but on the
second story the middle was opened and you looked down onto the first floor and
there were only two single file rows on either side of the car. I’m really
quite sad I don’t have a good picture of it because it was weird cool. I’m used
to the NJ Transit trains where the second story is the same as the first with
full rows on bow sides of the aisle.
The next day we went to the beach! I pretty much just sat around
and looked pretty… why? Well I love my Teiks I really do but I did the math and
I walked about 35ish miles up and down the hills of San Francisco for about 12
hours so I had some nasty blisters. So nasty in fact that I was legit hobbling
about the hotel room and when we woke up the next morning I was very intent on
stay in the room while the guys went to the beach because I could hardly walk.
Then I sucked it up because I didn’t want to have to deal with
the guys bugging me for skipping the beach so I went. And it was nice. I got to
read and chill and soak in the beachy energy.
Plus we drove through the redwood forest…
And the best part of the trip was actually a short stop over on
the way home… but that’s the next post! Because I’m strangely obsessed with
Donner’s Pass and yes I will fangirl over it!
Cheers,
No comments:
Post a Comment