San Francisco
The City by the Bay
San Francisco, California

October 22, 2000

San Francisco had always been a mysterious city at the "far end of the world" to me, being from Ohio. For a long time I never pictured myself ever going there. However, we made it! San Francisco was a kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, smells and especially people. Wow! My senses almost went into overload. We drove into SF a couple of times in order to get repairs done, but I really don't recommend it. The traffic, even during the normally quiet hours, is very hectic. If you take an overall look at the city and surrounding communities (such as, Haight-Asbury) it looks as though someone planned a beautiful city and then someone else came along and pushed up huge hills in various places. Some of the streets in SF are at better than a 45° angle. Up on Russian Hill they have a street called "the crookedest street in the world". What we did was stay in a place north of SF called Vallejo. Then we could take a water taxi into the city. That was very pleasant. The ride in on the water taxi took about 55 mins. On our way across the bay we happened to pass a sailboat regatta which was very colorful. Then we landed at the ferry's pier. Pier #1. Of course, Fisherman's Wharf is way up at the other end of the long line of piers at Pier #39. It was Sunday when we went into town and when we got off the ferry we were met by several men operating bicycle-rickshaws. One of them offered to take us down to Fisherman's Wharf for $12. We took him up on it. Well, if you've ever looked at our pictures Bob and I are no small fry, plus the poor guy was bucking a strong headwind the whole way up. However, he kept up a constant chatter most of the way. Just to give you an idea of the kind of people you run into in California, he told us that this was just a part-time job for him. He actually worked in computers and earned $60,000.00 a year. He decided rather than pay an expensive health club to go and work out that he would do this on the weekends and get his workouts paid for. Interesting, eh? We arrived at Fisherman's Wharf and started looking around. There were wall-to-wall stores and restaurants. It was from here that you could get tour buses that would take you all over the city. Also, you could board the famous SF trolley cars. Bob decided that he wanted to see the Palace of Fine Arts. The transit system in town is actually fairly easy to get around on.