Nataliya and Seth's San Francisco Vacation
We got up very early and headed to breakfast at Sears Fine
Food. I asked them what they were famous for and they said the
silver dollar pancakes and the corned beef hash. I decided I'd
have the pancakes. Nataliya had the oatmeal with strawberries. The
pancakes were good, but I've had better. So I got myself another
breakfast by ordering the corned beef hash which was the best I've
tasted.
Then we went to take the cable car to Fisherman's Wharf - a routine
which would pretty much repeat itself every day. While waiting on the
line to get on the cable car, we met this guy Pat and his "curvy" date
that he met on the Internet. Earlier that week, I introduced Nataliya
to the humor of Jeff Foxworthy - "If someone asks to see your ID and
you show them your belt buckle... You might be a redneck." Well, this
guy proudly said he works in the rodeo and he showed us his huge rodeo
belt buckle! I tried to hide my laughter by acting impressed! Then he
asked us to touch his leg because those muscles are used most in the
rodeo. Nataliya obliged, but I turned him down.
Meanwhile as cable car after cable car came down and stopped on a
wooden platform, Nataliya and I were intrigued in the manual process
it took to push the car around. Seemed like a big effort for something
that seemed to be a simple process. (Side note: In the cable car fleet of
employees, only one of them was female.)
We finally got to fisherman's wharf and started walking around to
familiarize ourselves with the surroundings. While checking the
souvenier stands, I spotted a jewelery store that let you choose an
oyster and you can keep whatever pearl is inside. I thought it was
rather unique and dragged Nataliya into the place to play. We picked
one out and the woman joyfully counted down (up?) "one, two three,
alooooooooohaaa" before opening up the oyster to reveal a very nice
pearl. They then suggested drilling a small hole in the pearl before
it hardens too much after being out of the moisture of the oyster. Then
they put in the hard sell for which they probably make the most of their
money - selling a setting for the pearl. We found a very pretty one with
two dolphins swimming and they were happy at making their sale. Then then
gave us a free oyster to open and this one was nice as well. They drilled
a hole in this one as well, but when they tried to sell us another setting,
we turned them down, took the two items and left. Aloha, indeed!
We then thought we could go see Alcatrax that afternoon and maybe take a
wine tasting tour. The wine tasting tour was a bit expensive and the first
available tour of Alcatraz was Wednesday at 3:45 PM. We bought tickets for
the Wednesday tour and walked around. By Pier 29, we went to see what the
IMAX film, "The Great San Francisco Adventure" was all about. We waited,
cold from the cooler late afternoon air and chilling ocean breezes made our
summer-clothes ineffective. Anyway, we got in to see the IMAX presentation
and the show was really bad. I didn't have very high expectations walking
into this IMAX presentation and I still walked away disapointed.
Then we went to the Aquarium of
the Bay at Pier 39 which was an underground exploration of what a
SCUBA diver might see (in a controlled environment...) The moving
sidewalk kept the tourists moving though the 770,000 gallon underwater
museum of live sharks, stingrays, and fish of all shapes and sizes, mixed
with various types of coral.
Afterwards, I was hungry and we went into
North Beach Pizza
(review),
also at Pier 39. (In case you haven't figured it out by
now, there are a lot of things one can do on this pier...) This place
featured an all you can eat Italian buffet that included mediocre pizza.
The waitress was excessively bubbly and eager to please, trying
her best to charm us with her Irish accent. (One thing we did notice on
this trip was that there are a lot of people working here who are
from Australia, England, and Ireland. Considering the sheer numbers of
homeless in the area, you'd think they'd offer those jobs to the locals
first... but more on the homeless subject later.) My brother, Jared, met
up with us at the restaurant after finding a hotel for the night,
showering and getting some rest. Jared was quick to rush to pay the
bill for lunch.
From there we walked to Coits Tower which was this short building on a
very high hill. We didn't really stay long enough to get into the
significance of the building because we were pretty tired after trekking
up the hill to get to the building.
After a few scenic photos, we walked down and headed up and down various
hills to get to Lombard St. Honestly, no treadmill I've ever seen can
prepare you for the steepness of these streets!
Lombard Street is known as the "crookedest street in America".
The street is so steep that they made it so cars would have to drive in
a diagonal fashion to navigate the steet. The homes on the side look
expensive, but would you want to live on a street that always has
touristy traffic all day long? In the photo on the left, you can see the
tops of the cars as they maneuver their way down the street. In the photo
on the right, you can see how steep the streets get.
As Jared headed back to his hotel for some rest and to do some work,
Nataliya and I ventured towards Japantown to
see some festival we heard was going on. On the way, we stopped at a
furniture store where we found many nice pieces which we both agreed
would be nice to use to furnish my 3-year old townhouse. Unfortunately,
the shipping would run into the thousands to get the furnite cross-country.
We finally arrived at the festival at 6 PM and found that the festival was
over at 5 PM, so we walked around, to find a place to eat dinner and settled
on Umeko Restaurant with its all-you-can-eat Japanese seafood buffet.
Afterwards, tired from all the walking and eating, we headed back to the
hotel for some much needed sleep. Shortly after watching
Sex And The City, which Nataliya is
now addicted to, we both went to sleep.
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