We started the day by walking to
Union Square
to look around and find the 1/2
price ticket booth to see if we could discount tickets to Mamma Mia or The
Tale of the Allergist's Wife. Neither one was available, but someone there
suggested we check back on Thursday when more shows offer those types of
tickets. Anyway, where we got there, we found that it didn't open for a
few hours, so we went off looking for breakfast. Actually, I was in the mood
for lunch. Nataliya suggested going to
Ton Kiang, a
restaurant that was supposed to be the best in San Francisco for dim sum.
That sounded great to me, so before Nataliya could figure out how to get
there, I hailed a taxi to save
time and get to the food faster.
Although I was totally unaware of how far this restaurant was from
Union Square,
it was made longer by "Mo" the Jordanian taxi driver who wouldn't
stop talking! He asked us to call him when we needed to go back to the airport and he'd take us for $30, adding that he'd bring us coffee/chocolates/beer...
anything we wanted. I tried pushing the envelope and I then asked if he'd
let us have sex in his taxi and he said, 'sure'! I then asked if he'd let me
drive and he politely suggested I leave the driving to him. After finding
out that we came in from New York, he spent the next half-hour telling us how
much he loves New Yorkers because some old woman visiting from New York
recently hired him to be her personal chauffeur for the week, paying him
$500-700 a day for driving her all over the area, including Napa & Saucilito.
He was upset when she told him it was her last day, but she paid him $1,000
for that last day. Whether he was serious or not - who knows. All I know was
that I was happy to get out of that cab when we finally arrived at the
restaurant! Of course, before we left his taxi, he made sure to give us his
business card, taking the time to cross off the
taxi company's phone number and inseret his own personal cell phone number.
On a happy note, the dim sum at Ton Kiang was excellent! It's
definitely worth the extra effort to get to, although not necessarily worth
listening to Mo the cabbie ...
After our dim sum brunch, we decided to get back to
Union Square to check for
any discount theatre tickets. After the experience with Mo (and the fact that
it cost too much to get there,) we got on the #1 bus to get us to Chinatown.
From Chinatown, we walked to the 1/2 price ticket booth in
Union Square and
discovered that there weren't any tickets available for any decent shows.
We'd check back on Thursday.
After stopping off at the hotel room, we picked up some developed pictures
from Walgreen's and hopped on a cable car to Fisherman's Wharf to get there in
time for the 3:45 PM Alcatraz tour. After a stop at Starbucks, we got on the
ferry and to Alcatraz Island.
They had self guided tours on alarmed portable MP3 players, so we took
the tour which lasted about 40 minutes. It was an interesting tour,
although little was very surprising for me because I already knew a little
bit of the history.
It was definitely cool to feel the prison
bars, touch the frigid floor of the isolation rooms - to physically experience
Alcatraz instead of just reading about it or seeing a Hollywood movie about
it. Nataliya wasn't familiar with all the history so it was all pretty much
new for her. She was surprised that with all the security in place, some
prisoners were actually able to escape! (Note to self: I'll have to rent
"Escape From
Alcatraz" for her.)
It's really a shame the facility hasn't
been maintained as most of the island has deteriorated; buildings have been
destroyed or are crumbling. Other buildings have been destroyed by fire.
Also, the island looks like a toilet for the various seagulls and other birds -
some pathways are heavily painted white from bird guano.
Just to side track a little, there's one thing I haven't yet mentioned, and
that's how small our hotel room was. While it's
true it was only costing us $35 a night and that we had to share the
facilities with other cheapskates, the room was barely large enough to fit a
full-sized bed. Why'd I bring this up, you ask? Well, the prison cells at
Alcatraz reminded me of this small room
as two cells were approximately the size of our room, but at least they had
a toilet and a sink, and all their meals were included! I haven't
done anything wrong - why can't my hotel stay be paid by the taxpayers? :)
Well, it was getting late and it was time to get back to the mainland, so
we made our way back to the ferry and back to Fisherman's Wrarf.
We had dinner at Chic's on pier 39.
Thumbs up on this one! The food was very good! Both of us enjoyed the clam
chowder in sour dough bread bowl, and our seafood dinners were tasty. The
only complaint was that the food wasn't as hot as we would have liked, but it
tasted too good to complain!.
From there, we hopped onto cable car and went back to hotel, stopping off at
Walgreen's to drop off another roll of film. After some talk about going out,
we lay down to go to sleep.
