Return to San Francisco

San Francisco is a great city with much to offer visitors with all tastes, interests, and inclinations. Highlights, in no particular order, include:

1. Seeing and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.

2. Riding the cable cars.

3. Shopping around Union Square.

4. Great modern art museums.

5. Walking up and down a few of those hills.

6. Driving a car up and down a few of those hills.

7. Visiting Alcatraz Island, once home of the infamous Al Capone –- a visit surprisingly interesting and worth reserving in advance.

8. Visiting the nearby Muir Forest –- see the redwood trees within half an hour of San Francisco and without having to take off the Manolo Blahniks.

9. Enjoying the views of the bridge, bay, city, and ocean from the Marin Heads.

10. Strolling through China Town and sampling the local fare.

11. Relaxing in the huge Golden Gate Park.

12. Driving up Twin Peaks to enjoy the views.

13. Seeing the Haight/Ashbury area, although this original hippie heartland now sports a rather bourgeoisie GAP at the main intersection.

14. Driving down Lombard Street –- the most crooked street in the world.

15. Visiting nearby Napa and Sonoma Valleys.

We have been in San Francisco many times, done all of the above, and bought several t-shirts (one I still frequently wear while mowing our 4x5m lawn). Although we again enjoyed some of these, this journal does not describe much of these must-do items. Our main intents on this visit were shopping, dining, catching up with friends, and simply enjoying being there.

Quick Tips:

European visitors may be surprised by the taxes and charges added to quoted prices. In contrast to much of Europe, quoted prices need not include taxes and other fees, and it is your responsibility to work out exactly what those are. I originally toyed with the idea of taking a stretch limousine into town, staying near Union Square, and only picking up the rental car when leaving high-parking-charges San Francisco. However, although all limousine websites are happy to inform you that the rate does not include taxes, vehicle licensing fees, toll fees, fuel surcharges, and gratuities, I found it near impossible to determine what those charges actually were.

Similarly, all kind of taxes are added to hotel prices –- including, at three different venues in California, some of the following: sales tax, occupancy tax, conference center tax, county visitor’s tax, room tax, and a parking tax. At no stage during any reservation were all these taxes explained or totaled. Parking in San Francisco ranges from free (very rare), to around at the Fisherman’s Wharf area and to at Union Square and downtown hotels.

Best Way To Get Around:

San Francisco has a fairly good public transportation system. The cable cars to and from Union Square to the Fisherman’s Wharf area a major tourist attraction, in addition to being one of the best ways to cross over to the north side. Walking can be tiring with all the hills, but it's a sensible option once in a specific area. Taxis are more limited, hard to find during rush hour, often old, and drivers surprisingly rude.

San Francisco is a pretty easy city to drive in, even if you just upgraded size-wise from a European compact car to what goes through as a full-size or minivan at an American rental agency. All rental cars are automatic, so sliding back on those hills is not a problem for those less able with the clutch. Parking is, however, a nightmare, with strictly enforced regulations seemingly changing every few meters. Parking garages are generally a better option, but fairly expensive –- compare rates before entering. Upside of driving? Convenience, and gas is still a third of German prices.

We had stayed in the Tuscan Inn a couple of times on previous visits to San Francisco, so we knew what to expect. Like most other hotels at Fisherman’s Wharf, the Tuscan Inn is a low-rise building of four floors, with most rooms facing rather busy streets. The décor is slightly Tuscan, with light walls and earthy-colored accents.

The last time we stayed here, we received a great rate through a discounting website but ended up in an impossibly small room. This time round, we found the best deal on the hotel’s website itself and reserved a more spacious room. The two double beds were covered in floral prints and the furniture painted in a white-beige. One wall was completely covered in mirrors to give an impression of spaciousness.

The small bathroom had a rather low and shallow bath-shower combination –- no sitting in the tub with the water up your neck here –- with a steady flow of hot water and a strong extractor fan. The washing basin was conveniently in a small, well-lit space just outside the bathroom door.

A minor gripe was the absence of a proper closet –- there was space for hanging clothes behind half a curtain in front of the bathroom, while drawers were scattered from the desk to the large bedside chest of drawers. In contrast to our previous two visits, there was no left-behind porn, neither gay nor straight, on top of the TV wall unit. We were fortunate to have a room facing the courtyard –- it was comfortably quiet, and from the previous stays, we could not recall the street-facing rooms having much of a view to make up for the additional street noise.

The room had complimentary coffee machines, but after the first cup, we bought our own coffee supply. Despite all our previous stays in this hotel, this was the first time we were actually inside the hotel at 5pm to attend the manager’s wine reception in the lobby. The wine was great, but the queue was slow-moving, as only the manager or his stand-in was filling the glasses, discouraging anyone going for seconds, as far as I could ascertain.

The hotel is conveniently located within easy walking distance of Fisherman’s Wharf attractions and restaurants. A Safeway supermarket and Walgreens drugstore are across the road, and a Cost Plus and Barnes and Noble bookstore with a Starbucks are in the same block.

The room rate was $109, but throw in valet parking ($26 per night) and taxes, including a $3.64 parking tax that I cannot recall from previous visits, and the total per night come out at a more pricy $154. On future visits, we would probably stay near Union Square and only pick up the rental car when leaving San Francisco itself. However, with a toddler and a baby, a car was more convenient, and the Tuscan Inn suited our needs perfectly.

"No, we’re NOT going to McDonald’s," the mother says, disappointing her kids while waiting behind us at the traffic signal. We were not going to McDonald’s either, though after a two-hour delay inside a United Airlines Airbus, due to fog at Mexico Airport, and a 50-minute wait at immigration at San Francisco International (eight persons in the queue ahead of us), the speed at which McDonald’s can serve up some hot food certainly had some appeal.

Our first meal on American soil in three years was definitely going to be burgers, but we had Johnny Rockets in mind. We first ate at Johnny Rockets in Tokyo, where the outlet in Roppongi served arguably the best burgers in town – the competition was limited until the late 1990s – at slightly over $10 a go, excluding fries or drinks. My first earthquake experience in Japan was actually while seated in Johnny Rockets, and my companion that night actually thought at first that it was special effect seats!

A few years ago, we happened upon Johnny Rockets at Fisherman’s Wharf and were happy to dine there, rather than at overly touristy and expensive nearby Pier 39. This time, we sought it out on purpose and were happy to find it as expected. It was still furnished in 1960s diner style, I guess – I was not around for much of the sixties – with red, fake leather seats and a lot of black-and-white details. Apart from the counter seats, most tables are for couples, although a few have space for four, which is fortunate, as the clan has expanded to that size since our previous visits. Tables are decorated with parts of original jukeboxes, and the music is sixties, although a few songs might have been from the seventies, too.

Service is fast and friendly, with the drinks – a Diet Coke and two chocolate milkshakes – on our table within minutes and a starter of onion rings and fries following soon. The burgers and chicken for the toddler took a while to arrive, but the taste was worth the wait. I shared a delicious apple with ice cream with the toddler. The bill came to $33.

A few days later, we decided to return for breakfast and happened to sit at the same table. This time round, the music was impossibly loud at times, but the food was still great. The service was good, and we got exactly what we wanted once my wife explained in Spanish the desired deviations from the standard menu. Most items were below $5, with perfect portion size, without the exaggerated excess we experienced previous mornings at other diners. The coffee, however, was horribly weak, and for once, I actually declined the offered free refill. The freshly squeezed orange juice was clearly the better option.

On several previous visits to San Francisco, we had the pleasure of being shown around by a good friend who first introduced us to Ghirardelli Square. During our first visit, the friend had a Chinese-American boyfriend, and he suggested the Mandarin Restaurant, which served excellent, mostly northern Chinese cuisine. A year later, he had a Mexican boyfriend, and we ate excellent upscale Mexican food in Ghirardelli Square. After meals, we browsed through the small boutique style shops that frequent the center. At that stage, we were still living in Tokyo, and both the prices and products on offer in the local Sharper Image store seemed pretty much mainstream. Soon after, he left San Francisco, and left to our own devices on the following trip, we were happy to return to the Mandarin.

On our latest visit, we would have been happy to return again, but with the children in tow, the Mandarin and several other places in the center simply seemed too upscale for comfort, and as we were not in the mood for a large meal either, we headed for Lori’s Diner. Lori’s has several outlets around San Francisco, with this particular one offering great views of the bay as well as the Golden Gate Bridge. The decor is sixties diner, with bright primary colors and a few essential items, such as a pink Cadillac and a few small planes hanging from the ceiling.

The menu selection was mercifully small – only around twenty food items are available, mostly burgers and salads. I just wanted a cheeseburger, and my wife shared fish and chips with the toddler so the limited menu suited us fine. As with so many other similar restaurants in San Francisco, the order is best placed in Spanish. A starter of mozzarella sticks and tow shakes and a cola arrived promptly. The burger, accompanied by fries and ample fresh salad, was well-done as requested and tasted good. All in all, the food was good, but nothing extraordinary, and the $35 bill was not particularly low either. Johnny Rockets, admittedly without the view, offers a better deal, both taste and value-for-money wise.

I had quite a good chuckle while waiting for the food. On each table was a selection of around a dozen containers of fruit jelly (jam), just waiting to be consumed freely and without any charge. A mere two weeks earlier, we spent a few days in Salzburg, Austria, where in the local cafés, such luxury items had to be ordered separately and in addition to your bread order. The going rate in most cafes was around 80 cents for a serving of jelly and butter! America certainly still is the land of plenty!

Although we had not planned to see any cultural sites while in California, we could not resist the Legion of Honor. It is spectacularly located at the top of a hill, inside a park/golf course with views of the Pacific Ocean and downtown San Francisco. Previously, we read about a special exhibition being held here on the Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya, and while driving by, we decided to stop and check it out. The small parking lot at the museum was already full, but we easily found parking at the bottom of the hill. While strolling up the gentle hill, we could not help but notice that we were getting more exercise than any of the sportsmen playing the golf course using electric carts.

Admission was a rather steep $12 for both the permanent collection and the Mayan Court Exhibition. It is not often that entry into museums in Germany exceeds $5.

The Mayan exhibition was in the basement, in a special exhibition area. Although the exhibition was fairly small, filling around ten rooms, the quality of the works on display was excellent. As in many other museums, the curators saw fit to make the minor descriptions of works impossibly small to read from more than two paces away. Renting an audio guide would definitely have been a sensible option. The exhibition rooms were also very crowded, and I missed the Japanese system of a designated route that all visitors religiously follow, allowing you to see all works while moving in an orderly queue through the exhibition. Furthermore, here in San Francisco, my height was less of an obvious advantage than it was in Tokyo.

The permanent exhibition is spread over around 20 rooms and consists of European art, mostly but not exclusively from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. For obvious historical reasons, the works available to a New World museum are more limited than for a European counterpart, and the first thing I noticed was that many paintings were physically much smaller than I would have expected in a European museum. The exhibition gave a good overview of European art with, shall we say, lesser-known works by all famous artists. Like any self-respecting museum with a room dedicated to the French Impressionists, it has a Monet Water Lilies. I was beginning to wonder how many did he actually paint – it seems at least one per major museum, with a couple of extra for the really large ones? A Rodin Thinker sits in the courtyard.

Although the collection is doubtlessly very good, I could not help but reflect that I have been in several provincial museums in Germany with more impressive collections at a quarter of the admission price or less. Maybe we were simply not in the mood for art and culture, but on the whole, the most impressive part of the visit was the view of San Francisco while strolling down the hill, back to the car.

I cannot really recall when I first became aware of San Francisco or the desire to visit this beautiful city, but I guess I must have seen pictures of the international orange Golden Gate Bridge sometime when I was small. Movies such as The Birds and Dirty Harry I only saw in my mid-twenties, while living in Japan (it is possible to see these movies at least three times per year, being broadcasted at all hours on Japan’s various networks). Finally seeing the bridge really made my day, and after many trips, I still enjoy both seeing and crossing the bridge as much as I did the first time.

Fact File:

Opened:
1937

Construction Cost:
$35 million ($1.2 billion in today’s money!)

Length:
1.7 miles

Suspension span:
4,200 feet

Towers:
746 feet

Toll:
$5 per car, southbound only

The Golden Gate Bridge connects San Francisco and Marin Head County to the north. It can be seen from many vantage points inside the city, but I prefer the views close up from the Marin Heads, looking back towards the city. Here a road with the most amazing views of the bridge, city, and Pacific Ocean hugs the hillside. Several vista points are available. I prefer the stops closest to the bridge, where it seems almost within touching distance. Driving further along the road, the panorama becomes wider, with the bridge increasingly playing a smaller part in the larger overall picture (the photos below were taken from the third and second viewing points. The first was slightly crowded, and we were in a hurry elsewhere).

To get to this road, turn right at the end of the Golden Gate Bridge when driving from San Francisco. Ignore the crowded vista point immediately next to the road and turn left at the first opportunity. Cross underneath the highway and then turn left again and veer to the right (or return straight back onto the bridge!). From here, enjoy the curvy road and several viewing points. If in a hurry, turn back before the road becomes one-way only. The one-way section starts with a dramatic, very steeply sloped road that gives the impression that you are going to plunge into the Pacific Ocean – a feeling enhanced when you are not yet accustomed to the rather soft feel of the rental car’s brake pedal. However, after this dramatic moment, the views are not particularly good, and the return to the main road is via uninspiring but dead-slow back roads through this nature conservation area. However, if planning to get out of the car and walk, do continue and enjoy the views on the walk to Point Bonita Lighthouse