Symphony in the sun

We're having a heatwave...a tropical heatwave...

Those of you who have better things to do with your time than watch old Marilyn Monroe movies will have no idea about that quote, but hey...

Well, I can tell you now that Greyhound buses have alot to learn from South American bus companies. Cramped, smelly and an interesting clientele certainly make a short journey seem long. So, after 7 hours on one of these charabangs we arrived in San Francisco at 5.30am and grabbed a taxi to our hostel/hotel in the supposedly trendy Mission district, where we had a very pleasant room, and went to sleep for 3 hours. After that we began our exploration of the city. I had very fond memories of San Francisco from my trip when I was 19 and was looking forward to see if it still lived up to its status as one of the few US cities I would happily live in. Actually I think its got even cooler. We decided we would wander up to Castro St for breakfast, but unfortunately I chose one of the steepest hilliest streets in the area (which went down quite badly with Jo) and finally reached Castro feeling a bit knackered. Breakfast was in a bar that was joyously advertising it's Thursday night's activities colourfully named "Wank Tank", but the food was okay and I became fascinated by the breakfast of the bloke sitting next to me - fried eggs, bacon, french toast with icing sugar & blueberries swimming in maple syrup - luckily he was clearly a gym junkie who might actually burn some of that off. Then we ambled down Market Street to buy 3 day travel passes and off to the newly tarted up port area to check out their fancy food hall.

That evening we headed a couple of blocks down the road to sample one of San Francisco's finest burritos. Very good it was too! The only drawback was that they made the fiestiest guacamole I've ever eaten and, combined with the rest of the burrito, gave me astounding breath issues. After that we headed to SF's premiere lesbian bar, or so the guide book claimed, The Lexington Room. Now, I was thinking 'this is SF so the main lesbian bar is going to be cool & hip', but it turned out to be very small (just about big enough for a bar, a few tables & a pool table) and strangely less hip than London bars. The 'ladies', for I shall call them that, were standard geezer bird combos (though one was attempting a cowgirl look, alas she clearly was not as adept at the redneck hat as I), and the pool playing was of a standard so appalling that I was tempted to revoke their lesbo status immediately. But I did have a lovely chat with a biker chick about her managerie of dogs as apparently they don't usually like bars but they seemed happy to frolic about in this one. She thought it might be because it was an all female bar & had a different vibe, but I think it may have had more to do with my burrito breath. So after a couple of swift beers we headed back to our hostel.

The next day we hit the vintage shops with gusto by heading up to Haight Ashbury, supposedly the hippy area, but were disapppointed to find that it was quite expensive now and that in fact all the good thrift stores were on Mission. So we headed back to our hotel and went out for dinner instead - Herbivore on Valencia, a most excellent vegetarian restaurant. Bargain of the day = 4 pairs of new Sketchers shoes for $29!

So, we decided to check out the Mission St thrift stores. Jo immediately spotted a rather fine pair of Gap 3/4 trousers for me for $2 and then purchased a fabulous pair of platform shoes for $8. After a couple of hours we headed downtown to catch the cable car to Lombard Street (the zigzag street) and finally, after an hour of queuing we trundled over the hill. After much wandering aboutup and down hills we ended up having dinner in Chinatown and crashing out. Our last day in SF was beautifully sunny so we thought we'd head to the park. We caught the tram all the way to Ocean Beach to have a look at the Pacific, which was cold, misty & grey, and then headed back to Golden Gate Park where it was also cold, misty & grey. So we caught the tram back to the small park behind our hotel only to discover that they were about to start a free concert by the SF symphony - hooray! A very pleasant 3 hours were spent lazing in the sun listening to Spanish influenced classical music, followed by a great burger & fries at The Burger Joint on Valencia, then back to pick up our bags and head to the bus station for our ride to Portland to meet Patti Thompson...

Love to one and all!
S & J
xxxxx