We Took The BART In San Francisco (Dec. 7 – 12)

With one more stop left in our year of travels, we arrived in San Francisco on a Friday morning after an uneventful flight from Papeete (uneventful but for the disconcerting noises the plane made when it hit turbulence… as if little bits were falling off). From there, we caught an airport shuttle to our next CouchSurfing host, Emmanuel. Surprisingly, it had been somewhat difficult to find a CS host in San Francisco, given the large number of CSers in the area, and San Francisco’s laid-back reputation. We thought it would be easy to find a host for our five days, but it proved much trickier, and we sent out nearly a dozen emails before we got a positive reply. Easy to find hosts in Tahiti, hard in SF, who knew? Given the number of people cruising through the Bay, perhaps it makes sense that they’re harder to find there than one of the world’s most remote island groups. Interesting.

We ultimately managed to arrange some couch time with Emmanuel, a native of France who had grown up in Allentown, Pennsylvania (of all places…). As is typical of CouchSurfing hosts, Emmanuel is very friendly, talkative and generous nearly to a fault. During our stay, he hosted an additional five surfers who had been stuck without other hosts. This meant that the floor was usually lined with other surfers (Andrew and I had fortunately “booked” so we were able to sleep on the futon). Emmanuel lives in the really nice neighborhood of Cow Hollow in San Francisco, and we felt really lucky to be able to stay with him. Despite having gotten only an hour or two of sleep overnight on the plane, we went out with some other British CSers to a local bar, a hipsterish dive that had surprisingly cheap microbrews, and hung out with even more CSers who were in town. All told, seven CSers were in attendance that night – a veritable convention!

Posing with Emmanuel, who we called Manny. He's a nice guy.

Before coming to SF, Becky expected to like the city, but I don’t think she ever expected to love San Francisco. We were extremely lucky to come here during a spell of fine weather (five days of sun with no fog in sight!) and spent as much time outside as possible. On our first full day, we walked through the bustling Fisherman’s Wharf to catch a ferry to take us to Alcatraz. All the ferry tours were sold out for the day, so we were lucky to have booked our tickets early in the morning. For once we were happy to play tourists, as the ferry ride provided a great view of the San Francisco skyline from the water. The Alcatraz tour itself was also very good, with a headset providing a self guided tour of the cell block. It almost gives you the shivers to step into one of the solitary confinement cells and know that inmates were formerly kept here for weeks at a time, sitting in the darkness with nothing but a button to occupy themselves.

Alcatraz...Solid as a rock!

The fashion police finally caught up with Becky for her blue sweater

After we returned from the Alcatraz we had the obligatory clam chowder bread bowl and Anchor Steam beer (brewed in SF, natch) before heading to Coit Tower before the sunset. We took in the San Francisco skyline as the sun slowly set. Next we strolled down the stairs of Telegraph Hill looking for the wild parrots of movie fame. Sadly, there were no parrots to be seen, but we enjoyed the stroll through this interesting neighborhood nonetheless. I reckon that if Mt. Gretna was relocated to a San Francisco suburb, it would be Telegraph Hill. We continued on to City Lights bookstore, famed for its role during the Beat generation with Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg putting in regular appearances, definitely Becky’s milieu. We spent the rest of the evening strolling through Chinatown and Union Square enjoying the atmosphere, the people, and the Christmas lights. We hadn’t really had a sense of Christmas’s imminent arrival until we arrived in San Francisco and started to see the decorations out in full force.

The next day we continued our walking tour of SF, visiting the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Famous as the epicenter of peace, love, and hippieness in the 60s and beyond, as it’s reached middle-age the Haight has cleaned itself up somewhat. As with all areas in San Francisco, the Haight hasn’t been able to resist gentrification, and was much less seedy than Becky had hoped. However, Haight St. is still lined with shops catering to the hippie set, and we spent a few good hours at Magnolia, a local brewpub. We really enjoyed the beer sampler (as we usually do) and the food was really good, too. With its laid-back atmosphere, we could really see spending time at Magnolia if it was our local. Later that day we went in search of a good burrito, a staple for any trip to San Francisco. We had done some research on burritoeater.com, which took us to the Mission District. The taqueria had really authentic vibe (as opposed to the tourist traps at Fisherman’s Wharf) and had the good food to back it up. We ended up getting tacos instead of burritos, but they – along with a strawberry soda - were delicious. Carne asada = muy bueno.

Harrrrrrrd to believe this is actually a pirate store, but 'tis

The next morning we had decided to take advantage of the weather by renting bikes to ride across the San Francisco Bridge. Neither of us has ridden for awhile and although we’re both in good shape, I’ll admit to some concerns about our fitness level. It turned out to be fine, as we really enjoyed the cruisey trip to Sausalito, which allows you to take in the Presidio, Crissy Fields, the bridge, and then the downhill trip into Sausalito. From there, you can continue on the bikes to Tiburon, but we decided not to risk the good time we’d had so far, and took the ferry back from there. We continued our biking trip up and down the Embarcadero so that Andrew could check out AT&T Park, home of Barry Bonds and his Giant Head. We had certainly worked up an appetite by that point so we had to hit up In-N-Out Burger, a must-stop in CA. In-N-Out Burger was Becky’s first cheeseburger after renouncing her more veggie-friendly lifestyle before leaving for NZ, so this provided a fitting coda to our trip, we thought.

Look, nerds!

Later in the evening we continued on our beer and food tour of SF, visiting two brewpubs. The first, 21st Amendment, is well known for its Watermelon Wheat Beer, which was unfortunately unavailable on our visit, bummer. The second brewpub, the Thirsty Bear, featured Spanish tapas and a wide-range of brews. There were a few hits and misses – we enjoyed the vanilla cream and the stout, but didn’t love the others.

Our somewhat weak attempt to offset our humongous number carbon miles for the year

The next day we got up early to get an awesome breakfast burrito downtown at El Castillito, then rode the BART subway (by the way the public transportation in SF is awesome, the buses are often not scary at all!), and went out to Berkeley (aka The People’s Republic Of) so Becky could visit the Mecca of liberalism. Conclusion: not a bad place to go to school; at the very least they have a nicer winter than we were used to at Penn State. After Berkeley we crashed at Emmanuel’s for a few hours, as our week of walking around Tahiti and SF had finally caught up with us. It was finally time to go home, as we had a red-eye flight out of Oakland to catch just after midnight. There’s a reason they’re such cheap flights – most sane people balk at making a connection when their body is telling them that it’s 4 in the morning.

"The only thing better than one beer is one sampler tray of nine beers" - B. Franklin

Overall though, our trip to San Francisco was a highlight. We enjoyed great beer, good food (Becky’s new fave is the breakfast burrito!), and good company with CouchSurfers. The San Francisco Bay area is beautiful, and it’s easy to see why so many people choose to make it their home. It’s always great when a place actually exceeds the high expectations that you have for it. Since so many of the books and music Becky loves are from the area, the bar was set pretty high. Well done, San Francisco!