Keropie's Cuties: Off to the City and the world's most crooked street!

Saturday 19/7/08

Well our tired feet are a testamont to the many many kilometers we have been walking around San Francisco. However at the end of the day and after a long shower it feels really good to be here sitting on my bed with the window open showing a view of the city and the sounds of the trams bells dinging away.

Today we started our adventure where we are staying down on Fisherman's Wharf up to Union Square. First stop on our route was a gorgeous old Italian deli to stock up on salami, up the road in a district that reminds me of Newtown - very cafe-y and restaurant-y - very Italian come to think of it, most of the eateries are Italian.
Second stop - City Lights Book store which is a famous bookstore made famous by Beat Poets in the 1950's. It is groovy corner store that is squishy inside with floor to ceiling bookshelfs over 3 levels, very much like a terrace house. It made me realise that I am not very well read! There are old wooden chairs placed between the narrow rows encouraging people to take a seat and read. With jazz music softly playing in the background, it was hard to leave.

Union Square is a district where there are lots of shops, businesses and homeless people! There were buskers playing the sax, singing soul and playing the drums on buckets. There were heaps of people bustling around the Westfield, Macy's, Emporio Armani and other big name stores.
But as people on a budget we walked on through after stopping for a coffee and our lunch to replenish us after our 2 hour walk.

Next stop was the City Hall. All I can say is WOW! What a huge building for matters concerning the city, when we compare it to Town Hall in Sydney - even Parliament House. Very impressive indeed. However, it was closed so we could only have a photo out the front, a play in the park across the road, a climb on some sculptures and a sticky beak at a huge community vegetable garden that was directly opposite the city hall and took up the length of that block. We went to a Memorial building afterwards which had a War Memorial room and a theatre that hosts opera's and symphonies and a small art gallery where we chatted with one of the workers there who delightfully described one of the artists that we took an interest who's forte was linear pencil drawings of animals with plants growing out of their backs. She pointed us in a direction that a sculpture exhibition was being displayed but we took the wrong turn and walked another hour to Japan Town. Unlike China Town that we walked through earlier which was crowded and full of stores selling everything and anything, Japan Town was aesthetically pleasing to be in. We sat in a cobble stoned area near the Peace Pagoda where a little Asian girl ran up to Ashlen loudly proclaiming that she wanted to "play with the girl". Ashlen had a mortified look on her face with this gorgeous little girl excitedly babbling at her, so she ran for cover and buried her face in Damien with her arms firmly wrapped around him. Much to Ashie's disgust, the little girl followed suit which cracked us up. Soon after the father came to Ashlen's rescue and claimed his child back but not before Damien gave her an Aussie dollar. She was too cute.
We headed into the Japanese shopping mall which was full of divine smelling restaurants and sushi bars one of which had their sushi going around the bar in boats sailing on water. There were also lots of shops with kitchi Japanese bibs and bobs, however a little ridiculously priced unfortunately as we adore a lot of the cutesy things they sell. We found a Japanese supermarket where we bought some lollies we like and snow pea chips. We found snack packs of small dried fish but we thought that we might give those a miss this time.

To get to Lombard St we started walking down a long, long road and after many hours of walking today we decided to catch a bus. I am amazed at the buses over here. For starters the bus drivers are actually nice - they will smile at you, say hello and be extremely helpful when asked a million and one questions by travelling Aussie tourists (BTW this view is not based on one experience, it's a couple now). Plus they only cost $1.50, children are free and you can travel for hours on that one ticket.
Back to the story, so we hop off the bus just around the corner from Lombard St. As we turn the corner onto it we are face to face with bumper to bumper traffic - cars waiting their turn to go down the winding road. I don't know if you have seen photo's of this road but it is a very steep crooked street that you drive down. And the only way to get to the bit that goes down is to walk up the bit that gets to it. The problem is the walk up isn't so bitty, but at least a 45 degree angle across 3 blocks. Wii Fit didn't prepare me for that one!
The pain of the climb was definately worth it once we reached the top. The view of the city below took my breath away (or was that because I'm unfit?!). The crooked street was just delightful, gorgeous houses and blooming flowered gardens lined the edges. After admiring the view and the street we descended back to sea level.

Our visit to Japan Town inspiried our dinner tonight, and we trotted off to Trader Joe's again (I'm looooving TJ's) to get Sushi and salad.

At the start of our day we came across a fire truck from the S.F.F.D. The Firemen let the kids climb inside and we discovered one of the firey's used to live in Sydney and goes for the Eagles (Damien found that out, typical man!)