“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” – Mark Twain (supposedly)
The human body is an interesting thing, it can get used to pretty much anything, which is something I experienced close hand after arriving in San Francisco. I got off the train in Emeryville to a crisp 17 degree, grey, overcast, morning. And I was freezing. My body had gotten used to temperatures twice that high, with 28-30 degrees being very comfortable, and 30+ being the norm. To suddenly go somewhere so much colder was a shock to my system.
Since Amtrak doesn’t go directly to San Francisco I took a bus into the city. While on the bus I discovered something very interesting: San Francisco is one of the test areas for a new version of the Pokémon tracking system in Pokémon Go. The nearby feature will actually show you on the map where the Pokémon can be found, rather than forcing you to walk aimlessly, hoping for the best. That actually made the game far more playable, and I must admit that after leaving San Francisco I started to play less because going back to a non-working tracking system was very annoying.
But anyway, San Francisco.
Home away from home.
My hostel was close to the Tenderloin area, but not really in it. The Tenderloin, for those who don’t know, is pretty much the worst neighborhood in the city. It’s where all the drug addicts go. Even on the periphery I saw a few of them. I later met people who stayed in a hostel in the Tenderloin and who’d gotten a bit lost in that den of crazies and drug addicts. Some concerned homeless people told them to keep a close eye on their money and get out as fast as they could. If even the homeless warn you about a place you know it’s bad.
What are feet for?
First thing I did on my first full day in the city was to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. There are a number of bridges in the world, such as the Golden Gate Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge, you just have to walk across. And so I did. I also took way to many pictures of the bridge, from every angle and viewpoint I could get to.
After crossing the bridge and coming back I took a bus to Land’s End. Or so I thought, as I took the bus in the wrong direction (going back to the hostel). Did make it to Land’s End, but it took a little longer than I originally planned. Land’s End is a great spot to watch the sunset, but the weather conditions weren’t really good for it. Conditions were good to follow the walking trails along the ocean side back to the Golden Gate Bridge though. Great views and the farther you got from Land’s End the less people I came across, which is what I want when I go on trails. Being part of nature and all that fun stuff.
Interestingly I again took a wrong bus when I wanted to go back to the hostel from the bridge. This time I took the bus I should have taken earlier to get to Land’s End. Sigh.
Another fun thing to do was to walk along the piers at the waterfront, starting from the Ferry Building Marketplace and up towards Pier 39. They sell a lot of fresh food in the Marketplace, but it was a bit too out of the way for me to use it. Instead I mostly ate in Japantown (another fun district). I didn’t stay long in Pier 39, just long enough to see the tourist madness of the place and determine that it was too busy for my liking. Afterward I took a bus to see Lombard Street, a street on a hill so steep they had to make a winding way down. Lots of tourists here gawking at it, as well as a lot of tourists going down the street in their cars and on bikes! Madness.
After Lombard Street I took another bus, this time to the Painted Ladies, a row of houses made famous by the old TV show Fullhouse (hated that show). The park people usually watch the houses from was closed, so I left quickly to go to Golden Gate Park. They have bison there, which was cool. Other than that it’s a nice place to walk through.
I am just now starting to realize how much I walked in San Francisco.
Doing time
When I think of San Francisco I think one of two things: the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. I’d be remiss if I didn’t visit that famous prison. I did it as part of a combination tour to Angel Island, which used to be an old military base and is now a nature reserve. Like Alcatraz the buildings on Angel Island, save the visitor’s center, are all abandoned and it shows.
There’s something freaky about seeing nature reclaim a former foothold of humanity.
A tram takes you around the island, so you can see almost everything within a short amount of time. Since this was a combination tour there wasn’t enough time to walk around the island, but unless you want to use some of the trails to walk to the center of the island the tram is all you really need here. After all the walking I’d already done, getting driven around felt pretty damn good.
I spent around two hours on the island before the boat picked everyone back up to get to Alcatraz. Most people don’t use the combination tour to get to Alcatraz, so it’s not that busy on the boat (compare that to the regular ferry, which is always packed like a meat grinder). You also get to approach Alcatraz from different angles, which is a nice bonus. You also get to see more of the Bay itself, and that’s well worth it too.
The prison island is not that big. The outside areas were mostly for the old prison staff and have the feel of a very small town. The largest house was the warden’s, but now there’s nothing left except the skeleton of the building. There’s a building where the prisoners used to work, which for some odd reason closes really early (before the last of the afternoon ferries arrive) but I had just enough time to get in there. It’s a really stark place and kind of demoralizing – I wouldn’t have wanted to be a prisoner there.
That feeling is intensified on the inside of the actual prison building. You get an audio guide that takes about an hour, which takes you through the prison and gives you a lot of information and stories from the people who were actually there: some guardsman, some prisoners. There are lots of personal stories that really paint the scene of how things were back in the day. The only downside is that some of the segments are quite long, so you have to wait in place a lot too – which wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so crowded inside. I’m not a big fan of audio guides usually, because of how longwinded some of them can be. For this one though I was never tempted to skip parts, so take that as my approval of the tour.