I'm usually a pretty good sleeper on the airplane, and when I fly red-eye's I really count on it. You've got to get at least a few hours of sleep if you want to have any kind of productive day when you get to where you're going. My luck did not hold up this time, and I got only about an hour of sleep on the first leg of our journey, from Anchorage to Portland, and the second leg, from Portland to San Francisco, was one of the small Q-400s that I can never sleep on. I had an aisle seat and every time I closed my eyes someone was bumping into me.
That is why I was surprised that Ursa and I managed to have as productive of a day as we did when we got to San Francisco. The first thing that we did was get checked into the place that we rented. A really cute, one bedroom flat right in between the Castro district and Haight-Ashbury. We have always preferred to rent a house or apartment on VRBO.com whenever possible rather than a hotel. It adds dramatically to the feeling of place, to feel like a local rather than a visitor. Plus, in a town like San Francisco that has a great mass transit system, you don't need to rent a car and fight traffic to get around, you can just jump on a trolly, bus or metro and jet right off to wherever you want to be in town.
We arrived at our place, first thing in the morning, got unpacked, had a glass of wine and then headed right out to do some city exploring. The first thing that we did was to make the short walk from our place to the Castro district where we found an incredible spot for lunch at
La Mediteranee Noe. As the title might suggest they served Mediterranean cuisine, which is why it was one of the first places that we jumped at to eat, because Ursa has an incurable addiction to babaganouj. I had a combination plate with small samples of three different entrees, and a cup of Middle Eastern coffee that was spectacular. The coffee is made by boiling extremely fine coffee grounds, sugar, and cardomom with a little water in a small brass container called a cezve. The coffee ends up thick and strong, but not in any way bitter like one might expect. It was delicious.
From there we found our way to a metro station, here it's called BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and took a few minutes to figure out how the ticketing system works, then caught a train to the Embarcadero. It was a long walk around all of the Piers to get to Fisherman's Wharf, so we walked for a while, and did some sightseeing, then caught a bicycle taxi the rest of the way.
Fisherman's Wharf is a cool touristy place to see. Lots of shops and restaurants, and things for the the kids to do. There are also great views of Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and a colony of sea lions that stay there. As tired as we were, it was nice to visit someplace touristy so that we could turn the brains off and let the entertainment come to us a little. But still, we were pretty exhausted so we had an early dinner and set back off for the house to turn in early.
On our way home we got a ride from an Egyptian cab driver who we had a fascinating conversation with. He explained how Egypt, much like Ukraine today, has been victimized by outside powers enforcing their wills upon the Egyptian people. These types of conversations are part of what I love about traveling. Meeting and engaging with people from different places with a variety of views. Injecting a little diversity into life is very much what invigorates me. Traveling is not just about seeing new places but meeting new people.
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