San Francisco Nights - Day 4, Part 2 - Mr. Toad's tours cont'd

Yes, Day 4 was a very long day and I can't seem to shorted the day anymore so I go on.  The tour took us to Haight Ashbury of the 60s hippy fame, now mostly line with trendy boutiques and the alternative crowd and a lot of homeless.

There was no need to take photos of the homeless as we have quite plenty of our own here in DC. The significant difference between the homeless in our cities, the homeless in SF were mostly white.  Very interesting.

We proceeded toward Golden Gate Park with it's lush green trees and beautiful gardens.

We took a break at the Music Concourse Area where they hold free concerts in the Spring and Summer.  The concourse is surrounded by the Natural Academy of Science and the De Young Museum, both of which were closed at that time of day.

Too bad they didn't have any concerts on this gloomy day.

Ahead of the pink bloomed tree is the Japanese Tea Garden. I will show more of later.

From there, we drove to Golden Gate Bridge where the weather drastically changed: the fog came suddenly with fine mist.  Bill sure looks pretty happy for a gloomy day. At least we got a photo.  More photos of the bridge on Day 5 when we have the bike tour.

The photo below was taken before the tour but though I'd end with this.  It was a really fun tour and we had a chance to take it easy today unlike yesterday.

Then we took an old yellow bus back to the hotel - Bill told me that these were probably the same streetcars from the Philly area.:

Oh, as we did take the cable car when we came down for the tour and forgot to post us on it. It was pretty crowded and at $5 for one way, we lucked out getting on and off for free. I guess the driver couldn't keep tabs of everyone coming on and off the cable car.

This would have been fun to do, but we didn't:

Went back to the hotel and had sushi at Makuki, the restaurant attached to our hotel. The food was divine. Sorry, no photos.

San Francisco Nights - Day 4, Part 1

With all my ramblings, I forgot to post a picture of Bill and I with the bride and groom.  This is one of my favorite photos:

DAY 4 - Monday, May 18th.

The night before we were craving mexican so we happened to find a trendy neauveau style Mexican restaurant close by which had no vegetarian options and there was a 30 minute wait.  Since we were hungry, we opted for Italian and ended up at Vive Pizza Restaurant in North Beach.  The food was decent with good crusty bread to start off with and that was good thing because service was very slow.  It's the Cali way, I guess. Bill had the gnocci but I can't remember what I had. I know tt was pasta of some kind.  :)

We woke up around 7:00 and lazed a bit. We were still on EST but pretty exhausted from yesterday's walk.  I decided to take photo of our room and views from rom our hotel room.

Views from outside of our room

 Coffe shop is in the corner with Chinatown gate on the far left.

 Banana Republic one block to the right of the hotel. How convenient for me. :)

We were itching to use the laptop and since we only brought his, we shared.

Coffee shop during the day. Wine bar by night.

The night before, Bill and I discussed what to do the next few days and we definitely wanted to take a tour of the city. We didn't take just any tour but the ultimate Mr. Toad's Tours of San Francisco for a 3-4 hour tour.  It was smaller tour group with a group of 8 and to top it off we rode in a vintage (revamped) 1929 Model A. There were cozy blankets to keep you warm. The heater was running on full blast which made it quite a pleasant experience on such a cool and overcast day:

Our tour guide, Eric, was young but pretty knowledgable. He didn't seem to be as "seasoned" as I expected on their website but he was from the city after all and he knew all the ins and outs. We asked him some questions and he answered them pretty well.

The tour took us all over town:

This was on Nob Hill with a view of Lombard Street at a distance. We didn't get a chance to go there although it was fairly close to our hotel. Oh well. Too much to do and see and so little in time. 

Passing through with views of the SF hills.

Flat Iron building on Columbus Avenue and last building standing after earthquake of 1906.

Driving by North Beach again - people waving at us

Financial District and TransAmerica building

Pacific Heights with beautiful Victorian homes and amazing architecture. That's what makes these SF homes so unique and beautiful.

The famous photo of all - Victorian homes overlooking the city.

Russian Hill - named for the Russian Cemetary found on the Hill although there is no signs of Russian settlers or any kind of community on the hill.

Grace Cathedral (a miniature version of Sacre C'oeur in Paris) surrounded by a beautiful park.

The Fairmont Hotel - famous and very expensive

Back to Chinatown for a stop to see hidden, so-called secret narrow alleys.

Map of these alleys on the ground by Ross Alley.

Ross Alley (below) in Chinatown, was notorious for gamblers and prostitute back in the 20s.  Plus this was the alley where The Beatles had their first gig in SF and also stopped to have a drink at the Rickshaw Bar, now defunct.

The alley was fairly crowded due to a movie production company filming so lots of their equipment and props were all over.  Not sure what movie was being filmed but I heard the name Nicole Kidman.  Check out the fake slab of meat prop.

 
We managed to move through the busy alley and find one of the oldest factories that made fortunate cookies by hand. On any given  day, they make approximately 30,000 fortunate cookies by hand.  We got a chance to eat them fresh and warm as they came out of the oven.  Photographs were a no-no but I managed to take one.

San Francisco Nights - Day 3, Part 2

I can't remember where I left off. Oh yes, Coit Tower.  Getting to Coit Tower took quite an effort.  As you can see below, you can see Coit Tower ahead of by Grant and Broadway. We had quite a way to go.

We came up on steep hill with actual steps on it. We didn't see any car's meaning that it was way to hilly to actually park a car there.  Imagine parallel parking!!  I can't.

So we decided to go for it and climb up those steps.  We barely made it to 20 before we had to take a breath.  I thought I was in pretty good shape. Guess not.

Keep on climbing....

 Almost made it to the top...

 Nope, not there yet...

and so you can actually see how steep this hill is:

And finally on the top of the hill. 

Poppies, poppies everywhere.

The view from the top of the hill was incredible but there was yet another climb to get to Coit Tower. When we reached the top, here's what we saw:

View from Coit Tower Hill

Coit Tower was built by a wealthy socialite as a monument to the firefighters who helped in the 1906 fire that ravaged the city. She loved the city so much that ended using her money to building this monument which took over 5 years to build.

The line was short so we decided to pay the small fee and took an old art deco elevator to the top.  Here are some incredible views:

As you can see, the wind pick up and brought about the clouds which pretty much stayed with us the rest of week. You couldn't even see Golden Gate Bridge but we got another chance later on.

At this point, we were getting tired and made our way back to the hotel.