San Francisco Nights - Day 3

Sunday, April 17, 2011 - Moving on to SF  - Day 3, part 1

What can I say about SF? Next to NYC this is one my favorite places to visit and I (ok we) will probably be back some time in the future. Another thing, I truly left my heart in SF.... :)

The Baldwin Hotel is a charming, renovated European style hotel but definitely not the grand Stanford Park hotel in Palo Alto.  I would definitely rate this as a 4 star hotel. Why you ask? The staff was exceptionally nice, the room was charming,  we had an excellent corner view on the fifth floor (room #503 to be exact), and the bathrooms were brand new.  On top of that, we were in the heart of SF, surrounded my Chinatown, Union Square shopping area, and the financial area east of us.

After dropping off our belongings we couldn't waste the day and ended up walking across the street into the famous Chinatown.  Here's the view south of our hotel:

A fact about Chinatown: it's one of the most oldest Chinatowns in country and has the largest Chinese community next to Asia.

 Chinatown Entrance- Gate right across the street from our hotel

As we walked through Chinatown, we ran into massive influx of shops catered to the tourist. To our right on Grant Street were great views of San Francisco, the downtown area and you realize how high up we were.

Grant Street - Looking left and up a steep hill

Grant Street - looking right and down a steep hill

We managed to walk up and down hilly streets of Chinatown for quite a few blocks. As we neared the intersection of Grant, Broadway and Columbus Avenue, we discovered that the famous City Lights Bookstore of Beatnik Era fame.  Also north of Grant/Chinatown was North Beach (Little Italy) and to the right on Broadway was their red light district.  Here's a peek:

Meanwhile I focused on the beatnik era. Imagine a time in the late 50's, a time of change. The youth were restless, filled with "crazy" ideas and "cool" ideas were abundant.  Little did they know that change was right around the corner (the 60's).

You couldn't NOT have a coffee or a bar near the City Lights bookstore.  

Vesuvios. This famous place was the place to be at that time.  It catered to the non-comformist, rebellious youth of that time. I can imagine the place filled with people smoking cigarettes, listening to cool jazz, sipping champagne or drinking espresso's while writing their poetry and thinking about changes in the world. There may have been a lot more going on in terms pharmaceutical use but I can still fantasize about my idea of the beatnik.  :)

Okay, this was me taken quite a few years ago for Halloween. 

Now imagine being inside in a smokey bar.  (In my dreams you don't reek of cigarettes. You just look good holding one ;) These photos were taken later in the week but thought it would be more appropriate:

Vesuvios - looking out in the alley from upstairs

Bill sitting downstairs 

Lots of old signs from the yonder years 

Jack' Keruoack's picture above our booth

It was lunch time so we decided to do vegetarian at this great place called Enjoy Vegetarian which catered to the strict vegetarian using organic products and soy products. No egg products were used but lots of great chinese vegetables and brown rice.  For the life of me I can't remember what we ate, but here are a few pics.

The day was not over yet.

Moving on, we walked toward trendy North Beach with lots of italian restaurants and cute boutiques. 

We also noticed that to get to to Coit Tower, we would be climbing a lot.

To be cont'd....