To Be Where Little Cable Cars Climb Halfway to the Stars

On our last full day in San Francisco we had a lot of things happening. First we decided to a "little" run around and then to Twin Peaks. I was confused and thought that we were going to try to run to Twin Peaks, and then I would run the other mile home, while John did the whole five mile loop we found online. John assumed I was doing the whole five mile loop with him. So. we started running (very slowly) and I was surprised that my body actually let me run that day, because for the last year or so, it has been controlling and angry with me and made my legs all heavy and calves crampy, but it must have been going easy on me since it knew I was on vacation. Thank you, body.

I know I always say this, but there is nothing like checking out a place by going for a run in it. Riding your bike through it is also nice, but you go a lot faster and miss things. Going slow (especially, as slow as I run these days) allows a person to see things they would have driven right past without noticing. This little pond thingy was right on our running loop. It was gorgeous and oh, so green.

We also encountered many, many hills. And if you are familiar with San Francisco, you know those sidewalks can just as easily become stair cases.

Stair cases that keep going, and turning and climbing even higher.

John had the map on his phone, and he forgot to turn off his wifi, so his phone's battery went straight to shit pretty quickly by continually searching for imaginary wifi. Which meant that after his phone died, we were pretty lost. That is, until I found the map on my phone, turned of my wifi, and John led us back to our AirBnB.

So, the thing about our trip was this: Normally, I plan our trip WAY in advance because we don't have tons of money, and I want us to get decent places and we usually go in July when everyone else also go on vacation. On this trip, we were going to be staying with our friend's sister. It was very nice of her to offer, but a week before we were supposed to leave, her plans changed, and we suddenly had two days in Mendocino on a weekend, during the busiest season without a place to stay. Needless to say, that was very stressful for me. I searched and searched, and the only place I could find that we could kind of afford without selling a kidney was a Motel Six in Fort Bragg for $250/night. Gah! Then I thought to myself, "Churlita, if her plans change again in a couple of days, you will be totally screwed, so you might want to take care of that." And I did. I found us other places to stay for the nights we were supposed to be at our our friend's sister's houses, and one of those nights was the last night we would be in San Francisco. So, we had to check out of our AirBnb by 11, but we couldn't get into the cool 1960's motel we were going to spend the night in until 3. As most people know, leaving your car full of stuff and bikes in San Francisco is just an open invitation for people to break your windows and rob you, but we didn't have much choice. We left our car parked in a relatively safe spot by our old AirBnb, and then went on a couple of adventures, all the while stressing out about whether we would have to buy all new clothes by the end of the day.

As you might recall from my last post, we had a less than lovely experience on San Francisco public transit the day before, so we decided to just ride bikes where we wanted to go on that Monday. After a flat tire, it turned out to be a pretty damn good idea.

The culture in San Francisco toward bikes is a bout twenty million times better than in Iowa. People there seem to understand that they would rather have people riding bikes, than driving cars, causing worse traffic and taking up the few parking spaces available in the city. I have to say, riding my bike in that busy city felt a hell of lot safer than riding to work every day in our little college town. It was also fun. I have always commuted by bike, so I feel comfortable doing it, and it was nice to have so many other cyclists and scooters on the road with us.

We made it to Lombard Street. I had never been there before, even though I had lived in and visited San Francisco a few times. Of course, John decided to join all the tourists driving down it in their fancy SUV's. Although, his mode of transportation was a little different.

The word in my family is that my grandma used to live right on or by Lombard Street and walked down it on her way to school every day. Up hill both ways?

After Lombard Street, we headed to China Town. We were going to get lunch there, but all of the suggestions our friends gave us of places to eat there were closed on Mondays. Another woman saw us looking confused, so she asked us if we needed anything. Talk about Iowa nice, San Francisco seems to be even nicer. She suggested a place, and we walked to it, but it was closed too. So, we rode our bikes until I saw the street I remembered walking down the last time I was in San Francisco in 2008.

As you can see, Chinatown was pretty quiet on a Monday. But on that street, we found a place called Spicy Shrimp that was not only open, they had outdoor seating where we could lock our bikes up next to us and keep an eye on them. The food was amazing, and extremely affordable.

After lunch we rode all the way back to Twin Peaks to get our car and move into our new motel. John rode ahead once we got closer to Twin Peaks, because I am much slower riding up those Mount Everest type hills than he is. He reached the car, and no windows had been broken, we had all over stuff, and we wouldn't have to buy anything to replace our imagined stolen items. Hooray! He drove back and found me a couple of blocks back and then we headed to our motel.

I saw this place on-line and fell in love with it. I love a swanky 1960's vibe.

And Boy howdy, do I love a rooftop deck. They even raise bees on their roof. Also, we were right in the middle of the Castro.

Our plan for our last evening in San Francisco was to meet my cousin, Mark and his partner for dinner, drinks, and mural gazing in the Mission at 5.

I used to live in the Mission in the 1980's, and it's a bit different than it was back then. There weren't these kinds of mural alleys in the mid-1980's, sadly.

We met them at this delicious taqueria and had some delicious burritos.

Then they took us to a mural alley. They even were concealed carrying a selfie-stick. My cousin and his partner are the sweetest, most wonderfully, fun, and dorky people you will ever meet. It's how you know we're related. I hadn't seen him since we were here in 2008, and then we didn't have a lot of time to hang out with just them, so we felt particularly lucky this time.

We had so much fun taking photos and admiring the amazing art.

Later, John said that was one of his favorite things we did on our vacation, and we did some amazing things. I think a lot of it had to do with the company we kept that evening.

After our muraling (that's a verb, right?), we went in search of margaritas. We were having a hard time finding a good place for those. Both John and Ruben laughed that maybe we should go to the Irish pub to look for them, and damn if they didn't have a sign in front advertising their margaritas. They had a watermelon margarita special, and Ruben loves all things watermelon, so he ordered one of those, and the rest of us ordered regular ones. The woman messed our order up, and gave us three watermelon ones, and one regular. She was so sorry, and said we could have the watermelon ones free and she'd give us the regular ones we ordered. So, we had as many margaritas as we could ever want.

 Mark and his partner had to take the BART to get back to their town, and so we sadly said good bye, and walked back to the Castro. We didn't want to leave all of those incredible murals, but we had to sleep some time, I guess.

We didn't get to do everything we wanted in San Francisco, but I think we got in a lot for the little time we had.