PJ and I traveled to San Francisco this past week. We left on Wednesday and flew back yesterday. The trip has given me lots to blog about.
We were officially in San Francisco for the conference of the American Literature Association. PJ had to attend the business meeting of the association for which he serves as treasurer. While he had to work, I had plenty of time to be a tourist. This is our third or fourth time to visit San Francisco, so we know our way around the downtown relatively well. Overall, I think the trip was a good mix of repeating things I’d seen/done before and seeing/doing new things.
This time we stayed at the Parc Fifty-Five downtown. Here’s a view of the city from our windown on the twenty-ninth floor:
Just click on the picture to enlarge it. The bit of gray showing just between some of the buildings is actually the bay. We really liked the hotel, and our room was great. My only complaint is that we later spent a small fortune on 6 gin and tonics in the hotel lounge, but they were absolutely delicious, so I guess I can’t complain too much!
I thought that I would give an overview of what I did in SF here and then write about some of the individual activities later. I also want to blog about our dining experiences even though I forgot to take pictures of my food (sorry Kathee!). I’ll try to do that before I forget everything I want to say about our dining, which was generally good.
Thursday morning I started by doing something new: I walked to the Coit Tower, which is pictured here. (just click on the picture to see a larger version.) It was a lovely day, so the walk was really nice.
In part, I was looking for something I could do early in the morning. But I had wanted to visit the tower the last time we were in SF, but I ran out of time. So, I made it the first item on my agenda this time.
After walking to the tower (and up the steep steps to get there), I had a nice rest in the park area that surrounds it. No picture can capture just how lovely it smelled walking through the shrubs and flowers.
Once I went into the tower, I was surprised that there was an elevator to take you to the top. I had just assumed that you had to walk up, which is partly why I made sure to rest before entering. The elevator takes you to a lookout room where you can get a 360-degree view of the area.
It’s a beautiful view. I don’t usually do well with heights — they give me terrible vertigo — but I didn’t feel queasy at all looking out at the bay and the city below me. Here’s a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge from inside the Tower:
Again, just click on the picture if you want a larger version. I’m clearly not a great photographer, but I hope this picture at least partially captures how lovely the day was — warm, but not too warm; sunny, but not too bright.
Inside the base of the tower there are murals depicting scenes from San Francisco history. They’re also very interesting and well worth a visit. I purchased a series of postcards of them.
After visiting the Coit Tower, I decided to walk over to Lombard Street, which is famous for its winding road. I think I may have seen it every time I’ve been to SF, but I wanted to try to get a decent picture of it. Here’s the best one:
I then walked to the Asian Art Museum, which is one of my favorite museums in the world. Since I regularly blog about my museum visits, I’ll save my thoughts about the museum for a post of its own.
In the afternoon, I walked around Union Square a bit. That evening we saw a local production of Sam Shepard’s Buried Child. While I usually blog about the plays we see, we both really disliked this production, so I doubt that I will write about it.
On Friday, we did a little shopping in the morning and the went to hear our friend Matthew’s paper at the conference. In the afternoon we visited the Mission Dolores, which I also intend to blog about sometime this week. That evening we met a friend for drinks, dinner, and dancing in the Castro. I was pretty exhausted from all my walking the day before, so I didn’t do that much dancing, but it was a lot of fun nevertheless.
On Saturday, we went to Alcatraz for the first time. I’ll blog about it later too. We had tried to see it last time we were in SF but couldn’t get tickets. This time we ordered ahead. When we got back, we bought salt water taffy, had a rest in our hotel, and then had an easy, early night. We flew home on Sunday.
Overall, it was a great trip. I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to visiting again soon, perhaps in December. In the meantime, I’m just trying not to eat too much taffy at once!
![IMG_8341[1]](https://live.staticflickr.com/8644/27753735444_2ca20d29d0_s.jpg "IMG_8341[1]")
This Gaudy Gilded Stage 
Sounds like you had a lovely trip. So sorry not to see pictures of food–but I enjoyed seeing your pictures of a city I love. I’ll look forward to the reading about Alcatraz, food, and your museum visit.
These photos are breathtaking when one has visited there and has had the chance to meet someone real special and out of this world, and has gone back to see what it’s like living there and getting to know that person, the Franciscans, and other residents there. The first time I went to SFO I spent there only 14 days, but that helped me getting rid of my depression while walking on the streets of San Francisco. I developed a depression some two years after I had almost died and had been diagnosed for the first time. I struggled to survive; but the first days I was in panic, not being able to breath and having many other problems. I lost 50 pounds in one week while I was working in another country and had to flight back to my own in an emergency. Every minute counted. I lost everything, including my hopes. The worst part was all the lies that unveiled themselves from my last two relationships—two sociopaths in a row who were only interested in the money and in ‘vive la vida loca.’ I survived; but I went nuts and insane… My abrupt trip to SFO with the last couple of dollars left on my account after a money laundry was part of that insanity; but it helped. There I met The Old-Man-from-SOMA-Who-Always-Cries (50+) and I told him, ‘Give me your tears and I’ll give you mine.’ He, instead, played me the piano the morning after. It was lovely and that made me fall in love even more—I usually fall in love at first sight and I think he did, too, in his own crazy way. We slept together at his friend’s in San Rafael where he took me on BART together with his bike. Then, I told him, ‘I’m not going to let you slip away.’ I went back for the second time and I lived in San Francisco for 6 months. We shared some times together, he showed me many different places in the SFO Bay Area. My last day in SFO I had this sad feeling that we definitely had to split, if we ever had a sort of relationSHIT. He took me to the Coit Tower, a.o. places we went all day and night long. The last tour was Castro—he asked me to choose—and in one of the bars a guy unexpectedly kissed me in my mouth in front of him, like once another one had done at The Hole in The Wall Saloon in SOMA, embarrassing me too much. But this time I told this guy, ‘I hate it when someone I don’t even know kisses me in my mouth!’ This time I could notice My Old Man’s satisfaction and approval on my reaction on his face. Late at night we drove back to that South-of-bay-smaller town where we first stayed this second time, as I was supposed to departure from San Jose and then from Dallas, TX, back to my country. I never thought we’d talk again, but one day the phone rang and it was him, telling me he missed me and he loved me very much, and here I am and there he is, living in separate worlds but always together. He’s sometimes in SFO, or across the San Francisco-Oakland Bridge that I loved so much (shame it wasn’t in this set of pictures of yours) but sometimes I felt that bridge separated us too much. So now, Mr. Teddy Bear 1991—elected at the DC Eagle—is writing his own book, believe it or not, on the same subject I have been reading about in this blog. I have already written a play on us, called ‘The Old-Man-from-SOMA-Who-Always-Cried or the X-Ray of a Collapsed Mediocre RelationSHIT.’ And of course he knows the play… ‘THAT play,’ like he says… LOL!!! Odd enough, one of the characters in our play is called ‘Gaudy’ and she’s my best friend and bewitched crazy psychiatrist. I still need to read a lot in your blog to find more about you and others. I’m glad I came across. Cheers and warm greetings from Costa Rica. Roy