Fool Around The World: San Francisco

Well we were a week early for the tree lighting ceremony as it turns out so we will have to wait till tomorrow night for that....oops!

We have been in San Francisco for a little over a week now and have spent most of our time here getting to know the city. We are staying in Fisherman's Wharf which in hindsight was a bit of a mistake. This is tourist town and most things here are a bit mediocre. Luckily we can walk to North beach were things get more interesting and there is a lot of public transport around although its almost as bad as Sydney's public transport system. There are street cars, trolleys and buses that you can catch from almost every corner which will take you anywhere in the city. Now while this sounds like it would be a great thing it's actually not, it means that they stop at every street corner to let people on and off so just travelling a few kilometers will take you more than 20mins...very frustrating.

Aside from the transport woes we have found San Francisco to be a great city, the sun has been shining most days (there is a lot of foggy mornings too), the people are super friendly....and they have real sourdough bread! We have had my favourite San Francisco food three times already, Clam Chowder in a bread bowl....yummy! You can get Clam Chowder from pretty much every cafe and restaurant in the Wharf but we thing that Boudin's is the best especially since they make their own sourdough!

San Francisco is home to the largest Chinatown outside of Asia and not surprisingly it reminded me a lot of Central Hong Kong with it's narrow alley ways lined with discount stores and Asian green grocers. We went there in search of Dim Sum but had to bail out after an hour of walking around and only finding one empty slightly dodgy looking place. After some quick research back at the hotel we found that in actual fact Chinatown is not the place to have Dim Sum in this city....go figure!

We have also visited North Beach which is 'Italian town' and had really good Pizza and Ricotta Cannoli. Haight-Ashbury which used to be home to the hippies and while there are still a few around its mostly just interesting places to eat and alternative clothing stores not to too dissimilar from what you would find on King St in Newtown.

We took a walk along the Presideo admiring the coast line, and headed through Golden Gate park. It's very different to what I was expecting, I guess after spending so much time in New Yorks Central Park I thought it would be similar, but its not like it at all.

San Francisco has really been a bit of a rest stop for us. After the buzz of New York its nice to finally catch up on some sleep and chill in a Comfy Holiday Inn Bed.