San Francisco Day 2

Faith really wanted a picture in that fountain.

My feet were aching and sore from our stroll of the city the day before and I actually thought about an alternative to taking the trip back into the city, but I didn’t want to disappoint Kellee and Faith; besides how can you go to San Francisco and not see the golden gate bridge. So I bottled up the slight pain and decided to make the journey.

When we arrived in the heart of San Francisco I was determined not to make the mistake I did the day prior and was actually feeling confident and comfortable with taking the city transit system. So, I checked my little map in my little tour guide book and we headed for the nearest bus stop. When we arrived the bus was waiting, but we had our beast ( our green stroller made by Jeep that might actually pass for a jeep). Suffice it to say, we were not ready to board and I made the decision to wait for the next bus. If I would have paid attention to our surroundings, I might not have hesitated; there were gang members playing craps, hookers swaying and a tranny traveling the street. This of course was the longest wait of our whole day.

Before, I continue I should note the frequent friendliness and courtesy we ran into on the streets. There was no less than three different times while walking or riding the Bart that someone near us would be using foul language. Upon seeing us they would apologetically say something to the effect of, “OH! I’m really sorry I didn’t see you guys.” They would then change up the conversation or quite down. This happened with different races in the best to worst parts of town. Even on the street when we were waiting for the bus we had to walk through the gang members and their craps game to get to the bus stop; they were very gracious and friendly about our doing so. From business suits to bums to bus drivers, people were warm, friendly and helpful.

Anyhow, we caught the bus and found the routes to be very easy to get around. You can get an all day pass for the buses and trolleys for $10- worth the price, since it cost $5 to ride a trolley one way anyway. As I said above the drivers were very friendly and helpful; we asked a lot of questions and they were very gracious in helping us to get where we wanted to go. A word of caution though, these buses get filled fast, so big monster strollers are not a good idea if you have little ones. We had to actually make people get out of the bus so we could get off and one time we missed our stop due to the monstrosity.

Our first stop was the Golden Gate Park. Once again I had my little traveling map out from my little tourist book and thought this will be an easy destination to get to, so I asked the bus driver to drop us off there. To which he responded, “What part?”

“Ummm…I'm not sure just the park and will find our way.”

“The park is 42 blocks wide!”

Well, dear readers I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that I missed the vastness of this park on my little tourist map! So the driver dropped us off near the Tea Gardens and some other museums. We looked around but didn’t go inside, venturing to make our way to the kids park. It took some time to get there but it was well worth the trip. It had to be one of the best children’s parks I have ever come across. The landscape was stocked with swings, ladders, slides, monkey bars and a host of other child gadgets. The best was a hill that was covered with a smooth concrete. Kids would take pieces of cardboard and climb to the top to slide down the concrete hill. We found a piece lying about and had a bit of fun ourselves.



At Hippie Hill

Ridin the WaveKick'n it

Afterwards we hopped back on the bus and made our way to the Golden Gate Bridge. We walked out on it a little ways; there were a grip of tourist all wanting to do the same thing. I’m not sure what else to say about the place except that it cool and it's San Francisco; so it really is a must if you go. One cool thing you can do is rent bikes and pedal yourself across the bridge and back- If it was just me and Kellee and she wasn’t pregnant, I would have jumped on the idea.

Holding on for dear life!Sitting on thousands of little cables

I really wanted to have kellee lay on her back while I jumped over- something about being pregnant and getting dirty ruined the pic.

That's a Hair-raising ideaFaith wanting to be like her Papa!

Afterwards we bused on to the exploritorium; beautiful architecture with a great view. The Exploritorium is a kind of hand’s on kid’s science museum. And it cost a pretty penny. Luckily we got there an hour before it closed and they let us in for free. I say we were lucky because it really wasn’t a place for three year olds. Don’t get me wrong it was interesting and fun and Faith enjoyed it, but it was just over her head and would not have been worth the money to take her.

Moving on we walked a little of the city and filled our stomachs with some sourdough bread, which is a San Franciscan thing to do…atleast that’s what tourist think. We then made one last ditch effort to try and see Lombard street (the crookedest street in the world- the name is based on the design of the street not the character of those who live on it). I had it planned out with the help of my trusty tiny tourist map, we would get bused to the top of the street and walk down (it’s a steep hill) taking plenty of pictures to commerate my genius idea. Obviously, this is not what happened. I calculated wrong and we ended up getting dropped off at the bottom. I’m not one to give up so easily and my girls are troopers, so I thought we could make this work. My legs were tired and my feet aching but I was willing to plunge ahead, a small price to pay for great family snapshots. However, When Kellee , whose pregnant feet were swollen to the size of her calves, saw the hill and the determination in my eyes burt into tears. She could go on no longer. After a short argument on seeing the error of my ways we decided to head back to the Wharf to eat and go.

Faith had talked about taking the trolley again all day, so we decided to jump on to get to the Bart. I have to admit it’s a much better ride at night.R2D2 in San Fran Trolley Time