San Francisco, Here We Still Are!

Tuesday, day two in San Francisco, was a fantastic day! We caught an early morning shuttle, this time, 9:00 a.m. and we were back in China Town by 9:30.

We headed to a dim sum restaurant that our shuttle driver had recommended, as we got there we discovered that it was closed for renovation. As we were standing there scratching our heads wondering where to go next, this sweet little Chinese lady came up to us and said in broken English, it's closed, Rico asked if she knew of another place, so she said, follow me, she was grabbing Rico by the shirt, and in her short little quick steps, like all little Chinese ladies seem to take, she kept saying, follow me, and gesturing with her hands. She walked us about a block, then pointed down the street to another place. She was so cute! We enjoyed her so much! We thanked her, she went on her way, and we went and had some wonderful dim sum! Yum!

After our wonderful meal, we set out on foot again. We went to the cable car museum, that was a terrific place! We learned all the history of the cable cars. After about an hour in the museum, we walked more, and then we caught a cable car (our first cable car ride ever!) and took it to Lombard Street. That let us off about six blocks down from the famous "crookedest street", and of course it was all up hill! Boy is it up hill! So many hills in San Francisco! And we think we climbed them all!

Anyway, we, along with all the tourists, took pictures and climed the famous street. Cars go down it, it's only one way, but there seems to be pleny of times when no cars are on the street, so we were able to walk up that way, with the stroller, becuase the sidewalks on this section of the street are all stairs, they need to be, it is soooo steep! Anyway, that was a lot of fun to see this beautiful street!

From there we continued walking, we were in seach of what is called the painted ladies, they are a row of beautiful old, small victorian homes, we didn't know exactly where they were, so we were just walking and tyring to find them. We walked and we walked, and never did find them, we didn't want to run out of time, so we hopped on a city bus that took us down to the bay near the Golden Gate Brigde, we walked and we walked some more, and seemed we never got close to the Bridge, we decided it would take too long to keep going, so we planned that for the next day. So again we walked, this time to another bus stop, that somewhere along the way we found out took us to these painted ladies. So we hopped on that bus, got off, wandered through this wonderful park in the middle of the city, and on the other side, there they were, 7 pretty little houses all in a row....know as the "painted ladies". As we sat in the park for a bit admiring these pretty little houses, a chocolate lab named Phoebe befriended us. We had a good time with her for a few minutes.

By this time it was getting late and we needed to be back at our shuttle stop in China Town by 6:00. The time just goes way too fast! So we hopped another bus or two and another street car that took us back to China Town, and we had enough time left to do a little shopping. We found a little wok shop and we bought a wok and a few utensils, we also found a bakery that had delicious sweet bbq pork buns, so we picked up a few for our dinner.

By this time, it was 6:00, and the shuttle took us back to our home one more time. The day went so fast! We took lots of public transportation, but we walked a lot too! And those hills.....

We got back to our home about 6:30, I figured it was early enough to do some laundry, so I went to check out the facility where we were staying at Candlestick Park. Well, I discovered that it was $2.50 for a wash and a quarter got you only 5 minutes on the dryer! I couldn't believe it! By this time I was fed up with the place we were staying. It turns out Candlestick RV park is the only rv park in San Francisco, so they can charge what ever they want for anything. Not only did it cost 2 to 3 times more than any other place that we stayed thus far, the shuttle was $10 bucks a person, so we counted $10 bills instead of people getting on and off the bus! The worst part was the fact that it was a parking lot, and your neighbors were only 5 feet away from you! We decided that this place really blows, and we were happy to leave it!