Day 5
San Francisco
Temp: Low 20s, cold breezes
This post by Crystal, then Craig

Day 5, Thursday, was our last day with the car, so we planned to drive to the Haight Ashbury district for breakfast and then drive over the Golden Gate Bridge. The morning began a little grey but in true holiday fashion soon cleared to a spectacular sunny day.

Haight Ashbury is famous for housing residents such as the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Charles Manson, as well as a strong hippy and anti-war community. We drove through town, accompanied by Henry Winkler and Ted Coppel talking on the radio about dealing with fame.

Haight Ashbury Man makes Boyhood Dream a Reality

The streets of Haight Ashbury retain a lot of the old hippy charm, as well as a lot of the old hippies themselves. I felt like a terrible narc when I mistook a woman standing at a traffic light as a beggar, when she was simply holding a sign saying "My Religion is Kindness" and waving and smiling to passers by. Oops.


We enjoyed breakfast in a bustling Middle-Eastern cafe, then walked along Haight Street, browsing the shops. We bought a glow-in-the-dark frisbee, stamped with the famous street signs, and browsed the Goodwill store, a huge op-shop full of all kinds of items, including a pair of black leather chaps, still in good condition.

TAG TEAM ACTIVATED

Craig here, 30000 feet above the planet, as we fly from San Francisco to Seattle. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves, so let’s get back to the wonderful Haight-Ashbury area!
Day 5 continued, with a trip to one of Crystal’s favourite places in every city, the Salvation Army/Goodwill store. And San Francisco has the only second-hand clothing store I’ve seen with a pair of leather chaps for sale. Giddy-up, San Francisco.


We grabbed a quick beer (mainly to use the toilet, guilt-free) at a bar that hadn’t grasped the concept of time. “Happy Hour, 1pm-7pm.”


Of course, we hadn’t grasped the concept of logic, as the beer soon required ANOTHER toilet break. So we found the public library, and Crystal had to practically wrestle an old man for the toilet key. It all worked out well in the end, with minimal bruises and dampness of pant.

And then there was shopping! We went to the biggest record store ever, Amoeba Records, and grabbed 3 CDs for car listening (we immediately forgot about these CDs when we got back to the car. Jetlag or just plain stoopid?)

OMG, Amoeba Records is huge.

Then we found Giant Robot and grabbed some t-shirts and posters and kinda blew our budget a bit. But hey, holiday! TOOTOOOT!


Okay, so time was running out on the car rental, so we had to hightail it from the Haight. We set GPS to random over-bridge destinations and we were off! Hills, buses, heavy braking, low gear climbing, we had it all. But let’s let the video tell the story!

So yeah! Golden Gate bridge, despite seeing it on every show and movie ever made, was magnificent. Perfect sunny day for it, it was magic. And the view from the other side was clear AS! Checkit!





We did the Bay Bridge after that, which even though it shares similar incredible engineering, is grey and not red, so is considerably less interesting to the spoilt part of my mind that needs colour to enjoy something. (But Crystal liked it!)



We’ll spare you the angst surrounding returning the car on time and take you to the tacky Irish bar that serves the best Bloody Marys IN THE WORLD. Wow, how they EASED the horrors of the rental car return, OOOH YEAH!


And then it was date time! A quick spruice back at the hotel, a quick walk through the chilly night breeze, and we were in Saha, a middle-eastern restaurant of awesomeness. We found it on www.yelp.com, and if you ever need to know ANYTHING about ANYTHING in America, hit up Yelp. Works every time.


Fatigue kicked in, so we didn’t end up going to HA-RA, the grumpy boxer bar that we really like, choosing instead to flake out at the hotel. Yes, there were giggling drunk teenage girls next door who got home late, yes there were LOUD phone calls to our room at 3am, with people trying to find said girls, and yes, the cleaners REALLY HAD TO have loud and long conversations outside our door at the crack of dawn. But earplugs? Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

And that was Day 5.