Summer Vacation 2010: San Francisco

We took a month-long trip to the US for two weddings, some fun, and a certain amount of barbecue.  We aren't going to blog about the majority of the mainland US trip, but we did have an exciting vacation before things got crazy busy trying to see all our family and friends between cycles of intense eating and shopping.  We had to be in the rough area of New England from about the 12th of August through the 30th of August because of the weddings, but we were able to leave Japan on August 4th after classes ended for Lee.  While we could have crammed more family visiting into the trip, and that would have been nice, we decided that visiting someplace new and really vacationing for a bit on the way to the US would be an excellent idea.  Our main options were Alaska and Hawaii, figuring them both to be between Japan and the mainland US.  While Hawaii would have been fun, we chose the tundra rather than beaches.  The Kanazawa summer can be likened to living in Satan's armpit (though it gets worse the further south you go) and a break from the heat sounded better than a week at a beach.  Also, Hawaii is a lot more expensive than Alaska.

We started our Alaskan adventure with an eight hour layover in San Francisco, from 11 AM 'til 7 PM.  When you enter the country, you have to collect all your baggage and clear Customs, so we disembarked (de-planed? dis-planed? We heard them all from the airline attendant), grabbed our monstrous bags, took them through Customs, and checked them back in for the next leg of the flight.  We were then free to figure out how to get to the city from the airport and see what there was to see for 4-5 hours.

San Francisco was gray.  Very gray.  Surprisingly gray.

San Francisco was a lot colder and cloudier than anticipated.  Weather in the 60's is by no means cold, but when you're used to the 90's and 90% humidity, it seems downright chilly!  We took the BART (expensive subway / train) to the harbor and then walked down to Pier 39, Fisherman's Wharf.  We found a big noodle.

We're still not sure what the noodle is about.

We also found Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge (partly obscured by fog), and an excellent lunch.  It's amazing how everything is really all right there.  We weren't sure we'd be able to see all that we wanted to see in the few hours we had, but we crossed quite a few things off our list in a short amount of time, including the obligatory MySpace self-portraits near famous things.  We also had a kind passer-by take an actual picture of us near Alcatraz:

There's Alcatraz!

We also got to see sea lions hanging out at the pier.  Pretty cool place, wouldn't mind going back!

Posing prettily for our picture.

We had an excellent and deeply satisfying lunch of local specialties, along with milk that *gasp* didn't taste like someone added flour to it!  Sourdough bread, local oysters, sourdough garlic bread with blue cheese melted on top, Dungeness crab pasta, and halibut battered in a local beer.  Mmmmm.  I typically don't like blue cheese, but melted onto the sourdough garlic bread, it was wonderful!

We ate them all before we remembered to photograph them!

Amazing garlic bread.

Pasta with Dungeness crab on top, Lee's entree. 

Good old Fish'n'Chips (Halibut in a local beer batter), Lee caught red-handed stealing fries.

After we lunched, we walked the city some more.  We wanted to ride a cable-car trolley, but the lines were immense and we didn't have exact change for a middle of the line stop.  It was also kind of expensive.  We did ride an electric streetcar later on.  We walked to Lombard street as well, and it is a very interesting street.  The houses that line it must cost a fortune!

Lombard Street.  Crazy, winding, Lombard Street

This city seemed like a nice place, with great views, lots of bike riders (with *gasp* helmets) and buses that also carry bikes, though the hills really are pretty steep.  I could not imagine walking there in heels!  Nice place to visit, and I wouldn't mind going back.  Check out our pictures on Flikr.

View from top of Lombard Street

Steep hills - SF has many