The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco

After a ridiculously good sleep (which wasn’t really expected, being smack bang in the middle of San Francisco) we woke up to an absolutely perfect day for walking – no humidity, blue skies, and sunshine. Not wanting to squander too much of it, we had odds and sods for breakfast (which wasn’t included) and hit the streets, heading south east toward the gates of Chinatown, and stopped off fleetingly for a cup of coffee at Starbucks on the corner.

A woman standing nearby seemed almost normal at first. She seemed sort of neatly dressed and turned out, but something wasn’t quite right – the black eye she was sporting was probably a bit of a pointer. At first she seemed like she was just waiting for the lights to change, engaging us in idle conversation, telling us that we should hold onto our children tightly because they grow up so fast, then out of the blue she was berating passers by, begging for someone to give her a cigarette because she hadn’t had one for days, then the switch would flip back and she’d return to normal, asking where we were from and what we were planning on checking out. We drank our coffee and headed north up Grant St through Chinatown, leaving her to her erratic rantings, then clambered up a road so steep the kids were casting about for cams and carabiners and made it up to Coit Tower. I’d been there back in 2000, and the kids seemed pretty disinterested in going up to the top, happy enough just to check out the murals surrounding the gift shop and elevators, so we shot through a couple of minutes later and continued down Grant, and onward to Pier 39.

As has been the case for the past 21 years, the Sea Lions were still there, although from my memory at least there were a lot fewer than last time. Still, they were in fine voice, putting on arguably the best free show in San Francisco for visitor and local alike, jostling and biting one another constantly for the perceived best spot then playing up to the crowd like wrestling performers before others attempted to usurp their positions, .the ritual repeating itself.

After a quick lap of the tourist stops at the pier, some fish and chips and a massive battle with the kids over their refusal to eat ‘orange cheese’ (can’t blame them really, it’s pretty plasticky and not too flash!), then walked along the waterfront until the smell of Boudin’s hit us.

Apparently it’s a San Francisco institution, although I’m not so sure whether that’s for the locals or the tourists. Boudin’s specializes in sour-dough bread, and deploys a fearsome attack weapon which should be banned under the terms of the Geneva Convention – they vent baking smells from their ovens directly to the street, so you have to walk through a bready, sour-dough flavoured cloud. Even if you didn’t buy anything, you’d smell like a walking loaf of bread – free advertising, in a way, for Boudin’s. Having said all that, the bread is definitely good, and the front window and shop represent yet another show – automation moulds bread into the classic loaf, baguette and stick shapes, but hands-on bakers stand in the window, sculpting custom pieces of edible art – crabs, lobsters, rabbits, even alligators – by hand. Baked products are then delivered by an aerial tramway of baskets suspended from a cable, from the bakery to the storefront. It’s hypnotic to watch, and needless to say I was suckered in to buying a normal 1lb loaf, plus a ‘mama bunny’ loaf, ostensibly ‘for the kids’. I got away lightly at under $10 – people in front and behind me were spending anywhere up to $50 on sourdough of various shapes and sizes. Who are these people? What planet do they come from? I have no answers.

In full tourist mode, we walked to the end of the ‘tourist’ section of waterfront, waited 45 minutes for the Hyde/Powell cable car, and rode it back to Broadway – we could have probably walked it in less time than we spent waiting for it, but the kids loved the open air nature of the thing, and I have to admit I’d have been a bit miffed if I hadn’t been able to score a spot on the outside, hanging off the railings. I did it back in 2000, but honestly, who wouldn’t say no to doing it again… if they could just do something about the wait.

Nic and the kids returned to the hotel, where I knocked back a beer and managed to summon sufficient energy to do battle with the late afternoon San Francisco traffic and head to Alamo Square. I’ve got to say, San Francisco is hard work driving around. The blocks are pretty small, and the intersection of every block seemingly comes with a four way stop sign, lights, or a sign declaring no left turns when you want to turn left, or one-way signs in the opposite direction to that which you want to travel in. It took me 15 minutes to travel 20 blocks south and 6 blocks west to Alamo Square. Still, on the upside, San Francisco drivers – at least from my experience – display legendary levels of patience and courtesy compared with those in other cities. I was behind a trolley bus which had to stop, mid intersection near Haight Ashbury, while a guy stood in the middle of the road, on crutches, having a chat with a guy in his car, stopped at a sign. No one tooted, gesticulated madly, or yelled obscenities. I either happened to randomly encounter a ridiculously blessed out group of people, or it’s representative of the greater whole. I’m sure I’ll hear back from someone, one way or the other.

Eventually I made it to Alamo Square, parked on Fulton in what I suspect might have been a tow-away zone, and ran for the square to catch the late afternoon sun of a perfect spring day on the ‘Painted Ladies’, a group of beautifully decorated houses facing west, with the city behind them. Trust me, if you’ve seen any movie set in San Francisco, you’ve seen them. I wasn’t the only one with the idea, however, as groups of people were picnicking on the square, enjoying the sun. Still, with visions of my car being impounded I ran back, jumped in and went back to the hotel, then maybe 15 minutes later decided to continue pressing my luck to head out and take photos of the sunset on the Golden Gate bridge from the headlands of Marin County.

Naturally, I should have quit with Alamo Square. After completely missing my exit travelling north I finally turned around and made it a few minutes after sunset, got some hopefully reasonable shots, then managed to take an exit off 101 and ended up on Highway 1 south. Figuring I’d just head east until I hit a street I recognized was, for me, something approaching a cohesive plan, but as previously highlighted San Francisco doesn’t like to do anything in too straightforward a manner – streets you want to take are either one-way, you’re prohibited from turning, or they dive into tunnels. When you don’t know your way around, it’s a recipe for complete disaster, and I love it. I finally crawled into the hotel maybe two hours after I left, wrote, then nodded off around midnight, somewhat disconsolate at the thought that this was my last night in San Francisco.

For now, anyway.