Up & Down the Hill.

While you were here wishing us a Happy Anniversary, we were in San Francisco having dinner, riding the cable car and walking.

We’ve been to San Francisco a half dozen times together and we’ve never had the time to ride the cable car. Thus, our main goal this visit: Ride the freakin’ cable car, already!

We walked over to the Cable Car Museum from our hotel, and caught a ride on the cable car down to Union Square. They emptied the cars of all passengers there and reloaded them. We’d been shooting the breeze with the brake guy, so he told us to walk a block up and catch it there to ride it back. Except all the cars were full. So we shrugged and just kept walking, following the cable car route, walking, all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf, walking. If you’ve ever been to San Francisco, you can start smiling in amusement at us here. I’ll cue you at the appropriate time later for the laughter.

We got to Fisherman’s Wharf, and there were all the cable cars and the cable car guys taking their lunch breaks. The guy we’d been chatting with exclaimed, “Hey!” With a wave, he pointed at us, and then, “You didn’t WALK all the way from Union Square, did you?” We replied with much chirpyness, “Yep, it was great!” He was mightily impressed and we were pretty pleased with ourselves and our athletic prowess.

We walked over to Pier 39 and decided to grab a bite to eat for our own lunch. We were quite hungry given we’d just walked from Union Square to Fisherman’s Wharf. And then… we made the mistake of sitting down while we ate… (cue for laughter here) and all our muscles froze in place. After lunch, we barely made a standing position, and then limped and gimped and hobbled (note I did NOT say “walked”) back to our hotel, where we proceeded to take a two hour nap. I guess you could say we drowned the loss of our athletic prowess in sleep?

I would normally declare a two hour nap on a Saturday afternoon decadent, however, given the state of our muscles, this nap was downgraded to the status of necessary. In fact, we could happily have made it into a 10 hour nap, except that would have smacked of admitting our age (one of us had a birthday this week, not naming names, but I’m pointing at him). No one our age wants to say truthfully that they went to bed for the night at 4pm because San Francisco kicked their a**.

After our nap, we managed to make it out to the Golden Gate Bridge for the sunset. If possible, I think one should always see the sunset from the Golden Gate Bridge. If not there, then definitely from Alcatraz island.

Truly, though, we really had the best time. San Francisco is such a fun and beautiful place, and while our home was experiencing a summertime heatwave, the weather where we were was a perfect 70°F. Some drizzle/fog in the evenings, but warmed up right nice during the day. Awesome.

We also had a bit of warm reminiscent memories, for we stayed at the same hotel where we stayed the very first time we went to San Francisco together back in 2004. We enjoyed it just as much this time as we did then. They charge a bit more now than they did then and, personally, I think they charge more now than they should. Thing is, they have a great central location and they know it.

I guess I should also mention that I’ve never been to Chinatown there. Now, I don’t know what exactly I thought Chinatown was, so my ignorance (or lack of aforethought), and Tony’s desire to please attributed to yet another long walk on already stressed leg muscles. So, we get to Chinatown and we’re “walking” along slowly, feeling all the while that we’re about a second and a half from being pick-pocketed and I turn to Tony and say, “I guess I’m not much in the mood for shopping?” And he’s all, “That’s pretty much what Chinatown is, babe, shopping.” To which I responded with a grunt. I put the venture to good use, though, because I was on the lookout for Thee Dried Plums. While there were dried plums aplenty, and I didn’t find Thee Dried Plums, there were the scariest looking dried WHOLE FISH and dried WHOLE other stuff that smelled really nasty. I’m still shuddering over those dried whole fish. After that experience, we came the conclusion that Thee Dried Plums must have been homemade — they were simply too good to have been purchased somewhere.

The flights were fairly non-eventful, memories bountiful and enjoyment of each other top on the list — just the way we like it.

P.S.1 — I didn’t even mention the most delicious strawberry cheesecake we were given for free for our anniversary, did I?
P.S.2 — Or that we saw Tony’s twin (everyone has a twin, right?) playing hoops Saturday morning. Tony even said the guy looked like him, which really means there was a similarity. So weird.
P.S.3 — There is a store called Chocolate Heaven at Pier 39 — it really is. They even have chocolate pasta in there.

P.S.4 — We walked past several enclosed fern gardens (glorious!) and a 20′ tall wall of wild blackberries (unbelievable!).