Road Trip v.2 (Part 4): San Francisco

The next morning we woke up early to drive down for a day full of tourist-type activities in San Francisco. We did some Wharf roaming, took an 11am ferry ride to Alcatraz, followed that with a trip to the Walt Disney Museum because I'm a child. It was all capped off with some trinket shopping in Chinatown. We had also planned to pull off to the Golden Gate Bridge parking area on the way into town and walk up on the bridge. We didn't read the signs quickly enough and the tollbooth operator, who simply mumbled directions like someone who hated the world, didn't seem too willing to help. We were too lazy to figure it out, so we just went on our merry way. It was just as well; there was a lot to do in the city.

We wandered around the entirety of the touristy area on the Wharf all the way to Ghirardelli square.  I wasn't too impressed with the Wharf. There was a lot of shopping to be had and overpriced boat excursions. The food at the seafood stands was pretty good and we found some awesome fuzzy animal hats. But that was about it. It was, however, the most perfect day for a ferry ride to Alcatraz: 80 degrees and sunny, which is bizarrely unusual for Fall in San Francisco, I'm told. The weather made for postcard-perfect views of the city from the water and Alcatraz island.

I don't think either of us expected much from Alcatraz. Yet, we both left really impressed with it. The guided audio tour led us through each cell block with narration, on the history, the prison breaks and the big riot. Being in the prison brought back a lot of nostalgic feelings of walking into work every day at the firm bent over at the waist.  I also recently started watching the television show Oz, so I feel like I'm kind of an expert in prison culture now.

Uh-oh, looks like someone found
their Alpha in the prison yard.

After Alcatraz, we made a frantic failed effort to find a cheap afternoon snack, which is unsurprisingly impossible in touristy city when you have a small amount of time. Instead we just made our way to the Walt Disney Museum and ate some Cave Junction sausage in the car. I felt like I had mildly coerced Kim into going to the Disney Museum. We both like cartoons. Yet, admittedly, I'm the one with the bizarre childlike fascination with amusement parks and Disney movies. The museum was actually a hit with the both of us (I think). There were a lot of audio-visual components and running film clips about Walt Disney's life and the growth of animation. The main gallery was a multi-level spiral showroom of exhibits, looped clips, narrations, and some sort of giant floating eyeball-like projection screen. We laughed at the woman who took our tickets and walked us through the map for pointing out where, as she said completely straight-faced, we could "clear our heads and take a breather."  Turns the comment wasn't completely idiotic. The museum was, in fact, a sensory smorgasbord.

We hit up Chinatown afterwards and literally walked for miles through trinket stores that all started to look the same. I intended to buy a few Asian-inspired items, but walked away with nothing, completely annoyed with the unceasing glut of identical stores. We shuffled our sore feet back to the car and headed towards the west end of the city near the ocean where we would be staying with another one of my good college friends, Mikey. Upon our arrival to his house, the three of us walked through the salty-fishy smelling mist to a nearby Chinese food dive, which was delicious and deeply satisfying after a day of beleaguered attempts to find nourishment.

Playtime in the office parks

They all look the same.

All the touristy crap was out of the way, the next day was strictly for city adventures, of which there were plenty. We met up with Mikey and one of his friends near the government square of the city. I'm careful to note the location because San Francisco, and most California cities for that matter, have nicer city halls than many state capitols I've seen (and strangely enough, I've seen a lot). After that we went for a stroll through downtown. On the way to our lunch spot we stopped at a gallery-slash-bar with an awesome space for gallery parties. But we didn't know what to think about the artist on display, who seemed to project a lot of disturbing erotic assault fantasies in his cartoonish drawings. At the very least, we decided we didn't want to meet the guy (or possibly girl). We hit up some Mexican food, played on some office-park sculptures, and then....there was the ice cream.

Best. Ice Cream. Ever.

Originally, I had intended to do the Kitchen Sink Challenge at a San Francisco ice cream shop featured on Man vs. Food. Being an ice cream fiend, that was the only food challenge I've seen where I thought to myself "you know that's not that much food." In reality, I believe it's about eight pints worth of ice cream and toppings. The shop was pretty far from where we were. With such a short time in the city, I didn't want to kill a whole day to stuff myself with ice cream and then wallow in the the misery of said fat-assery. Instead, we had a reasonable helping (three scoops for me, two scoops for everyone else) of the best ice cream I've ever had at Bi-Rite. Not only was the ice cream itself amazing but they combined it with bold topping options like bergamot olive oil. I had some some maple, chocolate, sea salt, caramel, olive oil concoction, which I had mostly destroyed by the time we got to the park to sit and eat.

The rest of the afternoon felt like blurry details: I got stung by some hornet which caused one bicep to swell up like that episode of the Simpsons when Homer gets jacked in just one arm; a fidgety purported glass blower, who I'm fairly certain hasn't blown any glass in his life, tried to sell us his gear; we walked up and down hippie-tastic--now hipster-tastic--Haight Street; and then we took a nap. We woke up woosy, but ready for a delicious dinner that Mikey had cooked for us. We feasted, fell asleep again, and woke up the next morning for a stupid long drive down the California coast all the way to Orange County.