Continued from Cali Coast Day 5 Part 2.

Today is the first day of this trip where we didn’t have any sort of place to be at a certain time. The first day, we had to pick up the rental car and leave LA before traffic got bad. Second day, we had to get up and go visit a vineyard at a reasonable hour so we could get ready for the wedding in time. Then the day after that we had to make it to San Simeon in time for the Hearst Castle tour. Day after that we had to wake up, check out the hotel and make it through Big Sur and into Monterey before it got dark. Then yesterday, we had to make it into SFO to return the car by 5pm. Today, there are no time restrictions, and it felt nice to be lazy this morning. I did some blogging in the morning while RH went out on the street to walk around and get some coffee.

RH looks punk rock today. It’s already past noon when we made it out of the hotel.

This is where we went drinking last night, literally right across the street.

The cable car stop is also literally right across the street. Our SF CityPass allows us to ride the cable cars for free.

Wweeee!!!! Actually, it was just mildly exciting.

Took us up a huge hill, came down the hill, and we’ve reached our first stop.

Back in Chinatown! Dim sum eluded us last night, but NOT TODAY!!!

It seems like there are only old erAsians in Chinatown. None of them are speaking English, and they do not integrate into the rest of SF. I bet all the younger generation have integrated into society, and therefore are not here. I bet Chinatowns are a dying breed.

Found the dim sum place, and it is open.

Yes yes yes!! I spoke Chinese for my order, the lady who took my order misheard me the first time, and I had to correct the order. She got mad at me and gave me attitude. RH was kind of upset by this, but I kind of expected this. I expected shitty attitude here just like how I expect to get shitty service at a Chinese restaurant. Part of the culture?

We saw a bakery right across the street from the dim sum shop, so we came over here to see what else we can get to eat.

Found them, egg custard!

We ended up getting a table at this bakery to have breakfast.

Some soy milk to wash everything down. The dim sum was awesome and totally worth coming back to Chinatown. Craving satisfied!

Done with our first lunch, it’s time to get back on the cable car and head towards the piers.

German tourists. There are foreign tourists everywhere here in SF. Literally, EVERYWHERE. The German tourists took a video of a firetruck going by. Seems dumb, but I’d do the same thing if I were in Germany.

The cable cars took so long to show up, the Germans decided to just leave and walk instead.

We waited for what seemed like forever, then a cable car came. As I am about to get onto the car, the conductor stuck out his hand and just said “Stop!”. Then just kept on driving on. Too full to take more passengers, but he was pretty rude about it. Speaking of being rude, people in SF are fucking rude as shit.

What’s up with people saying Parisians are rude? No, fuck that. I’ve been to Paris and a lot of big cities in this world, and SF is very high up there on being rude. Fucking SF people are fucking rude as shit compared to other big cities in this world. I think they hire all the rudest people in the world to work on their buses, trains, restaurants, etc.

Since we didn’t want to wait for another cable car, that could be potentially full again, we decided to walk to our next destination.

The walking part isn’t bad, it’s the uphills, and downhills that I was trying to avoid with the cable car. We’ve been doing so much for the past 5 days already, we are trying to save our bodies from wear and tear so we can finish up this trip strong.

I’ve always wondered what it looks like behind one of these SF garage doors. It goes pretty far back.

Pretty damn steep incline.

Up that hill is our next destination, the curved part of Lombard Street.

Turned 180 degrees from the previous photo, another big hill.

Steep, and a terrible spot to get a flat tire(car on left). You can’t jack up a car while it’s leaning sideways.

Lombard Street. I drove down this thing last year when I attended a wedding in Napa.

Twinkies…I was really embarrassed about this the whole day. For the record, I had my shirt on first. It’s also gotten a bit hot, walking around these hills and with the sun coming out. I ended up taking off my jacket and holding it for most of the day.

So, we walked up this giant hill to see Lombard Street. Now, we are going to walk down this giant hill, then walk up another giant hill to see that thing in the distance, Coit Tower.

That’s cute and all, until you realize that this house costs millions. It’s cute to have lots of money, said no one ever.

I guess that’s earthquake proof construction. At this construction site, I also saw two Asian construction workers. I’ve never seen any Asian construction workers here in the US. A lot of Asians working blue collar jobs here in SF, something rarely seen in Austin.

Yeah, there are a lot of Asians here. No where else would there be a store dedicated to ping pong. TABLE TENNIS ROBOT!!!!

Thanks for the love tap, asshole!

Up and up we go.

Little urban garden.

Sweet. Looks cool, but I bet it drives like crap.

Look at all those parking spots behind that garage door!

A couple of blocks from the top, I looked to my left towards the ocean, and I see this black sailboat just FLYING….Wait, was that the America’s Cup sail boat? Is that race happening here right now? Holy crap!!! I got really excited!! I don’t sail, I get sea sick, but I do love engineering and I do love racing, and lastly, USA USA USA!!

Their guests never have trouble finding their house.

Almost made it to the top of Telegraph Hill, where Coit Tower tops it off.

Yup, America’s Cup is happening here. Here’s the viewing pavilion for the racing. Now, I remember seeing a sign for it around town. I don’t know how the format works, but apparently the racing happening over multiple days. I couldn’t even see the racing yacht, it was so fast it must have made it to the other side of the bay already.

Up the stairs in Pioneer Park, the top of Telegraph Hill.

Ah, one of them French public toilets. Surprised to see one of these here.

Looking towards Lombard street. That’s a long way we’ve walked, up and down two giant hills.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Apparently, it’s been foggy in SF for a while now, but the weather started to clear up in the past couple of weeks. We lucked out to be able to see the bridge from here. In fact, the weather has been hotter than expected this entire trip. I guess that could be a good thing, even though, I was hoping to get out of the Texas heat and go somewhere chilly for a bit.

‘Merica!! Where we imprison you on an island surrounded by shark infested water!

‘Merica!! Where we build giant phallic symbols atop a big hill! Here’s Coit Tower.

Murals inside Coit Tower. Yeah yeah yeah, these are nice…but, I saw Diego Rivera murals in Mexico City, so I didn’t really spend much time looking at them…probably a mistake.

The first floor of Coit Tower is one giant souvenir shop, and this is where they sell you the tickets to get up the elevator to the top.

We arrived to an elevator with no line. Happy. It was one of those old school elevators where there’s the accordion style metal door that you have to manually shut. The elevator operator was this nice young guy who joked with us and asked if any of us had been on an old school elevator like this one. Me me me. Been in one in Ithaca, in my sister’s 100 years old apartment building.

37 more steps to the top.

All the windows had….windows. People throw coins out onto the ledge from the window gaps on the side. I don’t get it…

There she is, the USA team of America’s Cup. That’s one fucking fast sailboat. It actually rides on hydrofoils, so you can see the hull lift out of the water when it gets going fast. Pretty fucking amazing. This is one of those things that I would never travel to see, but since I am here by coincidence, super awesome to see it by chance.

Looking downtown.

This person decided to throw a key onto the ledge instead of coins.

Looking back towards Lombard Street. Ugh, we walked so far.

KL points. I was really really excited to see Team USA sailboat. Giddy.

Alcatraz.

OK, I think that’s enough fun up here. Time to head back down. That’s a statue of Christopher Columbus. He has on a cape, like he is some sort of superhero.

Waiting in line to get down the elevator. We lucked out again. The line was really long when we first got up here, but by the time we waited in line, we caught the first elevator that showed up.

Back to the first floor. A tour group comes by, and the line is extremely long. Dodged that bullet.

Filbert Street Steps, connected to the base of Coit Tower. This will bring us down to the water.

Many of the homes here are only accessible from the steps.

Halfway down.

Homes are quite nice over here.

Hah, a funny little access point from the steps into the door.

RH pointed this out. I had totally missed it, but someone keeps bees right next to the steps. Holy shit, someone keeps bees right in the middle of dense San Francisco. Holy Shit!!

Quite a big elevation change.

The steps dropped us right outside America’s Cup Pavilion.

To be continued at Cali Coast Day 6 Part 2.