April 11 San Francisco

Up early for coffee and muffins in the lobby of our quaint hotel, The Grant. Although cool this morning (about 50 American) it looks like it will be a nice day. We thought we were going to take a "hop on, hop off" bus tour but after waiting almost an hour at the stop and no tour bus came, we decided to walk. We discovered that San Francisco is easy to see on foot as long as you don't mind very steep hills.

Our first stop was the 210 foot tall Coit Tower, built with money left to the city by philanthropist Lillie Coit. The tower is in the shape of a fire hose nozzle because Lilly so admired the firefighters who fought the 1906 earthquake fires. The views from the top of the tower are spectacular.

A walk down Telegraph Hill led us to the Piers where we found Sally's Famous Fish, a take out that specializes in fresh haddock "fishwiches" prepared before your eyes. It was by far the freshest haddock I have ever tasted! After lunch we set out on foot again and ended up at the Ghirardeli Chocolate factory where we forced ourselves (because of the rave reviews) to try their very special hot fudge sundae...yum!

Needing to walk off all that food we decided to tackle the steepest street in San Francisco...Hyde Street with a 31.5 per cent grade. On the way up we stopped to watch cars navigating the "crookedest street in the world, Lombard Street. Its eight switchbacks were installed to reduce the steep grade from 27 per cent to 16 per cent.

Walking all the way to Civic Centre we were thrilled to take pictures of each other next to the bust of Harvey Milk at City Hall. We also witnessed a couple of weddings and could hear the council in session behind closed doors.

Walking through the Tenderloin District we noticed many homeless people but were only approached by a few. We did, however see a dead body on the sidewalk with two police officers standing near her. It was a shocking sight but no one around us seemed shocked! People were just going about their business.

On our walk back to the hotel we stopped at a small market and bought a few items for our fridge. With sore feet and tired eyes we ended our first full day of exploring the streets of San Francisco.



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