We got up and checked out of the Monarch then walked a few
blocks to check in at USA Hostels for, technically day 1 of our San Francisco
to Las Vegas tour. We then set off to do s’more sightseeing.
We made the familiar walk to Union Square where we boarded
the park tour bus which took us through more of the city and also through the
Golden Gate Park. We had originally planned to get off at Haight-Ashbury and
then walk up to the twin peaks for a fabulous panoramic view of the cityscape
but decided against this as we’d then not be able to catch the last tour bus
back; plus the walk would be epic and we weren’t in the mood for that sort of
thing today. Instead we got off in Haight-Ashbury and walked along the street
of this extremely unique part of town. We’ve never seen so many hippies and odd
people before and this street was oozing them! We passed tonnes of Marijuana
themed shops before we reached our turn off street.
We made our way towards our lunch stop which was a place
Danny had noted from another of the Man Vs Food episodes – Ike’s Place. We
eventually found the shop which was very busy but we got served extremely
quickly and were soon making our way to a nearby park to devour the mega
sarnis. We picked a shaded spot under a tree and tucked into two very beautiful
sangas that certainly hit the spot whilst, all the while, doing a lot of people
watching. Yet again we were not let down by SF’s promise of odd happenings as:
whilst behind us was going on some extremely big social gathering of some sort
for middle aged, slightly large gay men, in front of us was more oddness. There
was a middle aged man with fighting forks (like Raphael the ninja turtle)
practising his art, albeit rather shoddily. Watching him was a pair of guys,
one of whom had: a skateboard broken into pieces next to him, a Lord of the
Rings style staff with him, and a colourful bird upon his shoulder. This park
was full of strange things like this and we loved how all these strange things
were seemingly rolled into one place of oddness.
We soon had to move and try to make it back to the tour bus
stop to get back to town but our people watching had engrossed us too much and
we had to seriously power walk to get back in time to make that bus. We also
passed the Castro Theatre where we had originally intended to watch a film
though we noticed that they were all old films that we had no interest in
watching. On this walk back we also passed a few guys who were making a stand/
protesting/ advertising something and every single one of them was stark
bollock naked – you cannot escape the madness in this area!
Surprise surprise the tour finished in… Fisherman’s Wharf
meaning we’d been there every day of our stay in SF. Luckily though we caught
the shuttle bus by the tour company back to Union Square so we didn’t have to
walk miles back to the hostel.
At the hostel we checked in properly and threw our stuff
into our separate rooms (due to the trip policy here) and then went out and up
the road to find grub for tea. We found the original Tommy’s Joynt and so went
in to be confronted with a long line of hungry people waiting to get some food.
The food looked good though and the queue appeared to be worth the wait. We
wanted to get some drinks though for now and so made our way to the bar to sort
that out first. This place is full of character… and alcohol, all variety of
the stuff and was/ is a favourite hang-out of Lars Umlaut (Metallica’s
drummer.) After a couple of beers we joined the queue and got some food. Danny
got a beef sarni and Corrie got the famous buffalo stew. The food was nice but
we really wanted more of it but we paid up and went back to the hostel.
The sign in the hostel lobby read: “Free drinks at the
downstairs bar from 9pm.” We weren’t sure about this and so thought we’d
venture down to check it out. Sure enough there were free drinks. There were
lots of people but no queue for the bar. Danny went up and came back to Corrie
with a vodka and lemonade and a rum n’ coke. We got a couple more of these
before bed as it seemed rude not to!
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