City by the Bay, part 5

Climb every mountain, or street in San Francisco

This will be our last full day in San Francisco. We want to walk the twisty section of Lombard Street, and the online travel guides I’ve seen suggest that you walk from the top down, where Lombard meets Hyde Street.. 

I check with Google, and because our hotel is just three blocks away,  at Lombard and Van Ness, the only route it will give me is a walking route. No bus route runs along Hyde, though a cable car does.. "Quit being a wimp" Maps seems to tell me. "Man up and walk it." 

From our hotel to the twisty part is all uphill. And I mean uphill, steeper than any hill we’ve climbed yet. I take my action cam with me to record the trek. When we watch the video later, we find it’s 16 minutes or so long, Take off the part where we wait at the light to cross the street and about a minute’s worth after our arrival, and we needed a good 12-13 minutes to walk those three blocks. The views from the top, by the way, are spectacular.

Top: View from the bottom at the intersection of Lombard and Van Ness

Middle: Two blocks up, looking back (we still have a block to go)

Bottom: Looking toward downtown from Hyde and Lombard (All photos
by Sharon O'Connor)

This part has been dubbed the world’s crookedest street -- although it isn’t -- and it was immortalized in the old movie Bullitt, with Steve McQueen. The trek down the hill is aided by a reasonably graded set of stairs. You could actually begin at the bottom and have a fairly easy climb to the top with those stairs.

Traffic was relatively light compared with what it’s supposed to be on weekends, and there was no shortage of Mustangs (McQueen’s vehicle in the movie). Lots of people crowded the bottom of the hill, all with cameras or cellphones taking pictures.

Our walk to Lombard and Hyde, sped up. Real time video here

Descent. Several cars recorded making the turns. (Regular speed)

A cable car route passes by a couple of blocks east of the bottom of the hill. We had planned to hop on it, but the route ends two blocks away from Lombard, about two blocks short of Fisherman’s Wharf, so we walked down. At the end of the line, the car is driven onto a turntable. A worker pushes a lever allowing the car to be sided onto a short stretch of track, and then one or more men manually push the car around to face the other way for its trip back into town

.Turning the cable car

After watching this process, we return to Jefferson Street, planning to pick up an electric street car to our next destination, a science-oriented attraction called the Exploratorium. I check with G Maps, which tells me we need to go back a block to a pickup spot. But looking at the map the hotel gave us, it appears we could just go to the nearest stop, steps away, on Jefferson and hop a streetcar there. It should circle the block and take us right by our destination. 

There are two streetcar lines, E and F. The streetcar that pull up at our nearest stop is an F-line car, and I ask the driver if we can get where we want to go by hopping on that car. He tells us no, but he’ll take us to a stop where we can catch an E-line car that will take us there. I take it from his answer and manner that we can only take the E line, but I’m confused because the lines share the same track.

We have to walk to another stop from where he drops us off, and by the time we arrive, the E-line car is leaving. And the next half dozen or so cars that come by are all F-line. So we walk back to the stop Maps had told us to go to, but we have to wait through three or four more F-line cars before an E. Arrgh. Bet if I hadn’t asked we’d have got there eventually.

Once an E-line car shows up, we hop on and head for our destination. The Exploratorium comprises several sections, some inside, some out. The main building is essentially a big warehouse with experiments for visitors to perform. Although this part is supposed to be split into six themed sections, you only know when you pass from one to the other if you see the section number on the wall.

Unlike most museum exhibits, there is no flow, no set of signs that lead you from one demonstration to the next. Instead the experiments are scattered about on the floor, and you wander from one to the other. Some were interesting, others less so. One of the ones we like is the Slinky escalator. You start the Slinky doing it’s thing on a tilted, motorized belt, then adjust the speed of the ramp to keep the toy flip-flopping along. I can’t set the speed to keep the toy going in place, so it tends to creep up the ramp, causing me to slow it down and make the toy start walking down the ramp.

Playing with the Slinky escalator

I eventually tired of the whole thing, needing more structure, more learning instruction. Sharon was receptive to leaving, so we walked to the Ferry Building Marketplace, a huge historical building that used to be the focal spot for visitors arriving in or leaving San Francisco by ferry.

With the rise of automobiles and the creation of the two main bridges, the building lost its importance. But it was rescued to become a shopping area and a mecca for the artisan food community. We ate lunch at a fish market -- very good -- and wandered about for a while, stopping at a place that made cheesecakes, including packages with three bite-sized cakes that we indulged in. Yum. 

Top: The Ferry Building Market. A popular place to be

Bottom: Bicycle rickshaws are all over the touristy parts of Embarcadero
Street and the wharf areas, which are fairly flat. And they constantly solicit
pedestrians

We grab another streetcar -- F-line back to Fisherman’s Wharf -- with no trouble at all. When we arrive at the appropriate stop, Sharon rushes off the car and begins looking frantically around.

“We have to get to the water,” she says, fretting because she can’t see a way there. I want to know why, and she finally explains she had seen a number of sailboats with identical sails. I note that we are near the area where we’d boarded the tour boat a couple of days earlier, so we’re near Pier 39 and the sea lions. 

We scurry down to the end of the pier -- the seals were being quiet at the time -- and join a crowd of people who’ve gathered for the same purpose we’re there. A fleet of one-design boats are sailing around Alcatraz Island. We’re not sure if this is a race or what, but I quickly count 25 boats immediately visible. We know more are out of sight, so I guess 30-40 boats minimum are involved. It’s an impressive sight.

Sailboats and pelicans

From here we go have a soda, then catch a bus back to the hotel -- we’re just not up to anymore walks up hills this day. But our day isn’t over.

Sharon’s been wanting to be at bayside to take some sunset photos. So after resting up a bit, I ask if she still wants to go. I can be really dense. But I’m thinking that sunset will be the same time it is at home. It isn’t; it’s 10 minutes earlier. By the time we arrive bayside, the sun’s already down -- and has been awhile. Still, it’s twilight, and with the proper camera settings, we should be able to snag some interesting pictures. 

So we take some shots -- Sharon gets talked into taking pictures of a young woman who was struggling to take the selfie she wanted -- gaze at the scenes, and head back to the bus stop, where we have the same driver who’d dropped us off. He remarks that we didn’t spend much time in the area. He’s right, I’m sure, but it seemed like a fairly long time to me.

By the time we're back at the hotel, we agree we've had a good day, and though we haven't exhausted the sight-seeing opportunities, we've had a good visit and are ready to go home.