Off to the city by the bay

Of chocolate and, well, who cares about the rest?

Our day started off with a potentially bad omen. I had set an alarm to wake us at 6 to finish the packing and head to the airport. Not much room for error in that alarm though. But I did something wrong, and the alarm didn't go off, or I slept through it. Woke 15 minutes late, which pretty much killed the padding I'd built into the schedule. I roust Sharon and we jump into hyperdrive, managing to leave at the end time I had figured for. Of course being Sunday, traffic was light, and we arrived at DFW in excellent time. We've been marked for precheck and speed through security. And our gate is just a short distance from the security exit. Ah, thanks be for providence. Nothing spectacular about the flight, though when we took off and they're retracting the landing gear, we hear noises like something falling off instead of the usual thunks. The plane didn’t turn back, and no announcements were made, so we assume everything’s AOK. We'd booked a ride share from the airport to our hotel, and our route provided us with quite a little tour, passing through industrial areas and an area with a good deal of graffiti on the buildings and an assortment of “colorful’ characters -- including one guy standing in the middle of the street doing something that might be considered dancing. At check-in, the ladies working the desk show us how to use the buses and cable cars to get to many of the popular attractions and give us a map with the routes. We’ve prepurchased a three-day pass for the muni transit system, and what with the map they provided and Google maps, we manage to travel where we want to go with only a couple of hiccups during our stay. One of the things the ladies mention is a chocolate festival put on by Ghirardelli in Ghirardelli Square, which is just a few blocks from the hotel. We put our stuff in our room and decide to walk there, having read how walking friendly San Francisco considers itself. That’s fine for the walk to the square because it’s all downhill, ending at the waterfront, which is pretty flat.

A section of the bay just off Jefferson Street and north of Ghirardelli Square.
You can't see them in this picture, but people are swimming around the buoys
in the middle of photo. A semicircular pier to the left helps create the opening
into this area. The National Park Service says the pier, built in 1929, is falling
into disrepair and is in desperate need of help

The walk back, on the other hand, begins with a hill much steeper than anything we encounter in Burleson, followed by another hill a little less steep -- about like the worst hill in our part of Burleson -- followed by an uphill climb that’s manageable but only because we’ve been doing aerobic work at the gym for the past couple of months. The street in front of the square is full of people checking out a line of booths that stretch the length of the square. Some give away chocolate, but at others you have to have a ticket to enjoy the treats. Tickets range in price from $35 for four tastings to $120 for access to everything. A couple of booths are dedicated to selling hot fudge sundaes and do a brisk business. And one or two booths are manned by companies other than Ghirardelli.

The chocolate festival in front of Ghirardelli Square. The company
was founded in San Francisco in 1852. 

We take advantage of the free booths, look at the rest, and then visit the shops in the square. The Ghirardelli shop stocks everything the company makes and also provides a variety of ice cream treats. One of them sounds pretty good -- chocolate sauce with cherry ice cream topped with more chocolate sauce and whipped cream sprinkled with mini dark chocolate chips. Those familiar with my warped taste buds may be surprised to hear that I suggest we split one of these wonders. My aversion to foods that taste really sweet has lessened in the past couple of years, so I decided to take a chance. The whipped cream hasn’t much flavor, taking on the character of the dark chocolate chips. The ice cream has a pleasing cherry flavor and contains big chunks of cherries. By the time we near the bottom, Sharon says I can have the last of the ice cream, and she’ll eat the rest of the sauce. Seemed fair to me. We stroll around looking at the other shops, stopping in on a couple. Then we decide to head back to the hotel, but on the way we notice a maritime museum building. Turns out, the building is part of a larger maritime historical park run by the National Park Service. We find that it is open and free, so we take time to view its displays.

This building is called the Bathhouse Building. It was built by WPA
workers in the '30s

The museum concentrates on ships connected to San Francisco -- what a surprise, eh? One curious piece is part of a ship excavated at the site of the Transamerica Pyramid when it was being built. Back in the late 1800s part of the bay had been filled in over a bunch of derelict ships, hundreds of them. The piece of hull on display was part of a ship that still had precious cargo aboard. The other display that fascinated me concerned a Japanese man who became the first from his nation to sail solo across the Pacific. His boat is on display, a ridiculously small looking craft whose size I never found out, though I later read on Wikipedia that it's 19 foot long. Looks a bit bigger than that to me. He’d been unable to obtain permission from his government to make the trip, so he had no passport, no visa, and no money. He snuck out of the harbor and sailed anyway. He was arrested on arrival in San Francisco for being an, ahem, illegal alien, but when the mayor heard his story, he was freed, given a 30 day visa and the key to the city.

The boat Kenichi Horie sailed solo from Japan to San Francisco.
His trip took 92 days.

Won’t go into the rest of the displays -- you’ll have to see them yourself -- but it was well worth the time. We also took some time to just take in the sights bayside, taking a bunch of pictures, including our first ones of that somewhat well known bridge that spans the opening to the bay. We finally made the trek back up the hill to the room and called it a day -- a good first day for us.