San Francisco: Fisherman’s Wharf

November 12, 2006

The next day, a bunch of the family were invited out by my uncle Charles for an early lunch. A ton of folks set out from the hotel down to Fisherman’s Wharf – we expected a brief walk, but ended up walking a good thirty minutes or more, before we got there.

Along the way, I spotted the usual stuff that catches my eye.

On first seeing this, I thought “Huh. Table Tennis Robot? I wonder what that’s about.”

Ask a silly question…

This, here. This… is a level of ping pong dedication that I have yet to see anywhere else. I mean, robot training? This is some serious shit here.

All of us, walking down Powell towards the Bay.

A rather cool building that Liz spotted. The hills and the inclines around here might be crazy, but the buildings are all so beautiful as to make it worth the hassle.

Cat Power.

The gathering at lunch was… HUGE. I’m not sure if this photo does it justice.

I’m not sure if this one does it either. There were a ton of folks, everyone sitting in this Viking-Hall-esque table full of seafood and bread.

We got to sit near the end of the table, with a great view of the bay. On the far right is Brett, who is Joanne’s boyfriend. Liz and I met him on walking into the hotel, and he’s a swell guy. I didn’t get to talk to him all that much, but I got a warm, good vibe from the guy.

I took a few photos from where we were sitting, looking out the window onto the water. I was happy to find that we were fairly close to the Golden Gate Bridge.

And Alcatraz. Next time we’re back here, I need to buy tickets for the tour – I kept hearing good things about it, along with the fact that you should buy tickets ahead of time.

Looking down at the boardwalk by the edge of the pier.

Outside the restaurant. The pier area was full of touristy shops and sunglass huts, things like that. We wandered around some, and sort of strolled in and out of the crowd after lunch.

Everyone else was taking off today, but Liz and I were sticking around for one extra day in San Francisco. She an d I said our goodbyes, and started walking towards Ghirardelli Square. On the way we picked up some coffee and just had a leisurely stroll, taking in the sights.

Ghirardelli Square: lots of shops and, sadly, no tour. In my heart of hearts, I secretly want to encounter large, exposed vats of chocolate or maybe even some kind of exposed chocolate spigot.

Of course, we had to go shopping and pick up a few chocolatety things. My coworkers are going to love me.

Walking back to the hotel, we came across a place that rented Go Cars. They looked super touristy, but they also looked way fun. If we were going to do the tourist thing, why not totally embrace it and go whole hog?

These things have GPS tours on them, and you can drive them pretty much anywhere in the city (although there are a few hills they won’t be able to climb). We were debating taking one of these for a spin tomorrow… and ended up grabbing a brochure.

After the walk we took this morning, we decided it best to grab a cab to take us all the way back up.

Come evening time, we found a nearby French Bistro and decided to have a nice, quiet dinner. Though it was only about two blocks away, we were both struggling something awful just to make it up/down the hills to get there.