We awoke bright and early to start our trip to San Francisco.
Going through check in and customs went quick enough, even though I was randomly chosen to have me hands swiped as well as my shoes. I am assuming the test is to detect explosive type materials.
People forget how large North America is. Our flight took 6 hours, while I believe it took us less when we went to London. I had hoped to see some impressive landscapes as we flew across the continent, but there was too much cloud cover most times we looked.
As the taxi drove up 17th street, I could see how the street rose before us. We will have a real up hill climb most every day when we get home. After two weeks of this, we might be ready to head off to Kilimanjaro.
The Owner of the apartment greeted us, and show about the lovely apartment. Home for the next two weeks. Immediately, we made sure that we could set up the Wi-Fi.
Changing our shoes, we headed out to explore part of our neighborhood.
We had three main goals for today. Most important was to get a SIM card, coffee and filters for our morning coffee, as well as the MUNI Passport which will allow us to use the transit system for the next seven days without having to pay the fare each time.
I have heard so many horror stories of people being shocked of the roaming charges when vacationing. Even the passenger next to me had a story of someone she knew who was charged $5000 but then was relieved when their carrier dropped the charges down to $2000. I find that criminal! There is absolutely no way that roaming charges should be that high. Perhaps twice the cost of local might be fair, but not 100 x the regular price!
For just $40, I now have unlimited voice, text, and web. Much much safer and cheaper than my carrier's roaming charges.
With essentials taken care of, we made our way back towards Market and Castro Streets.
On our way in, we had come across a group of naked men standing on the corner of Market and Castro Streets. On our way back, only one was still nude, and he soon donned a jacket. While sunny, San Francisco can be quite cold. Mark Twain quipped that the coldest winter he ever felt was summer in San Francisco!
With a multitude of restaurants, we will not go hungry here. We decided to stop in at the Dancing Pig. We shared a plate of Fried Pickles to start off our meal. I had the Pulled Pork Sandwich, while Hera ordered the house smoked pulled chicken. To end the meal, the Owner gave us one of their concoctions that they are planning to add to their drink menu. Their Texan Tickler is a fruity refreshing drink, that has a spicy after tones, and a good alcoholic punch.
No doubt Hera will have a great time with the flora here. The various flowers and cacti are lovely.
But in the end, we had to climb up to get back home. The last two blocks were exhausting... and we will have to this each and every day.
PS: All the snap shots were done in Samsung Galaxy SII
Cheers,
Hera & Anthony
