We arrived in San Francisco mid-afternoon. The temperature range in California was interesting. From Crescent City (where we stayed in the motel) to North of San Francisco, we went from 13 to 36 degrees in a few hours. From Ukiah to just outside of San Fran, it is really dry and the only "crops" you'll see are wineries.

The hostel where we were staying for the week was on Mission, close to 21st Street. Mission Street is at the heart of the Mission district, named that way after Mission San Francisco de Asis (also called Mission Dolores), one of the 21 California Missions established in the late 18th century (I'll post pictures of the Mission later on). The Mission district, housing a mainly Irish population in the old days, is now Latino in majority. Everywhere, you hear people speaking Spanish and listening to Mexican music. Unfortunately, the district has been left to its own demise and is not a very clean or pleasant area of San Fran. We never felt threatened but we came across some of San Fran's poorest residents on a daily basis. It definitely gave us a more honest sense of what the city was about.

The Elements Mission hostel is in a new building that also houses a cafe and restaurant/bar. We enjoyed our stay there, the place was very clean and the staff was great. We would have liked to meet some other travelers, but there was no common room in the hostel, so we usually just crossed people in the corridors, on their way in or out of the hostel. Our first evening in San Fran, we had sushi at Yo Yo, on Valencia Street.

On Tuesday, or first full day in the city, we decided to head for the Golden Gate Bridge, to walk across this San Fran monument. We got an early lesson in using the transit system in a city where three distinct companies offer transit services but don't talk, so tickets for the BART would not get us anywhere on the MUNI bus system. Fortunately, we were helped by a friendly lady at the Tourist Info place downtown and were able to figure out how to get around town with our newly purchased three-day MUNI pass.

We made it to the Golden Gate Bridge around lunch and had a snack before attempting the crossing. The bridge is long, almost 2km on way, so we were going to need fuel :-) Walking across the bridge is quite the experience, very windy, a bit treacherous with the bikes zipping by at high speeds, but for the most part, very fun. After the bridge, we bussed to the Golden Gate Park (not in the same area of town), walked around the park, then down to Haight, all the way to Haight and Ashbury. By that time, we were both tired and it was getting really hot, so we didn't take in all the quirks of this archetype of hippie culture. We bussed back to the hostel, then changed for dinner to a fabulous restaurant we came across. Levende Lounge was in the tradition of the hip restaurants of Saint-Laurent Street in Montreal. We tried their marinated olives, a beet salad, mini lamb burgers with Indian spices, Tucker had steak strips and I had duck confit. Yum!


Walking the Golden Gate Bridge