October 2, 2010

Westward going jet lag is a blessing when you want to get up early in the morning. New day, new possibilities!

We had spoken about taking the train (Caltrain) to go up to San Francisco because we wanted to avoid rush hour, which can be very bad in this area. We were a bit torn on the issue and I suggested that I could call our friend Benoit to find out how bad it would be. It was around 8 am and I almost called him before Hélène stopped me. It was Saturday! We’re already losing track of the weekdays. Well, that took care of the rush hour problem. 🙂

Hélène and I then spent some time going through what I had come up with as a plan for the day in San Francisco and by 9:30am we were all fed and ready to go.

We cruised northwards on 101 and the kids marveled at a highway with 5 lanes in each direction.

We got a pretty good impression of the hills of San Francsico as we got into the city and headed for Fisherman’s Wharf. So many people wonder why there are Norwegian farms on the most difficult to get spots in the mountains. An equally interesting question is what they had been smoking when they founded San Francisco. You’ve got this beautiful bay area with lots of easily constructible flat land and one of the best climates in the world. So, what do you do? It’s obvious that you put the city on the steepest hilly area you can find. The only place that is covered by fog all the time. Where uncomfortable winds are present continuously and where the temperature is the lowest. I wouldn’t be surprised if  a Norwegian got the deciding vote on that one. 🙂

I had brought a map of San Francisco on an iPad but, gadget freak as I am, had to quickly admit that for some things paper still does a better job. I bit the bullet and bought a 20th-century-technology map.

Fisherman’s Wharf is very touristy of course, but still worth the visit because of the main attraction, the sea lions. These cute creatures turned up here after the earthquake in 1989 and just decided to stay. Today they are protected and must represent a colossal value for the San Francisco tourist industry.

We had a great seafood lunch at the Wharf. Hélène is allergic to gluten and cow milk, so she made sure to order tuna with rice, which is normally very safe. However that would unfortunately turn out to be a bad choice.

After lunch we continued walking along the piers and had some great views. Alcatraz in the background.

I’m probably the only person to ever have photographed this sign.

At the end of the piers we reached US chocolate heaven at Ghirardelli square.

At the square we met a very talkative and funny guy. He played the guitar and had a stand with lots of bragging newspaper clips and photos. The guy had photos of himself with an impressive list of late 20th century stars. Gorbachev, Pavarotti, Europe (the pop group) and many, many more I cannot remember

He claimed he spoke 25 languages and asked us which language we spoke. To our astonishment he first spoke with us in French before he switched to fluent Swedish (which is very close to Norwegian). Amazing guy. Here he is.

We raided the Ghirardelli store for a few kilos of chocolate. Oh my, oh my, the temptations in this place. I’m going to have a weight problem real soon now. 🙂

Next on the list was the famous cable cars. We spent an hour waiting, including having to change car because of a techinical problem, before we were finally on our way. It’s a cool way to be transported, but not the most efficient. We got some beautiful views of Alcatraz and Oakland bridge and a very good feel for the city. Lots of steep hills and lots of strange buildings.

We hopped off at Union Square and went to the restroom at Macy’s.This is when Héléne started to realize there must have been butter in that rice she got at lunch. She was in pain, but we continued slowly nevertheless.

We did the mandatory hot dog

before venturing in to Chinatown.

Note the little teddy bear Iseline has in her hands. It is the bear of her good friend Gabrielle (Hi Gabrelle!). iseline has promised to bring the bear with her around the world and take pictures of it at different places.

Grant Avenue was a big tourist trap with a strange mix of jewelry shops and umpteen zillion souvenir shops all selling the same worthless plastic things. It beats me how they are all able to survive.  Some of the jewelry shops had carved mammoth tusks on display. Totally fascinating. Talk about a limited resource.

Once we found our way over to Stockton Street we got to se the real Chinatown. It was like we were in some suburb of Beijing. Chinese was spoken all around us and the food shops had typical chinese goods on display. The dried fish emitted a very distinct odor.

We worked our way up to little Italy in search for a store that supposedly sold gluten-free bread. Disappointment then when we discovered that the address Hélène found on the web was to a restaurant that served gluten-free food.

Once we had gotten this far we continued to the Coit Tower. Hélène’s stomach was now in a state of total revolt after the invasion of butter at lunch. She lied down to relax outside the tower while the kids and I took the elevator up. We got a magnificent view of San Francsico but couldn’t see too far because of the fog.

We have bought 2 new cameras for the voyage. One of them is a Canon Powershot SX210 IS. A technological masterpiece of a compact camera with 14x optical zoom. I put it to the test and photographed Hélène 64 meters (210 feet) above her. First without zoom, then with full zoom. Pretty impressive for such a small camera.

We walked down a set of very steep stairs to reach the car, which we had parked at Pier 27. We were exhausted and happy. On the way down Iseline told me, without being asked, that it had been a very good day and that she really enjoyed traveling. A sharp contrast to the Cholera vaccine session, when she screamed to me that she did not want to travel. Just before reaching the car we found a small supermarket with organic food. They had gluten-free bread! The day was saved.

I drove us down to Menlo Park again while Hélène managed to take a nap. We were invited to have dinner at Ash’s home and he treated us to some really good indian food.

Unfortunately the kids were so tired they started to crash completely at 9pm, so we could only stay for a couple of hours. It didn’t take much effort to get them to bed when we got back “home.”

Hélène also collapsed, but the viking in me wanted to blog about the day. It took me about 20 minutes of total inefficiency before I realized that even vikings need to sleep from time to time.

I fell asleep in about 14 seconds and slept like a baby for 8 hours.

Eirik

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