Weeks 6-9 - San Francisco California

Our general travel route for this week...

We have added some more pics to our photo album for this trip.

After spending a great week in Fort Bragg it was time to head back to San Francisco where we spent the next 4 weeks in a rented house.

Leaving Fort Bragg, we decided to take a different route back out to the 101 highway, so headed south to take highway 128 east to Cloverdale. What a huge surprise this drive was. Absolutely beautiful drive from the rugged coastline through large Redwood forests and on into the Anderson Valley which is a relatively new producer of Pinot Noir wines.

The first order of business was to put the trailer in storage. The KOA in Petaluma offers storage for fairly reasonable $65 a month, so we decided to stay Sunday night at the KOA, leave the trailer, in storage, there Monday and head into San Francisco to meet our friend Marian at the rental house which we took possession of early Monday afternoon. We somehow managed to time our arrivals perfectly as Marian's taxi from the airport arrived just as we parked our car in front of the house...

The house is in the Sunset District of San Francisco. We have never stayed in this area before so were excited to see what the neighbourhood was like. The house is in a great location. With offstreet parking we could leave the car and take public transit to pretty well anywhere we wanted to go in San Francisco. We were one block away from a Muni rail line which goes downtown. In fact, if we were to stay here another time during the summer, the rail line goes right to AT&T park where we could attend Giants baseball games. The house is also one block from 19th Ave which is a major Muni bus route where we can easily get from here to the Golden Gate bridge and on to the Marina district on a single bus, one easy transfer away from either Filmore street or North Beach. Very, very convenient. A one week Muni passport, for unlimited rides, is only $26 and is very handy.

Nearby, within walking distance, we discovered an Irish pub, a "taco bar", many Asian restaurants, Starbucks (of course) and numerous smaller grocery markets with lots of fresh veggies, fruit etc. A little farther afoot, for which we used the car, but in a pinch the transit would have worked, is a large Andronico's market which has pretty well every grocery item one could need.

The house, which we rented through VRBO, is a small, older very nicely maintained and furnished place. Although the beds were a bit on the soft side for us, everything was pretty well A-ONE. The landlady even upped her cable service for us, at no extra cost, so that we could watch the Giants World Series playoff run. How sweet is that? Having excellent laundry and kitchen facilities were great. We were able to take advantage of some of the cool SF markets and do a lot of our own meals cutting down costs considerably, although we did try out a number of new restaurants.

Our friend, Marian, was able to only stay the first two weeks with us as she had to return to Vancouver and the working life. Still, we made the most of it. Lots of adventure day trips inside and outside the city, museums, sightseeing and shopping.

Day trips outside the city included:

• South along the coast through Pacifica to Half Moon Bay. Beautiful coast drive, lots of surfers to watch and a great lunch at Sam's Chowder House in Half Moon Bay.
• North across the Golden Gate Bridge through the Muir Woods National Monument to Stinson Beach. Another beauty drive and a nice picnic lunch at Stinson Beach.
• East to Berkeley for shopping, museum and excellent lunch at the famous Chez Panisse restaurant.
• North up 101 to Geyserville and the Francis Ford Coppola winery for general sightseeing and lunch at their patio restaurant.

Museums included:

• SF Rail Museum
• De Young Museum
• Legion of Honor
• Asian Museum
• UC Berkeley Art Museum
• Oakland Museum of California
• San Francisco Botanical Gardens (ok, not a museum...but a relatively cool place nonetheless)

Really cool special exhibits at the museums:

• "To Dye For" fabric show at the De Young.
• Japanese screen prints at the Asian Museum.
• Japanese wood block printing at the Legion of Honor.
• 25 years of Pixar Animation at the Oakland Museum. This was really neat!

Shopping? Well let's not go there!

We've been to San Francisco many other times but usually on short trips for a long weekend getaway or on a business conference. This was our first "live the life for a month" stay in SF. We generally tried to keep to our "rule" of doing one thing each day while just relaxing and enjoying the city. We found parking to be a bit of a headache with limits on time etc. Using the city's public transport system (the Muni) was easy and allowed us to visit places without having to worry about time left on the parking meter. For the last couple of weeks we bought the 7-day passports which give unlimited rides on the Muni system (not the BART though). Our house was one block away from the N-Line rail which goes right downtown in only about 20 minutes or so. We were also only one block away from 19th Ave which is a major bus route.

Some of our favorite things to do for an outing:

A nice day outing:

1. Walk a block to the N-Line. Take the train downtown and get off at the Powell Street Station.
2. Wander around downtown making our way to Sutter and Stockton where we jumped on a #30 bus up to North Beach.
3. Wander around the shops at North Beach and stop for a most excellent coffee at Cafe Roma.
4. Jump on another #30 which then goes around to the Marina district. Walk a few blocks up to Union Street to wander around the shops there and maybe have a nice lunch.
5. Walk back down to Fillmore and Lombard and catch the #28 bus. This bus goes along the Marina to the Golden Gate Bridge (can get off here and walk the bridge if desired - we've done that before) then south through the Presidio and Golden Gate Park to stop at, where else, 19th Ave and Kirkham - one block from our house ... SWEET.

A slight variation made it easy to get to another favorite area ...Fillmore Street:

1. After getting off the N-Line at Powell, walk up past Union Square to Sutter Street.
2. Jump on a #3 bus which goes along Sutter to Fillmore then up Fillmore to Sacramento where we get off, walk across the street to Peet's Coffee for a sip and a read on our Kindles.
3. Wander around Fillmore for awhile, maybe going into Mollie Stones for some dinner groceries or maybe having a late lunch at La Mediteranee, a most excellent restaurant.
4. Jump on the #22 bus south to where it crosses the N-Line at Church Street, switch to the N-Line to get home. Easy peasy!

Other days we did things like jump on and off the various Muni lines to see different neighbourhoods, when we spotted something cool looking or for a lunch at some place new. The BurgerMeister in Cole Valley, for example... we can attest to their great burgers.


A short ride on the N-Line from here is the area of 9th Ave and Irving. Lots of little shops, restaurants, bars (very popular night life) along with a yoga studio we discovered which happened to offer a 3 week (2 nights per) workshop on Iyengar Yoga. We signed up and had an excellent set of workshops.

A quick drive (25 blocks) down to the coast with lots of parking and beautiful sand beach to wander on and marvel at the waves. Beautiful.

Being in San Francisco while the Giants (baseball) made their run to the World Series was a lot of fun. Probably not impossible to get game tickets but very expensive (standing room only were going for minimum $500; seats were averaging well over $1000), so we opted to be participants in the packed local pubs with all the cheering, chanting, etc etc etc that goes with the situation. Lots of fun.

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Back to Week 5

On to Week 10

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