USA trip - San Francisco #4

2nd Oct, 2014

With a better understanding of where we wanted to explore further and what we wanted to see, we bought a 3 day all in travel pass. It's quite economical at $23 and includes all buses, electric trains and cable cars (trams). Considering a cable car ride is $6 and a muni (bus, train) ride is $2.25 then it's great because we can hop on and off as much as we like.

The famous San Francisco cable car

First we wanted to explore Chinatown a bit more. San Francisco boasts the largest Chinatown outside of Asia.
Apparently the time to visit Chinatown is very early in the morning where you see people everywhere buying fresh food - fruit, vegetables and seafood.

There is a park where the older people gather to play mahjong. We saw Portsmouth square from the bus on the hop-on-hop-off tour. I would have liked to go there. I guess it's akin to chess in the park.

We walked around Chinatown a bit and looked at the various stores. There are lots of souvenir shops and lots of shops selling knockoffs.

The big pagoda gate is the beginning of Chinatown. To the left and right of the gate there is a shop called "Michael". I'm not sure how accurate this story is but apparently the store previously had a different name but Michael Jackson went in there and loved everything in the store so ordered 2 of everything. Since he literally bought the store twice over, the owner named the place "Michael".

Then we took a bus past the Italian precinct but didn't stop off to eat because we were still full from dim sum. So we continued on to Fishermans Wharf again and visited the Ghirardelli complex with its 3 chocolate stores. Had an icecream at the takeaway store at the front before exploring the complex a bit more. Note for next time, if the line at the front store is long then go to one of the other two as they a requieter stores and have more seating. We watched some of the workers handmake chocolate.

The beauty of the all day travel pass is that we could just hop on a bus for a couple of stops, walk a bit and then catch another bus. San Francisco is pretty hilly and I didn't fancy puffing my way up the hills.  

The afternoon was when the fun began for us. We decided to go a little nuts and go and see Mrs. Doubtfire's house at 2640 Steiner Street.

 Since Robin Williams passed away, people have been coming here and putting flowers outside. The rocks in the flower bed have messages of tribute as well.





Since we were on a roll and in the area, we decided to go and visit the house from the tv show "Full House" at 1709 Broderick Street. I think the Tanner house was a grey/blue colour in the show but now it is purple.

After our movie/TV reminiscing we took a bus out to the north beach past golden gate park. The water was really cold. It was really beautiful watching the sun set over the water.

Got back to the hotel and then made our way out again for Italian food near Washington square. We took a walk along Columbus Ave looking at all the Italian restaurants.

When we were on the hop-on-hop-off bus, we passed the Original U.S. Restaurant (U.S. stands for united Sicilian). Our guide told us that was where the San Francisco baseball team got their meatballs. So we decided to try it. The place was ok but nothing to write home about.
If you walk up Columbus Ave towards Fishermans Wharf you will find the comedy club that Robin Williams started out at.