San Francisco
After spending four days in Hollywood, I was glad to get the fuck out of there. I’m thinking that maybe you have to live there for a while and not actually near Hollywood Boulevard to enjoy the place, but by the 4th day I was ready to leave. So Roger and I packed our shit and got on a plane to San Francisco.
When we landed after the absolutely horrific flight that took 65 minutes of our precious time, we nabbed a ride on a shuttle to our hotel. I always prefer to sit at the back of a bus - maybe because I feel as though I have more control. I don’t know where that thought comes from but I have never really felt comfortable sitting at the front of a bus. Either way, I didn’t need to justify my position. The driver was insane. I thought at least if he crashed head on, we would be the last to catch the brunt of it. Shit thinking, I know. But when you’re facing death it is every man for himself.
My first impression of San Francisco was wonder - I could not believe that this place was in the same state as Los Angeles. It had such a different feel to it. And I certainly did not feel out of place as San Fran was far more multicultural than LA. And the buildings were amazing as well. The landscape… the shops.. everything about San Fran on first glance was just amazing. It almost felt like you were in another country.
When we got to our hotel, we had lost our booking thanks to some fucked up internet service. Luckily, we were able to get a room for 4 nights and Roger’s poor credit card wasn’t charged twice - something he worried about on and off the entire time. So imagine - we are tired and wanting to just chill for a bit. We get up to our room and notice that there is an ice machine literally outside our door. We were wary of it, since we checked out reviews on Trip Advisor - the eager internet heads we are - and read that someone else had an issue with the ice machine that had it’s highest traffic during the hours of midnight and 5am. Pleasant.
We fling open the door of our room and are greeted with a closet disguised as a bedroom. Okay, I am exaggerating just a little. It was not that small - but it was still small enough that there was just enough room for a bed and television. But oh no the room is covered in a hideous JUNGLE mural. I am not joking. Every morning I was greeted to the suffocating feeling of a small room surrounded by Jungle in the middle of San Francisco.
That night we went for a walk around. The dude at the front kindly told us which places to avoid but we still could not avoid the harsh reality of seeing a homeless person every 200 meters. It made me wonder, they had disappeared at night but stayed in their same spot every day for endless hours, saying nothing as they shoved a cup in your face and jingled it around as if that was enough for you to give them your change.
We ended up eating at a dinner that strangely had wine on the menu as well. It was then that I began to realise the only seafood you were ever going to get in this place was down at Fisherman’s Wharf which was a bit of a walk where we were staying. Sadly I never got to eat any of the supposedly awesome seafood there, but experiencing the place was enough.
I was having a hard time adjusting to the time difference between Perth and California. California was 17 hours behind Perth which basically meant when it was 9pm in San Fran and I was trying to sleep, it would be 2pm in Perth which is when I would normally be awake. So when I finally was able to sleep, it would literally be time to wake up. I felt sorry for Rog.. he wanted to get up early and get as much out of the day as possible. I wanted that too but I was always pissed off when I woke up because I was so fricken tired that I wanted to stay in bed until lunch time.
He went and explored China Town while I slept some more and later on we went back there for dinner to a place called The Empress. At night, China Town looks so amazing. It’s on the steep hills of San Fran and it just lights up with all sorts of endless crap. You could walk around there for hours and just be amazed by all the weird things there are. For example, I saw a few wooden boxes that looked awesome on the outside. They were either engraved or had paintings of flowers or whatever shit they had. Then when I opened them up, there was a huge painting of a fat Asian couple going for it Karma Sutra style on a rug. Every box was different and showed a different position. Utterly amazing. I was going to buy one as a joke but decided against it.
I also forgot how big the gay culture is in San Fran. Roger was getting looked at all the time even if we were together and holding hands. Even when we walked into shops, a few of the sales assistants would greet him warmly then either be greatly toned down with me or just ignore me. To be honest, not only men did this but so did a bunch of women. However, it was the men that noticeably took a liking to Roger.
Also the greatest blunder occured one day at a Starbucks shop. He wanted a cookie and couldn’t read the sign properly. Of course it was a chocolate chunk or whatever it was called. Roger read it as Chocolate CHINK (such a great thing to say when China Town is not too far away) which I continued to take the piss out of him for what seemed like days. But I guess it was ok, the guy behind the counter got a good laugh over it.
Actually, I digress. The biggest blunder was me - vomitting all over the Hotel’s guest bathroom and then tipping the guy at the front desk 20 bucks to clean it up. Not my proudest moment.
After four days it was off to Anaheim to start our Contiki tour.
Categorized as humour