San Francisco Day 3

We usually avoid things that are too touristy when visiting a new city but we were feeling a bit disoriented here so decided to go on a hop-on-hop-off bus tour. Plus I had the brainwave that it would be a perfect mode of transport for a meeting we had in the Presidio – we’d been wondering how to get across the city and as far as I could tell the bus would take us right to the bottom of the hill. It did!

After a speed-breakfast at Little Bird 2 blocks up from our hotel we got on the bus at Union Square and settled in for a chilly ride around the harbour past the Ferry Building and Fisherman’s Wharf where tourists were already lining up for crab and gumbo and other fishy feeds. Our bus had hard plastic seats so we slid from side to side and bounced into mid-air as the driver barrelled through pot-holes as he did a lot (and later we discovered he couldn’t avoid as the roads in California are crap!) I had planned ahead and took a hat which I was rather chuffed about however when I caught the reflection of the bus in windows as we drove past it looked like a bus with a bright orange traffic cone on top!

The Presidio was rather affluent, hilly and beautiful and we went into salubrious Lucas Arts offices for our meeting with views of the harbour, Palace of Fine Arts and a little bit of the bridge. We chatted Xero for a while feeling quite important 🙂

Favourite stop on the tour was the Big Orange Bridge obviously. It was great to see it again and we were pretty lucky given there’d been rain the day before – our driver told us that 80% of the time he takes people over there it’s covered in fog!

We wandered up and down the main street in Haight Ashbury and had our worst coffee of the trip so far. That area isn’t really my kind of place, vintage shops, alternate people, beads and strange smells! The trip through the Golden Gate park afterwards was very cool though – much bigger than Central Park so that would be worth a long visit on foot some time.

Wandered around Union Square once back in town and begun to think that San Francisco is really an orange town – what with the Big Orange Bridge, the Orange Baseball Team (Giants) and the orange heart we found in Union Square.

Dinner was in the Ferry Building with our Xero investor contact – turned out he was back in town earlier than expected so suggested we meet him and his partner at a favourite spot of theirs – The Slanted Door. Vietnamese. That’s right people – I went foreign … well what are you supposed to do in that situation? Quick scout of the menu revealed a couple of vegetable things I’d cope with and luckily it was one of those places where you order a bunch of items and then everyone picks. So I feasted on vegetarian rolls (without mushrooms – and they were REALLY similar to the spring rolls we made), spinach, jasmine rice and asparagus (although the black wilty thing I took in one mouthful wasn’t blackened sage, it was some kind of mushroom so I had to gag quietly to myself and take a swing of cranberry juice!) It was a really trendy place, big bar and loads of waiting staff and we had a great time getting to know this couple as well.