San Francisco...One More Time

We've been to San Francisco numerous times over the last two years. I'm not crazy enough to think that we've seen even half of what the city has to offer, but we've made our best attempt at seeing many of the well known landmarks, while at the same time getting off the tourist routes and spending some time strolling random back streets and grabbing a pint at some random bars.

With our time short here in the Bay Area, we wanted to pay one more visit to the city. So, we spent last Sunday and Monday in San Francisco. Sunday night we took advantage of our gift certificate that we received at the Gilroy Garlic Festival and enjoyed a nice dinner at Bobos steak and crab house. Great food, wine and ambiance. We then decided to try something random and ended up at a dive bar that was hosting part of the 2009 San Francisco Jug Band Festival. So, we watched a couple of bluesy/folksy bands play some fun music. And of course each band had a jug player. Interesting.

Monday was dedicated to sight seeing. As mentioned, we'd already seen most of the sights in San Francisco. But, one thing I'd always wanted to do was rent a GoCar. They are these little yellow motor cars (not much bigger than a motorcycle)that we'd often seen whizzing around the major tourist sites. They each include a GPS system that navigates you around the city and tells you the history of some of the more interesting sites. I'll be the first to admit that this was a super touristy cheesey thing to do. But, what the hell.

As I had hoped, it turned out to be a lot of fun, as we spent a couple of hours cruising around the city. In addition, it added a small element of danger to our site seeing, as in order to get the rental back on time we had to ignore the GPS navigation and cut across the city through the crazy traffic of San Francisco. They warn you that if you venture off of the tour route, the car may not make it up some of the hills in San Francisco. And of course, one of the hills we decided to drive up was too steep. So, about half way up the hill, we came to a stand still, even though I had it pegged at full throttle. So, I pulled an "Adam" and asked Tonja to get out and push. With just a 2 second push, the car started moving and I managed to get to the top of the hill, all the while Tonja running behind with a camera and a map trying to keep up. I'm sure this was quite the sight. We then proceeded to drive down the famous curvy street of Lombard and make it back to the car return a little late. A few photos of our GoCar adventure.

Leaving the rental store. This thing makes my Civic feel big.

Tonja and I cruising down Lombard in the GoCar.

Top Speed 35. 40+ on the down hill, which feels like 100.

Tonja had some problems keeping her helmet on her head.

A Video from the GoCar.

It's a good thing I played a lot of video games as a kid.

Proof that we made it to the Golden Gate Bridge.

We concluded our day in the city with one last touristy activity. A history cruise of the Bay. We'd never been out on a cruise of the Bay, so we thought it was a nice way to finish up our trip.

Even on an August afternoon, it was foggy, cool and breezy.

That was our SF trip. And now we're packing and getting ready to make the trip back to Seattle.