Our first time in San Francisco - one of my favorite cities. When Mary and Gregg lived in San Jose years later, we had opportunities to go many times.
9-22-1978: This town is too much! We really crowded a lot into one day. We went first over the Golden Gate Bridge. It's a beautiful day in San Francisco but hazy. Took some pictures and drove downtown. Parked down by Pier 1 - The Embarkation Center. Walked across a beautiful plaza with a big sculpture fountain. People sitting around the plaza eating lunch and enjoying the beautiful day.
We walked over to Market St. and got on at the beginning of the cable car line and started for Fisherman's Wharf. We had parked our car in a two hour limit parking meter space and decided to risk a ticket for over parking. The cable car was exciting, up and down hills. A young man on his way back from a job interview, told us which car to transfer to and a little about the city as we rode along.
At Fisherman's Wharf we went first to the Maritime Museum and went aboard a Clipper Ship. It was a log carrying ship and very interesting. We then walked towards the Cannery. The wharf area is just one street stall after another and shops and restaurants. You could spend a week here going through everything. We ate in a restaurant in the Cannery - Ben Johnson's - that reeked of atmosphere. William Randolph Hearst bought a building built in 1609 in England that was a favorite meeting place of Ben Johnson, the English playwright and his friend, Will Shakespeare. It sat in a warehouse for thirty years until the Cannery on the wharf opened and they moved it in and put it together piece by piece. It is really unique. (several times when we returned to the area, I tried to find the place and never could).
After lunch we bought Tee shirts for the kids and looked around then headed to the car by cable car. We got off and walked through Chinatown and when we headed back for our cable car we got turned around and got lost. Finally someone told us to walk to California Street and get on it there. California Street was two blocks away straight up. Marge and Norma decided that walking in San Francisco is not for heavy smokers and fat people unless you can always go down hill. We waited quite a while for a cable car but it never came, so we hailed a cab and headed back to the car.
Back to Emoryville and our motel and changed and then back to San Francisco for our Nightclub Tour. While waiting for our escort, we struck up a conversation with a nice young woman from Washington State. She ate supper with us at the Gazebo Room at the Hilton and on the bus to the Purple Onion, she met a single fellow so along the way we lost Laura. The show at the Onion presented Rebecca Reardon and Chuck Cline, both pretty good singers. Then they took us to Treasure Island and we could look back at the city by night. It was breathtaking and , of course, none of us remembered to bring a camera.
Next stop, was Finochios, where every act was a female impersonator. All three agreed it make us feel uncomfortable, but it was interesting.
We got home about 1:30 and everyone was tired. We decided we had seen quite a lot of San Francisco.
I forgot to mention that from Fisherman's Wharf to Chinatown we rode on the back of the cable car. Marge and Judy loved it. Norma had reservations!
I googled the singers at the Purple Onion, neither of them are still singing. Ben Johnson's is no longer in business, not sure about Finochios, the Purple Onion still exists.
No comments:
Post a Comment