If You’re Going to San Francisco…

A street car NOT named Desire

If You’re Going to San Francisco …

We still remember the Summer of Love, 1967, when San Francisco was the epicentre of all that was ‘happening.’ Students, hippies, sunshine, Janis Joplin and wearing flowers in your hair. Okay, that era is no more, but San Francisco still demanded to be visited so we arranged to stay here for a day or two at the beginning and end of a planned 4-5 week road trip. Typically, that was the only aspect of this trip that was planned in advance. Here’s Marigold with what she assures me will be a definitive guide to the City by the Bay.

Marigold Says…

Eleven and a half hours. Doesn’t sound much, and its less than a day after all, but if you add ‘on a plane’ into the mix then eleven and a half hours sounds a very, very long time. 6,000 miles, okay 5,876 miles, would take quite a bit longer to drive.

We’re all set to take off when there’s a big fuss and one of the passengers is led away by the (not exactly butch) steward, Julian, and doesn’t return. Not a criminal or a terrorist suspect, just an old man not feeling well, but they then had to search for and remove his suitcases from the hold, also try and find his hand luggage. This involved taking everything out of the lockers, showing it around and if nobody claims it, must belong to the sickly man.

A nice stewardess tells us a bit later, in a whisper, that the man was too drunk to be allowed to fly. Must have been pretty drunk then as four young lads opposite us are pretty merry, considering it’s half eleven in the morning.

We flew Virgin Atlantic – only booked with them after they had absolutely guaranteed that Richard Branson wouldn’t turn up – and I must say they did their best. They brought lunch out half an hour into the flight,

G wandered off to the back of the plane to stretch his legs, several times, and brought us an ice lolly back each time. Think he may have been chatting up Julian.

‘Pasty? Steak or cheese and tomato?’ I look at G in case he heard something different, but as he’s told me about ten times he can only hear the engine noise I’m no wiser.

Pasty?’ The nice girl says it again, she does mean a pasty.

‘Two steak, please,’ I say and there they are, two hot pasties in little paper wrappings. I try to open the packaging for ages, then give up and take G’s already opened one off him. Annoyingly, he opens mine in about half a second. A young bloke who wandered down from the back somewhere and spread himself over the only empty four seats on the plane ten seconds after take off, can’t open his pasty either. We both finish eating and he’s still struggling. I nod across at him but G ignores me. Offering to help another male with opening a paper bag is obviously not considered appropriate.

Everything has gone swimmingly, hotel last night near airport just fab. Poster said ‘Legends Tonite’ in the lounge and G groaned. Tribute bands!

There was an Elvis who was rubbish. Yes, he did look a bit like Elvis, when Elvis was fat, but not as fat as this man. He had a white sparkly jump suit on and it was so tight he could barely speak never mind sing. He did ‘All Shook Up’ and then said ‘any requests?’ People shouted out Hound Dog, Are you Lonesome Tonight’ and loads more, then he sang ‘In the Ghetto’ very badly, even though nobody had asked for it.

After him came’ Abba’ but there were only two of them and we kept waiting for the others, but they never came. The bloke with the beard forgot the words, twice, but the girl singer was very good. Even though she looked nothing like anyone in Abba.

Brekkie in hotel was gorgeous. Afterward sat in the lounge for a bit and a woman who’d accused me of breaking the toaster (just this once it wasn’t me) came over and said she was sorry as she’d just been pressing the wrong buttons. I don’t remember any buttons on the toaster, but she sat down and wanted to chat.

‘You off on holiday, then? Where are you going?’

I would have liked to have said, ‘to America, for a road trip. We’re going to…’ and then give a list of everywhere we hope to go to, but I need G for that as he does the ‘details’ so I just said, ‘America.’

‘Ooh, wouldn’t get me going there,’ she said, ‘all those fat people.’

Well! She was not exactly Twiggy, so more than a bit of pot calling kettle there.

Parked car at airport without a hitch, got airport bus and off we go. Why do you have to walk for miles with rushy cross people to get to the boarding point? Was singled out along with others to be frisked and body searched, where they rub you up and down. Glad it was quick as I can only hold my stomach in or 30 seconds without going red. Anyway, they didn’t take our stash of wine gums, fruit pastilles and tic-tacs.

Must say Virgin planes are rather lovely. Their aim in life seems to be to feed and water you. So far curry, ice creams and lots of drinks. It must be to keep everybody subdued and dopey. I said to G who can’t hear what anyone is asking, just say yes to everything, except the last question was are you Mr. Randall. It did confuse everybody when G just nodded. They wanted to tell Mr. Randall his daughter had had a baby girl, but they found the right Mr Randall and we all clapped.

Eight hours later now and we’ve just had cheese and chutney sandwiches, crisps, biscuits and a ‘mile high mint.’ Told G this is good practise for when we go into an Old People’s Home, as all you look forward to is the next meal and the one after that. Ooh, a brownie is just arriving.

Arrived at San Francisco, 106 degrees so a bit warm, but because we had set off an hour late, no room for us to park the plane. Hour and a half on the tarmac and that still left us with about a thousand people in the Security lines to get into the US.

TV screen says 106 degrees as we sit, and sit and sit on the tarmac outside the airport, just waiting for a parking space. No wonder the Captain sounds a bit cross .

It’s now well after midnight, in real terms. Just the car to collect. Two wrong directions, a train ride and then our car was still not ready. Have a seat and we will call you, they said. Grr!

A sign on the wall says’ ‘…Dangerously hot conditions to continue Saturday…

Today is forecast to be the second consecutive day of extreme heat across the entire San Francisco Bay Area and Monterey Bay Area. Widespread high temperatures of 100 degrees or higher are forecast to occur this afternoon. In addition, cooling overnight has been limited and not sufficient enough to provide significant relief from the heat. Emergency management officials in the city of San Francisco reported excessive numbers of heat related illnesses on Friday and hospitals in the City were overwhelmed.

These are dangerously hot conditions and everyone is encouraged to take action to remain cool and to protect themselves from heat related illnesses.’

Will need lots of ice cream then.

Took them an hour to find us a car. It’s a big Nissan something or other and they gave us a sat nav as well as we’d waited so long. Just as well as we were straight onto a ‘Freeway’ with about ten lanes of traffic packed with Friday rush hour traffic. The sat nav said ‘turn left here’ so we did and it sent us the wrong way in a one way street and every driver in San Francisco tooted their horn at us. Just had to turn round, turn left, and keep on turning left until we got to the hotel.

Hotel is very big, two big beds in the room, and G is in the bath. He keeps telling me it is half three in the morning in England and he is tired. I say we used to stay out until three in the morning lots of times once and he said ‘yes, but it never involved a drive through San Francisco traffic with a sat nav that hates us and anyway, that was then, not now, and one of us has slept for hours on the plane.’

Wonder if he means me. Better go to bed.

A view of a building from our hotel room this morning. No idea what it is, but it’s definitely ‘American.’

San Francisco, day one of our Epic Road Trip. All Road Trips have to be entitled ‘Epic.’ It’s the Law.

Marigold Says…

Woke up at three o’clock this morning. G was already awake and reading his Kindle. He said he was reading ‘quietly,’ whatever that means. I went into the bathroom which seemed massive after the tiny ones on the plane.

Last time we did a long haul flight, from Fiji to Los Angeles on the way back from New Zealand, the world’s fattest woman sat next to me. G had the aisle seat, Big Lady had the window seat and I was in the middle with most of me being overflowed by my neighbour. When she went to the toilet, we both had to get up so she could squeeze past and she was gone for ages.

A stewardess came and said the woman was asking for ‘the little girl sitting next to me.’ I thought she had got wedged in and couldn’t get out (what use would I be?) but she wanted me to bring her handbag. I brought her bag and she said ‘I’m going to stay here for a while and my glasses are in my bag.’ She came back an hour and a half later so she may have got stuck in there after all. I didn’t ask.

You can’t even change your knickers in those stupid plane toilets. I once tried to wash my feet in one, but I got my bottom stuck in the hand drier and they had to ask for a doctor to treat the burns. No, not really!

Some people on planes seem toilet obsessive, the woman in front of us went 8 times, not that I was counting. I feel a need to police small spaces when other people go in, and in my head want to tell them how to behave and say things like NOW WASH YOUR HANDS.

As we were ready to set off early today, I told G I’d see him in the lobby as he was fiddling with the room safe. You have to put your room card in a slot to use the lift or the buttons don’t light up. Nobody told me this and I hadn’t noticed the sign so I was still in the lift, pressing buttons and waiting for it to move when G arrived ten minutes later. He didn’t say anything, just put the card in the slot, pressed the button and the lift set off. I tried to pretend I was being kind and waiting for him, but he wasn’t fooled.

Went in the tram to Fishermans Wharf, very early as it was going to be so hot everybody in California will die, according to the very sweet girl on the hotel information desk. Brilliant Farmers Market. Full of everything good for you, huge fruit, honey, street food, and smoothies made out of fruit I have never heard of. Some of it looks like sick. Had some great tastings. It is the hottest it has been forever here. People are dying on the pavements and are being swept up and fed to the pelicans.

Met some great people, the best being Ruth who is 86 and from Norway. She was a midwife here 50 odd years ago and stayed in SF. Her husband Arnie was a fisherman. When we come back at the end of the month we are going to meet up again and take her out for a meal. We met her on the tram line, like you do. She is 86 going on 25, very fit and wears designer running shoes.

Also we met a bloke who was an artist and looked like a vagrant, but was most interesting. G talked to him for ages. He is Hungarian and gave me a recipe for goulash which had been in his family for hundreds of years. The ingredients seemed very similar to what I already when I make goulash, but he went to a lot of trouble which was kind. He had a bulldog named Raymond which I found amusing.

We are finding San Francisco pretty expensive, but cities always are. I mentioned this to a man from Holland we met at the hotel information desk and he said ‘Brexit’ very loudly and walked off. Oh dear, it’s all our fault.

We went to Pier 39 first as everybody told us it was great. Ha! A tourist trap with herds of people shuffling along like in The Walking Dead and over priced tat in the shops. As we don’t like fairground rides either, we moved on.

Had a coffee each, some sourdough toast that the girl on the hotel desk had told us was to die for and G had granola and yoghurt. That came to 19 dollars which is just stupid. The bread may well have been made to an original recipe here since 1849, but G is a world renowned expert on toast, so he says, and this was nothing special. Half size slices, cheap jam in a sachet and melting butter. G’s granola and yoghurt was just a plastic beaker half full of grains and dust with a (small) dollop of raspberry yoghurt on top. The coffees were supposed to be latte, but had barely any milk in at all, served in a paper cup. 19 dollars for that. Our first rip off of the trip.

The Farmers’ Market on the other end of the wharfs was just brilliant though. Fantastic quality, lots of tastings, nice people, as good as anywhere we’ve ever been G said and he’s right. Chatted to all sorts of people. One lady said ‘where are you from?’ and when I said England she said ‘sorry it’s so hot here today’ as if we may have thought she was to blame. G told her the weather in England was just like this every day and she believed him!

We also saw a stall selling dried Marigold. I asked about this and it seems to have many medicinal uses, but the girl said most people buy it to smoke and get high and it is also an aphrodisiac. She said the Incas used to smoke it during shamanic sexual initiation rites. Told G not to bother buying any.

A mural which we always call a ‘Muriel, as it confuses people. G didn’t even mention the absence of an apostrophe.

it was very hot, much hotter than usual in San Francisco, so the fire engines were charging up and down the roads day and night. Not that we saw any actual fires.

We did like the bread shops

I asked G to take a photo of our waiter’s shirt. I don’t know why that man was giving us the dead eye stare.

This man liked to chat. We both like to chat, but the man in the red shoes must have won an Olympic medal for talking. Annoyingly, he mainly talked to G and not ME!