Mary and Joseph try to find an Inn for Christmas
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
79
90
Trip End
Jan 06, 2009
San Francisco, California
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Well, we woke in Santa Cruz on Christmas Eve. As of 10am when we checked out, we had nowhere to go to for Christmas. We were officially homeless...would we really find anywhere so quickly.......?
Our plan was to drive to San Francisco in the hope of finding an 'Inn' for the night. We were Mary and Joseph following the light and hoping to find a warm barn. The traffic on the freeway was chaos. All we could see before us was an endless line of red brake lights. In the distance the glimmering skyscrapers of San Francisco beckoned us towards her. When we arrived, we went straight to a Hotel recommended to us by a friend. A beautiful, historic Hotel in Union Square. Massive light-strewn Christmas trees stood proud in the streets, department store windows twinkled with stars and baubles. The small Ice Rink was crowded with skaters. A couple of homeless people warbled out carols for tips on street corners and the San Francisco tram rattled up the ridiculously steep ski-slope streets with people hanging off the rails outside. Like being in India again! (David: Women danced in shop windows, I have no idea why... perhaps the window dressers broke all the mannequins.)
Inside, the Hotel was ablaze with Christmas lights and decorations. Children ran amok in reception squealing with excitement at Santa and his elves above reception while parents looked exasperated and checked in. The queue was long. The anticipation of getting a room for Christmas was growing. Time was getting on. It was after 3pm.
We got a room!!!!!!!!!!!! Hooorah!!! And it was perfect, overlooking Union Square and the ice rink. As it was also so late in the day, we got a fantastic rate! So, that was one problem solved...now what exactly were we going to do for food?? Reception told us on checking in that the Hotel's Christmas lunch and dinner was completely booked up. Burger King was looking to be our only option!! However, we still walked to The Oak Room, a huge, elegant dining room to ask - maybe there were some cancellations?! After a lot of page turning and "hmmmm"ing, the girl at the Restaurant lectern looked up at us. "You're in luck, we have had one cancellation! The whole Restaurant is completely booked out for tomorrow!" Talk about a flaming windfall!!! Just as we walked away, another couple walked up to ask about dinner too but they got turned away. So now, our final task of the day was to look for a present for each other for tomorrow. As luck would have it (again??), at the bottom of our street was a massive shopping mall with everything and anything you could possibly want in life, all under one roof. So we went our separate ways. The place was absolutely heaving with crowds doing last minute shopping. Christmas music blared out. Volunteers rattled tins as you power-walked by. Children cried and got dragged by harassed parents. It was mayhem! There were only 2 more hours of shopping left. And what was I doing?? Trying to find a nice pair of boots for myself! I hadn't bought David a thing yet!!! What was I going to buy him for pity's sakes?? The Mall was just crazy with bustle, panic, hysteria. Hords of people were still streaming in through the doors 30mins before the place closed at 6:30pm.
David and I called it a day, we were knackered!! The Hotel had given us a free bottle of champagne as it was our honeymoon so we guzzled champers while we threw on some glam clothes and then hit the town. We went for a Chinese in Chinatown which was delicious (we were sarcastically told by the staff that only English people wanted prawn crackers and seaweed. They had neither. That was us told then....) then we went to the Gold Dust Lounge for drinks. What a great place! A live band, seats around the bar, red velvet sofas everywhere and dim lighting. The atmosphere was relaxed yet lively. The barman was a Tom Cruise wanna-be - chucking bottles into the bin over his shoulder and slamming the till closed with a pelvic thrust!!! The clientele was anything with a heartbeat!
After this, we went to the Hotel bar, a neon-lit late night drinking den with cocktails and leather couches. An American couple started talking to us - she was lovely but very drunk and loud and her husband was a complete wallflower and only spoke to correct her drunken words! Very funny. (David: Amusing.) Then when they left, another couple started talking to us who were from Oklahoma. I felt like breaking out in song!! They were lovely and we sat chatting with them until about 2am. When David and I got back to our room, we opened our Christmas presents in bed like naughty children! A few weeks ago, David bought himself an iPod touch. Basically, it's one of these iPod phone things but not a phone only like a personal organiser with games on, like a blackberry I suppose. It was brilliant and I made lots of "I want one now" noises. So he bought me one too!! We didn't get to sleep until 3am!!
CHRISTMAS DAY!!!! We woke up late, around 11am. Outside the skaters were already crowding the ice rink and families were wandering around Union Square. We had a lovely leisurely, cosy day before we ventured outside. We decided to grab a Starbucks and wander around locally. Yes! Starbucks was open on Christmas Day!! And inside was absolute and total bedlam!!! See the photo I took!!! So we walked around the quiet streets looking at architecture and skyscrapers. There were some other shops open - like Virgin Megastore!! Good old Richard Branson!! And other coffee houses. But as you would expect, the streets were mostly ghost town.
That night, we got glammed up again for our Christmas Day meal in the Hotel. It was fantastic. The starters were a buffet and you had a choice of anything from oysters to lobster to cheeses to meats to salads and then main meal was the traditional Turkey or another meat. The food was just scrumptious. We shared a bottle of wine, people watched, scoffed and then both so stuffed and tiddley we decided that 10pm was time for bed.
BOXING DAY!!! We got up early and went out to explore San Francisco. We caught a cab to Fisherman's Wharf. This is a really interesting wharf with a number of piers and a plethora of entertainment along it. We wanted to go to Alcatraz but didn't anticipate the queue would span 10miles! Obviously, people in San Francisco had had enough of their families over Christmas and were escaping! Hence, no Alcatraz trips today but we booked for a few days later instead! We walked along to Pier 39. (David: Where we scoffed Clam Chowder in a sough dough bread bowl... yummy!) Basically Brighton Pier but with a million more tourist tat shops - who the flaming hell wants a lobster made out of crystal glass on their mantel shelf?? (David: Ooo, crystal you say... hmmmm....) At the end of the pier were the famous Sealions of Pier 39. Lounging about on wooden platforms. These Sealions were far more vociferous than any we had seen before. As we walked along some more, I inadvertently came across "The Bushman". This man is now a famous character of Fisherman's Wharf. Basically a man that hides behind his big collection of branches and startles you as you walk past. When he did this to me, I screamed out loud which amused everyone surrounding him! This guy has been doing this for over 20years and made some good money from it!!!
We also went to Musee Mechanique. This was a fantastic tiny museum tucked away down the side of Pier 45. Inside, it was like going back in time! There were amusement arcade games from the Victorian era to present day. Everything from Victorian "What the Butler Saw" stereoscopes to coin-operated puppets dancing and wooden skittles. They also had a whole section of old 1980's PacMan and Star Wars arcade games which amused David and other congregating men for hours re-living their youth!!! (David: Oh my god yes. They had Star Wars and Battle Tank and centipede and even Super Sprint: the first game ATD converted.) Us girls waiting for our partners sought out the Vintage Fortune Telling Machines instead!! It was a really great place. There was one old guy in there with a newspaper tucked under his arm and a flat cap. He just went round putting coins into the old Victorian Music Hall machines that piped out beautiful orchestral music and he privately danced and daydreamed of his youth to himself. Very touching to watch him.
After David had zapped a million PacMan monsters we decided to call it a day and take the tram back to the Hotel. After a short walk up the famous San Fran steep hills, we noticed a small population of bodies gathering in one area. It was the queue for the tram!!!!!!! We were told at least a 2-hour wait!!!!!!! Forget that!! It was already 5pm! So, we hopped onto a topless tour bus instead. Kill two birds with one stone. However, this was the last one of the day, so the general consensus of the driver? Supervisor? was to cram as many people onto the bus as possible regardless of whether they had a seat or not! Much like an ordinary bus you get to work! Hence, there were no seats upstairs and downstairs the outside of the bus windows were covered with plastic film with images of Guinness bottles!!! So, any photos you may want to take of wonderful San Francisco landmarks will instead consist of little black dots from the pixelated images of Guinness bottles! See my photo! Who the flaming hell came up with that idea for a tour bus?! Sack Him!!
The next day, with our 48-hr tour bus ticket in hand, we got back on the bus bright and early and thankfully grabbed a top deck roofless seat. The tour was really interesting.
We got off at Fisherman's Wharf again and decided to walk 5miles to Golden Gate Bridge. It sounded a worse walk than it actually was. The weather was cold but sunny and the walk was really interesting, taking you along the sea front past massive residential houses facing the ocean, past small harbour clubs and eventually along a long sandy beach to the Bridge. I didn't even know there was a sandy beach in San Francisco! Golden Gate Bridge was absolutely incredible close up. From far away David said "hmmm....the Humber Bridge is more impressive than that!" I thought he was just being very entertaining until he told me Humber was a real place in the UK!!! (David: It's a river.) I always thought the Golden Gate Bridge was really gold in colour hence its name!!! But it was bright postbox red! Odd! Apparently, the 'official' colour is orange and this colour was chosen so that during fog it could still be seen. The bridge was constructed in 1933, finished in 1937 and took a mere $35million to build!! It's also a famous suicide spot and if the person doesn't die on impact to the water then they will as a result of the freezing waters or the strong currents that will drown you (or get mauled by the apparently great white sharks!). Extensive studies and statistics have been written up on the number of suicides here - one man survived in 1970-something and drove himself to hospital after suffering with broken vertabraes!!!
That night, we returned to Chinatown and went to another restaurant. We'd spent 5 weeks in China with no communication problems whatsoever but here, in San Francisco Chinatown, David and the Chinese waiter were entertaining me highly with "What you Say?", "No! What did YOU say?", "no beer for you, Sir?", "No! which beers DON'T you have?!", "You not want beer, Sir?". (David: Well, I pointed to the menu and said I wanted a large Draught Tsing Tau he said he didn't have it, so I said: "What do you have?", "All of them, what you want?... and so it repeated, round and round... neither of us knowing how to get off.)
The next day, we checked out of our Hotel, said goodbye to beautiful Union Square and made our way to Fisherman's Wharf one final time for our trip to Alcatraz. Alcatraz was absolutely incredible. I had wanted to go here for ages. David had been here before, about 15 years ago. Alcatraz started off originally as a military prison with basic wooden buildings until the number of inmates grew to necessitate a bigger concrete prison for civilian criminals. Known as 'Hellcatraz' by inmates, it was a notorious prison until it was closed by Kennedy in 1963 due to rising maintenance costs and erosion of the buildings by the salty sea water. Then in 1973, it was officially opened to the public and has since been declared part of the National Park Service.
The grounds were amazing, much bigger than I thought they would be. When we got inside the main prison building, we got an audio headset which threw us into a world of our own, so David and I made our own way around. Simply because we wanted to spend different amounts of time staring at bent cell bars or chipped walls. Housing the worst criminals from bankrobbers to gangsters to murderers, Alcatraz had many suicides and many murders and although it was quite chilling to walk around it wasn't as hair-raising as I expected it to be. This may have something to do with the fact that the place WAS HEAVING WITH TOURISTS!!!! (much like myself! (David: You were heaving with tourists?)). The place was rammed!! just walking down a row of cells was like trying to walk down Oxford Street at Christmas!!! At one point, I got physically swallowed up by a crowd and couldn't get out! Completely ridiculous and unfortunately marred my visit a little. (David: But really giving you a genuine feeling of being incarcerated.) Anyway, on the self-guided tour, you got to go everywhere, past all the cells, in the prisoners offices and the dining room. Off of the dining room was an open door. I peeped through it to be faced with a long dark ominous staircase where the walls were very badly chipped and mouldy. I was staring at the stairs imaging horrors when suddenly another door next to the stairs bolted open and a museum staff member marched out. I nearly died of a heart attack!!!
There is evidence throughout the whole building of the violence and escapades of the prison with bullet holes in walls, bent bars and where the infamous escape occurred you got to see the ingenius removal of the cells grills. I haven't actually seen any of the Alcatraz films but I will now! (David: None of the false heads looked anything like Clint Eastwood. But the tunnelled out wall was there, with its papier mache infill.)
Outside, we walked around the recreation yard where escape plans were hatched and inmates were beaten up and then down to where the prison staff lived with their families. Sadly, these houses were demolished when the government once planned to demolish the whole prison but the ruins still lay there as a stark reminder of the history of Alcatraz. Really fascinating place indeed. They do night tours there too which would be fantastic to go on if absolutely flaming petrifying with ghosts of old prisoners whispering in your ear.
We gave ourselves 3 hours to walk around Alcatraz. This was in no way enough time. By the ferry port, there was still another building to explore which was now a bookshop and film theatre. But originally it used to be for isolation purposes. The building is composed of underground cells and alleyways and by far this was the most chilling part of the whole place despite the hords of tourists and cash tills ringing. We had 5 mins to literally run around snatching a peek here and there before our ferry left! Very creepy cobble stoned alleys.
By the time we were back on the boat to the mainland of San Francisco it was late in the afternoon and we had a long drive ahead. Our ultimate destination was Seattle for New Years Eve but that was 12 hours drive and 2 days away and for now we had to find a Hotel for the night.....we decided to drive until it got dark and then just stop somewhere immediately.......
Love us xxx
