EXPLORING SAN FRAN:
San Francisco, California, USA
April 25th, 2014, 7:25pm
Greetings, loved ones! Here's a little summary of my day:
We boarded the plane on time, had a decent flight, and arrived in San Francisco a little early. The plane was really tiny and skinny and made me feel a little claustrophobic, but I slept for most of the way! I kept dozing in and out of sleep while listening to my iPod. I don't think my parent's slept at all.... They were too busy laughing at how I sleep with my eyes open...
But we arrived safe and sound despite an incredibly bumpy landing... It was funny, actually. My mom was being really goofy either to calm herself down or just because she was being herself. But she had her iPod in her ear so she didn't realize how loud she was talking. She was sort of screaming and acting out what she'd do if we had to make a crash landing. Ahahaha!!! What a clown!
We got a taxi and headed to our hotel: The Hilton Hotel on Fisherman's Wharf. Apparently the name has changed to Pier 2620 Hotel, but whatever.
Our taxi driver had a very heavy Russian accent, but he was so friendly and informative. He almost acted as a tour guide and cab driver in one! We drove along the freeway, and directly to the left of us, were rows and rows and rows of houses. At least I think they were houses. Town houses. Or maybe apartments. Either way, they were so cool and pretty to look at! They were all about the same size and shape, and they ALL had flat roofs!!! I think I heard our taxi driver (who my dad named "Boris") say that the roofs are that way so everyone can see out of their windows. The houses were all stacked on a hill, so it just looked like a mountain of blocks and windows. The best part about it was that no house was the same colour. They were so unique, but so similar! ...Imagine giant hills made up of thousands of lego houses. That's exactly what it reminded me of! Except the colours weren't as bright as lego. In fact, the colours were all pretty pastels. (If you don't know what a pastel colour is then it's basically the faded version of a colour. Like Easter colours!)
Once we got past that section of the city, we entered what Boris called the "industrial section" of the city. There was construction equipment everywhere! Cranes and vehicles and workers... And the traffic was ridiculous! Boris wove in and out of traffic and definitely pissed off a few drivers... But he got us to our hotel in record time!
By now I was already starting to get a feel for the city. It's humid and wet like Mexico but it's colder. And with more rude people. Seriously! All day we've encountered such rude people! No wonder people say Canadians are so nice! It's because we are so nice in comparison to these Americans!
Some examples are:
Our hotel clerk treated us like we were dumb for arriving early. He sort of just shooed us away like we were a nuisance to him.
We went out for lunch and our waitresses weren't all that friendly. I don't think I heard her say thank you once! In fact they didn't even say goodbye when we left! The only little thing she did was write "Thank you" on our receipt. *Sigh*
After that we went on a cable car... The guy manning it was so snobby and sarcastic! Mom thinks he was "trying to be funny." But I think he was just an ass. I asked him if we had to transfer to get to our destination, and he simple shook his head. And under his breath he muttered, "Unless you wanna walk." As if I'm supposed to know! I'm a 19-year-old asian tourist!!! What did he expect?
Even people at the cafes were rude, people walking on the streets would run into us and not even apologize... My dad even noticed when I knocked something of the hanger in a store, I immediately picked it up and hung it back up. He said moments before he watched another girl do the same thing but instead of picking it up, she simply looked at the item on the floor, shrugged, and walked away thinking that it's "someone else's job." Oh and we were asked like 3 times in an hour if we had any "spare change" by homeless people. One guy, I swear, was high on every single drug you could possibly imagine.
Life if really different here in 'murica. And I don't really know if I like it just yet... I'm definitely proud to be Canadian. That's for sure.
So just to give you guys a little more detail on what we did today... (Sorry I ranted about the rude Americans... oops.)
At lunch we went to Fisherman's Wharf and walked around there a bit. We went into some awesome art stores, and took in some of the scenery. We went and ate at the Crab Shack (where the waitresses were rude) and had tons of shrimp! We had a shrimp platter which included coconut shrimp, deep fried shrimp, crab-stuffed shrimp. I even had shrimp alfredo! It was SO good! And it was only fitting that our first meal in an Fran was something seafood related.
We then took a cable car to Union Square where the shopping was much higher-end than Mom and I thought it would be. It was POURING rain while we were on the cable car though. And the rude driver didn't help. But we managed to stay positive and made the best out of it. We even had a contest to see who could sing the most songs that had to do with rain. I won singing, "I BLESS THE RAINS DOWN IN AAAAAFRICAAAA!!!" and "UNDER MY UMBRELLA ELLA ELLA EH EH EH!!" I also won at embarrassing my parents, I think. If that was even a contest.
The cable car ride took us up and down the many hills of the city... some of the downhill sections were pretty scary. Considering that the only thing keeping us from plummeting to our death was a tiny little break thing in the ground... :/ I got some great pictures, though!
Union square was full of stores like Louis Vutton, Michael Kors, Juicy Couture, etc. It was a little expensive for my taste... Until... We stumbled across... Yep, you guessed it, FOREVER 21!!! MY ALL TIME FAVOURITE STORE! AND IT HAD 3 WHOLE FLOORS! I was in heaven. I ended up buying two super cute items for like 20 bucks. :)
After that, I was in a much better mood. We walked around, went in a bunch of other stores, and walked back to Fisherman's Wharf through Chinatown. The rain had finally quit and the sunshine started peeking through the tall buildings that surrounded us. I guess our optimism about the weather had paid off!!!! :)
Chinatown reminded me so much of Japan, it almost reduced me to tears. There were similar markings on the ground for blind people, and some of the other street signs and lights were like Japan's. Not to mention the overwhelming amount of asians everywhere... It was a congested area full of Chinese food and knick knack stores. I sort of felt like I was supposed to be wearing a mask. Hahaha!
By this time Mom was about to rip off her own feet because they hurt so bad, so it was time to head back to the hotel. We walked aimlessly for a while since we had forgotten where our hotel even was... But we found it eventually! The lady at the desk was far nicer than the previous clerk, and she told us about a fun little square with over 35 food trucks and music and stuff! I think we'll go check it out after my Mom and Dad wake up from they're nap. It must be exhausting being old. (Hahahahaha just kidding!!!)
Well, I'll write again soon! I hope you're enjoying my travel blog so far!!!
Love always,
Lindsay Lehr