San Francisco part 2

The next day found us - me in particular - slightly more jaded than expected. We later discovered the reason for this in Canada. Turns out that we’d been unfairly berating Americans for drinking light beer. When we first ordered room service beers in Vegas, they delivered us light ones, and we were horrified, given that light beer in NZ is generally not much stronger than drinking water (I may have been known to refer to it as ‘weasel piss’ in fact). After that, every time we ordered, we made sure to specify “NOT light beers,” or “the strong ones” or something similar. We kept seeing Americans carrying boxes of Coors Light, or Bud Light and feeling superior in our NZ capacity for handling alcohol. The percentage was never written on the bottle/can in the US, and when we got to Canada and went to a bottle store, we discovered that what the Americans and Canadians call ‘light’ is actually 4% beer (ie: the NZ standard). Which meant that every unexpectedly rough hangover we’d had so far was due to us unwittingly demanding extra strong beers, most of which had been between 6 and 7%. Nice to know for the rest of the trip, but up until our second last day in Toronto we were ignorant of this rather important fact, so prepare for more hangover whines till we hit Montreal...

Best random discovery of the day in San Francisco was Rasputin Records, which somehow hadn’t found its way into Andy’s Book of Cool Stuff To Do in the States, and yet turned out to be cooler than all the other music stores that had. The SF branch - we encounter one the next day in Berkeley too - had five floors of awesomeness, and the best thing was its stringent organisation. Each floor had a specific genre or theme, so we happily headed to the vinyl floor, the punk floor, and the t-shirt mezzanine and bypassed everything else. Wallets much lighter, yet now with shopping bags in tow (yay, two Gits records and a Descendents t-shirt for me, and something Inepsy related for Sam), we carried on our merry way to a day of exploration in  Golden Gate Park.

Unfortunately a lot of the day was already over by this point, and the Conservatory of Flowers was closed (yes, not something I’d normally be into, but they had an exhibition of carnivorous plants that actually sounded quite interesting in the brochure), so we went straight to the California Academy of Sciences. The main attraction there was the four story rainforest, which is similar to the butterfly thingy at the Otago Museum, but each floor represents a different rainforest - Madagascar (no lemurs sadly), Borneo, Amazon and I forget the other one. Despite the unbearable heat and the spiders that I steadfastly refused to look at (Sam tried his best to cajole me, but it was never going to happen), it was an amazing experience. Also, I think I may have discovered a new love: miniature frogs. They were about the size of a fifty cent piece or smaller, came in an array of insanely bright colours, and quickly became the highlight of every exhibit for me. Apparently snakes, lizards, big spiders etc don’t eat them, as they seemed to cohabit quite casually in the same glass enclosures as those guys. Don’t be surprised if I return to NZ and decide to become a crazy miniature frog breeder. 

In the rainforest at the California Academy of Sciences

Miniature frog! He's the little red and blue guy in the middle, possibly so miniature you can't make him out

Sam on the living roof at the California Academy of Sciences

Next stop in Golden Gate Park was the Japanese Tea Garden, which maintained its air of tranquility even though we raced around it like mad things because it was nearly closing time. Sam climbed what seemed to me to be a gravity-defying Japanese bridge, but managed a rather relaxed-looking smile at the top, and we both loved the raked stone gardens, meandering pathways and abundance of squirrels. The general verdict was that the Golden Gate Park experience was fantastic, but may have benefitted from an earlier arrival (yet another theme of our trip). After one of those typically oversized American meals you’ve all heard about (this one was on Haight Street at ‘All You Can Knead,’), the rest of the night was spent lolling about in out hotel room doing nothing much of anything, which was probably what we needed at that point.

Atop the bridge in the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park

Squirrel! The first one we've met who seemed eager to pose for a photo rather than run away

Our last full day in San Francisco started off early (a first), and we made it to Chinatown bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the actual morning. Chinatown was slightly disappointing though; I’m not sure what we had been expecting (the outdated guidebook I’d photocopied seemed  rather excited about the place, which may have been better in its heyday), but what we got was store after store of exactly the same $2 shop kind of goods, but at tourist-inflated prices. We wandered for about seven or eight blocks, got a few good photos along the way with some pretty street lanterns in the background, but ultimately left fairly quickly. Sorry Chinatown, maybe we didn’t find your best streets or something.

Chinatown

Our Sunday night adventures in Berkeley hadn’t been enough, so in the afternoon we decided to get the BART back again and have a wander round in the day time. We were also planning on doing Oakland (on the way to Berkeley), but  were somewhat unsure on how this would work with the tickets getting on and off the BART, had no map of the area and also were starting to run out of time yet again (I swear time passes faster here). Next visit, next visit....Had been looking forward to listening to various Oakland-related songs while actually there, but oh well...  Berkeley involved more record stores (another Amoeba and another Rasputin), at which Sam befriended a really knowledgeable and friendly fellow record fiend called Cameron. Sam and his new friend Cam perused the punk bins thoroughly (this took far longer than my own perusing), and I ended up finding the book section and reading an entire book on the history of band t-shirts and they were still not done. This bodes well for me having extra credit up my sleeve to spend time in vintage clothing stores without complaints from the boy...

Finally we were back out into the light of day, and took a quick walk round the UCAL campus at Berkeley. We must have timed it just as lectures were finishing, because it was fairly packed, but we managed to fight our way through the crowds and find some beautiful scenery nonetheless. On the whole, the Berkeley vibe was definitely more intellectual than SF had been - every conversation we overheard in Berkeley involved words like ‘analytical’ and 'postmodern,’ whereas in SF it usually involved the screaming of expletives - and its laidback, university feel almost made it seem like we were back in Dunedin.

Resting on a tree stump at the UCAL campus

In need of a place to pee (or use the bathroom, as we’re meant to - but keep forgetting to- say), we found a brew pub with a bar on one side, and a glass wall showing the brewing process on the other. I made the mistake of ordering a 9% beer pitcher, thinking it would be the equivalent of a jug in NZ. It was at least double a NZ jug (I couldn’t even carry it myself), and at 3 in the afternoon, not the world’s best idea. The bar was also noteworthy because we met some Americans whose only impression of NZ was 'Flight of the Conchords,’ and who couldn’t seem to grasp that we weren’t into it. One of them also insisted that we must know his friend Matt, “cos he’s from NZ and don’t you know everyone there?” Which may have been funny if he was joking, but he actually thought we would know this random Matt, and kept trying to describe him (“Yeah, he’s Matt, but we all called him ‘Metres’ because whenever he had to say a distance, he’d say it in metres, and we were like hur, hur, hur. You gotta know him!”). Everyone told me before I came here that I would be harrassed by Americans about Lord of the Rings, and I’ve been incredibly disappointed because I would LOVE to be harrassed about the Lord of the Rings, given that it’s possibly the only NZ related thing I’m hugely into,  but no, the only comments have been about Flight of the Lame-ass Conchords and the Rugby World Cup (which we haven’t been able to give our true opinions on, as we tend to get asked about this at customs and immigration in airports, and they are ultra scary and you don’t want to say the wrong thing, so we just nod and smile our way through RWC rubbish).

Fuelled by our fancy brew-pub beer, we had a stumbly, yet pleasant trip back on the BART to SF, where we managed to catch a couple of exhibitions ten minutes before closing time at some cool little art galleries near our hotel that we had been meaning to check out. The Australian street art one was particularly impressive, although the curators seemed more impressed with Sam's jacket, and even insisted on taking a photo of him (not the last time this was to happen). We ended up at a lovely Chinese restaurant for meatless chicken stirfry. Cheap as, but the restaurant itself was beautiful, with plants everywhere, a fishpond and cool Chinese statues and things: for the family, very Chan’s from what I can remember as a child.

I really liked the paintings on spraycans that you can see behind me

Fishpond at the Chinese restaurant

Determined to fit as much as we could into our last night in SF, we realised we hadn’t yet done a tramride, so embarked on this at about 11.30pm (I love that cities in the States are open most of the night; Dunedin, sort it out!) Also Dunedin, bring your trams back, those things are great, and would have been a far better investment than your ridiculous stadium.... We rattled up and over a bunch of iconic SF streets, saw the crooked street (unfortunately not well enough to get a decent photo), a beautiful nightview of the East Bay Bridge, the lovely SF neighbourhoods in the area and enjoyed every minute of it. One of the coolest things we’ve done so far.

On our late night tramride in SF

The night ended back at Minx (totally our local if we ever move to SF) with a few PBRs - although not too many, as being a veteran of flying by now (but still hating it), I knew that the next day would be less traumatic if I refrained from the beers somewhat. As it turned out, the flight was fine, helped along by the fact that the inflight entertainment thingy had ‘Dexter’! Apparently the cure for fear of flying is to take anti-anxiety pills and watch endless episodes of a tv show about a serial killer....

Coming soon -  Toronto, jalapenos everywhere you look, and Andy discovers a sport she can actually get into watching (thanks Matt!)....