Departures: Local: Travel Tips

Carol from St Louis wrote to me, asking in passing for travel tips for San Francisco. I ended up writing more than I intended. Anyhow, if I post those tips here, then it won't have been a complete waste of time, right? Anyhow, I wrote this in 2002:

• Bring a sweatshirt. Even in the summertime.
• The Arboretum (in Golden Gate Park) has lots of pretty plants.
• The restaurant Ebisu, on 9th Avenue between Irving Street and Golden Gate Park, is very popular. But if you've worked up an appetite tromping around in the Arboretum, and it's between lunch and dinner time, then you can get in without a wait.
• If you think you'd like to see Alcatraz, you should see Alcatraz. If you don't think you'd like it, then you shouldn't go. I don't know anyone who's been surprised one way or the other.
• San Francisco has both numbered streets and numbered avenues. If someone tells you to go to "24th and Judah", don't assume that you're looking for 24th Street.
• Mandalay Restaurant (on California Blvd at 6th Ave) has yummy Burmese and Chinese food. The "salads" are unusual but great.
• The Hyde Street Pier has some tall sailing ships. If you like tall ships, then it's a good place to visit.
• The S.S. Jeremiah O'Brien, a Liberty Ship, is interesting to look at. The S.S. Lane Victory in Los Angeles is better. If you've seen the Lane, you can skip the Jeremiah O'Brien.
• Kids and science geeks love the Exploratorium. There's enough interesting stuff there that parents/spouses of kids/science geeks can tolerate the Exploratorium.
• You can skip San Francisco's main museum, the De Young. It's closed right now, anyhow. It's moving.
• The Asian Art Museum is pretty good. I've seen things there which I haven't seen anywhere else. Then again, I haven't been to China nor India nor... anyhow. But it's closed right now. It's moving.
• The Japanese Tea Garden is pretty, but is as crowded as a popular public garden in Japan. Brace yourself for chaos as you enter. You can quietly contemplate tea and nature somewhere else, later.
• The sourdough French bread is good here. You can get it at a few places, including Boudin. Boudin has branches around most of the tourist places. If you're in a grocery store, keep an eye out for bread by ACME, Grace, or Artisan's.
• North Beach has many cafes that are nice for drinking coffee and talking. If you look into a cafe and it looks like a pleasant place to sit, it probably is. Don't be so trusting of North Beach restaurants, though.
• The redwood forests in Marin county are rather nice. Group tours often go to the convenient Muir Woods. If you've got a car and would like to see trees without having to elbow your fellow tourists out of the way, drive up to the Pantoll Ranger Station on Mount Tamalpais. (You don't even need a car. When I did a web search to find out how to spell "Pantoll", I found a bus route there.)
• You can skip the main Library. It's so embarassing.
• San Francisco is a good place for burritos. There are good burrito places on Mission around 24th Street. Also, Tlaloc in downtown and Cancun in Berkeley are very good. San Francisco is not such a good place for sit-down Mexican food, unfortunately.
• If you're close by, it's worth dropping in to City Hall. It's a pretty monument to a past age of superior craftsmanship and illegally-funded civic improvement.
• Tourists who head up to the top of Twin Peaks are often disappointed--they've got a foggy view of a city they don't know that well. It's very windy and often cold. On the other hand, if you're coming there from Florida, you might be glad to remind yourself of what hills are like.

  [Disclaimer: 'Lene says that visiting tourists like Twin Peaks when she takes them up there and gives an overview of the city. So maybe tourists are only disappointed when they're up on Twin Peaks with me. If you know 'Lene, you should get her to take you up there instead.]

• Fort Point is under the Golden Gate Bridge on the San Francisco side. From Fort Point, you can often watch windsurfers zipping around in the gate's fierce winds. There may even be some regular surfers surfing the tide.
• JapanTown Center has a cluster of Japanese restaurants and shops. If you're coming from Los Angeles or Seattle, then JapanTown is nothing special. Otherwise, it probably is something special.
• If you like tomato, then it's worth a trip to the East Bay to visit Zachary's Pizza. (Either at the top of Berkeley's Solano Ave or in Oakland's Rockridge area on College Ave, a couple of blocks North of the BART station.) The crust is not thin. The cheese is not provel. But the sauce is wonderful and plentiful.
• Speaking of the East Bay, U.C.Berkeley is a good university for strolling around. U.C. San Francisco is not.
• I've heard good things about the crab at Thanh Long restaurant. It's on Judah at 40-somethingth avenue. (Their sign has a picture of a crab.) I've also heard that eating crab at places at Fisherman's Wharf is a gamble tastiness-wise.

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