San Francisco, Part I

So I was in San Francisco on work with my colleagues (and friends) E, S and T.  And while it was an absolutely exhausting (and often stressful) whirlwind, I managed to get out and about a little bit and take some pictures.  It was my first experience travelling with such a large camera, so I'm glad I got some shots (though the one above is an iphone picture)!

I am ridiculously tired.  Having had some very patchy sleep on the plane this morning, I'm feeling a bit floaty and light-headed now and thought I would sort out my photos to keep myself awake and not jetlagged (hah!).

Taking 26 kids on a school trip is no joke, so a lot of these photos were taken during the only times I had my hands free, including on the bus, so I apologise if there is any weird window reflection or blurriness.

Apologies for the memories being so haphazard - I just thought I would pick out the photos and let them guide the journey for me.

We landed in the early afternoon and the temperature hovered around a delicious 15 or 16 celcius with sunshine and blue skies very reminiscent of Barcelona.  To be honest, I didn't manage to do very much sightseeing, but I did get a sense of the hilliness of the place and the importance of the bay.

My bed for about six days.  Rest assured it was nowhere near this neat when I was done with it.

We walked towards the Fisherman's Wharf shortly after we landed in order to stave off jetlag, and passed what looked like a red light district.  Girls in nothing but overcoats and coiffed hair leaned and smoked on railed stoops.

The famous In-n-Out burger, which was pretty good.  Then again, by that point, I would've eaten anything.  I did appreciate the generous coating of onions that each patty received.

I wish I'd bought one of these hats I saw as we walked along the wharf.  They were hilarious and looked very cosy, particularly the red lobster monster.

I made the mistake of buying this weird sour spray candy at a supermarket.  Remember Wally Warheads from primary school?  They had "sour" and "hot" flavours that really made your tongue tingle, and just as S and I were reliving that moment, we found this bottle in the aisles.  I was so excited to see it and assuming it was a tube of hard sweets, I didn't even bother to check the label.  We spent a couple of gruesome days spraying our tongues and wincing and shuddering afterwards.

In our downtime, we managed to squeeze in a couple of games of cards and bananagrams.  It was funny to see what words people put down ("vagina"/"fish" and "manly"/"queens") and speculate on whether that meant anything about their thought processes.

Our hotel was located right across the road from Chinatown, and that first picture is of an area called Portsmouth Square, where the first US flag was supposedly raised.  Apparently the city started up around this area as well, though everything burned down in the earthquake/fire of 1906 (E, S, T and I took turns reciting the history to each other to see how much attention we'd been paying on the group tours).

I loved the little playground in the square.  So much happens in and around playgrounds and parks, especially in heartland estates.  To pause there is to watch life unfold, in all its bittersweet glory.

While we weren't chaperoning, we went walking to look for dinner places for our charges and that's when I got to slow down and look at the city a little bit.  There was something architecturally interesting or artistic on every corner - the picture above is of one such installation.  

The piece featured blank books hanging on wires, their words tumbled and scattered on the floor below like autumn leaves.  The words and phrases were chosen from books written by San Franciscans which made the artwork quite poignant.  I'm sure we could easily do something similar in Singapore, though artistic types here favour hideous sculptures of garishly spray painted balls (SAM, I'm looking at you).

On one such walk, we stopped for a quick snack.  (That is S smiling as she checked her texts.  We had wifi in the hotel and often Whatsapped each other even though we were in the same building.)

As we stepped into the cafe, we met a gruff old man outside who told us that he had been coming in for coffee every day for 30 years.  T said that he didn't see why anyone would and great speculation ensued, ending with the invention of a story in which he had secretly been carrying a torch for the lady boss.

Later on, E bought us all berries to share and I grabbed dessert wherever I could.  I tried a couple of tiramisus, nutella cake and that's me jonesing for churros while T pretends not to know me (he ate two).

We also took the kids to a cute little Mexican place called Taquieria Zorro where they took turns choosing songs on the jukebox and singing together over dinner.  I don't know much about Mexican food but everything was delicious, particularly my fish taco which was flaky, fresh and piquant.

That tamarind soda was surprisingly good.  I'm used to the idea of tamarind as something tart and occasionally astringent, but in soft drink form it was sweet and fragrant. 

Jetlag is catching up, so I'll stop for now and leave you with a picture of the most amazeballs bagel in the world.   That is a 7-grain bagel with salmon, egg and cheese.  E bought breakfast while we were running around the conference one morning and because she heard me mooning over the cheese in the shop, she got me pepper jack instead of cream cheese.  

Melted cheese, eggs and something smoky?  You can't do better than that for a morning wake up call.