Apparently it Rains in California

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We woke up after a night of rain and headed out on the road. The drive to San Francisco was relatively uneventful. We saw a lot of farmland, some hills that definitely fit the image of rolling hills, and a flock of birds flying low over a field in such a way that they appeared to be floating. That was cool.

As we entered San Francisco the sky was overcast, but we could see the Golden Gate bridge off in the distance. We started our tour of San Francisco in Chinatown. This is when the rain began and never let up. Chinatown in San Francisco apparently has the highest number of Chinese people in one place outside of China. The streets are a lot more colorful and there are waay more shops than the Chinatown in Seattle. We went into this one store that had all kinds of crazy exotic things like sharks fins, lots of cartilaginous looking things, reindeer antlers, and dried fruits and flowers. It smelled like seafood too. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed and we don’t know if that’s because so many tourists try to take pictures or because the things in there are illegal.

Our next stop was fisherman’s wharf. Going on a rainy January weekday meant very few tourists and lots of parking. We went to Boudin (pronounced like Houdini without the last i) and had lunch. It is famous for it’s sourdough bread, apparently the best in the world?, maybe just the country, but it was definitely delicious, and you can see into the factory where they make the bread, it was so cool. Then we roamed around and found the mechanical museum the AAA book mentioned (with free entry!).  Apparently it is someone’s private collection of viewing boxes that you put quarters in to see the little models do things. The first one we watched was a French guillotine beheading, we saw the carnival made of 50,000 toothpicks, the opium den with lots of twitchy people, and a larger carnival with really loud music. While we were looking around at all the cool things a man told us that the oldest one in the building was from the late 1800s. Out back there was an amazing view of Alcatraz as well.

We stayed in the car most of the afternoon as the rain intensified, driving through Golden Gate Park (probably the biggest park I have ever been in, we got completely lost and couldn’t find an exit) and then down Height street with it’s artsy and eclectic storefronts. The buildings in San Fransisco are amazing. There is a lot of color, intricate details, and artwork. There are so many different styles you can tell the architecture was influenced by the many different ethnic groups that settled the area.

Later we met up with some friends for dinner at a local Mexican restaurant with deliciously cheap burritos before heading down the block to a bar called the Fishbowl. Another day down, and unfortunately we had to cancel the next leg of our drive down the coastal route 1 because of the rain, too bad because it is supposed to be beautiful.