San Francisco

On the first morning, still all over the place with jet lag, we woke up at a very un-us 6 a.m., had a bite to eat, and made straight for the Golden Gate – San Francisco’s best-known landmark.
How do you know a landmark’s really famous? It gets clobbered by a meteor / washed away by a tsunami / blown to smithereens by aliens in a disaster flick.

As if to drive the point home, in the first three minutes a flotilla of boats with black sails slid under the bridge, followed by a squadron of enormous pelicans, and then – also under the bridge – a helicopter for good measure.

Self-driving Cruise taxis pootle about the streets. Reading about them online, you think, “Ah well, it’s the 21st century, after all.” But when a car with no one at the wheel rolls up next to you at the lights, you’re torn between crossing yourself and pinching yourself.
Sometimes they slam the brakes on without warning, and often as not they’ll change lanes without so much as a flicker of an indicator. Thank heavens they’re not BMWs.

The most recognisable architectural style in San Francisco is Queen Anne. All over town you find timber houses with wonderfully fussy facades, bay windows and turrets, often painted in bold colours. Probably the most charming and pleasing domestic architecture I’ve seen anywhere in the States.

Chinatown, though – I’d been expecting a bit more than signs in Chinese and a glut of restaurants. Sadly, no authentic old-world architecture to be found.

Up in Russian Hill, weaving between the houses, is the “crookedest street in the world” – Lombard Street. Driving down it is an attraction in its own right, so there’s nearly always a queue of cars waiting to get in.
It’s not helped by the folk in giant SUVs (which is pretty much all there is in the US) who can’t make the bend on the first go, back up, have another crack – and repeat that on almost every one of the street’s eight turns.

Along the waterfront, every pier is flogging “bay cruises” for $20–30 a head. Look closer at the routes and you’ll find that if you want more than a quick jaunt out of the harbour and back in ten minutes, the price jumps to $60–90.
We said we’d “think about it” and wandered off, but the ticket chap came after us for a haggle, and we shook hands on $90 for the two of us. The clincher, of course, was that the price included two drinks – alcoholic or otherwise.

We boarded a small sailing yacht and headed out into the bay. The weather was pure Ireland – wind, low cloud, and humidity up in the nineties – just like home.
Sailing sounds all terribly romantic, but half the time the boat’s leaning 45 degrees one way, the other half 45 degrees the other. You spend the whole time either hunched forward or leaning back, trying not to topple overboard. Still, there’s free wine out of a carton to take the chill off in the biting sea breeze.

By lunchtime we were on the hunt for a bit of street food. The West Coast is famous for its seafood – crab and lobster burgers, chowders, that sort of thing.
The prices, though, were daylight robbery – over $40 for a crab burger or lobster roll from a kiosk on the quay. For that in Dublin we could get four decent lobster tails and make our own rolls, so we settled for a chowder in a bread bowl and a crab salad instead. Tasty enough, but after four years on an island, seafood doesn’t quite give you the same thrill.

A floating pontoon at Pier 39 is home to a colony of sea lions. Dozens, if not hundreds, of the brutes bask in the sun, bellow at one another, and occasionally have a scrap.
The first sea lions turned up after the 1989 earthquake. The pioneers liked the safety (no orcas bothering them) and handy food supply so much they invited their mates. Since then, numbers have ranged from 300 to 1,700 depending on the season.

San Francisco has that proper big-city feel.
We were strolling along the waterfront when a chap with a “Jesus saves” placard on his chest was loudly telling all and sundry they needed to repent because Jesus died for their sins.
From across the road someone shouted back, “You idiot! Moron!” – it was a cyclist in a battered full-body lion costume.

A bit later we bumped into the “lion” again. He was sitting on a bench, worn out from the heat, peeling off his costume. Underneath he had on a striped sailor top.
“That’s Boniface!” Natasha said, delighted.

I’d happily go back to San Francisco – a day and a half is nowhere near enough for such a big, lively city.