San Francisco
Off to San Francisco with my friend Kathryn for the American Library Association Conference. The first time I was in San Francisco was in 1976, hitchhiking here with my friend Don, on our way to explore the world. It was a trip of firsts, including the first palm tree I had ever seen, beside the I5 highway. Thanks to the seventies, SF was an almost mythical place in both song and story. It was a time for living as cheaply as possible, since we would have to go back and find jobs when we ran out of money (which inevitably happened, six months later).
Today we flew in, took a taxi to the Hilton in the Financial District, halfway between Chinatown and the Embarcadero. By the time we checked into the hotel and ate dinner, we had spent enough money to exist on for a week in 1976. We decided to go for a walk, get some fresh air, and look for something more appealing than hotel food.
The ferry building has been turned into a wonderful upscale farmers’ market with small shops selling everything from pottery to organic food, and gluten free baking. There are fish shops and meat shops, dairy shops, and a bookstore. A shop selling “Tasty Salted Pig Parts” smelled wonderful, but wasn’t altogether useful without a kitchen. We found a restaurant where they cooked the food, and I had a local fish called escolar, wonderful tasting and cooked with pesto.
Tummies full, we wandered the shops, and bought fruit, cheese and bread for breakfast. The bookstore managed to extract a little money from Kathryn, but I escaped unscathed. We wandered back to the hotel, passed a couple of parks. Unfortunately they showed the other side of the city – sleeping bags on the ground, people looking like they were setting up for the night. Now I wonder, was it always like this, and I just didn’t notice when I was young, was it different, or was the fact that I had very little money somehow changing the way I looked at things? On that trip we stayed in a strange hotel room that was $9 and had a bathroom down the hall.
The hotel has provided a couple of surprises. First of all, as we were lying around chatting, a woman opened the door and started to come in. They had given her our hotel room! She left, full of apologies. Then we discovered that the blinds on the windows don’t open, so although we can hear some interesting Chinese music, we can’t look out and see where it is coming from. Finally, neither of us has been able to connect to the free wifi. We are reluctant to pay, since it’s $10 a day, so we’ll see what we can sort out tomorrow. It makes me cranky when an expensive hotel wants to charge extra for everything…including the bottled water in our room, which is $3 a bottle, (over $4 Canadian). Obviously I’m getting grumpy so it must be time for bed.