San Francisco - Day 4 (5/29/09)

Our final morning in San Francisco, after a quick bagel and coffee breakfast, was spent touring and roaming around Chinatown. At around 1.7 square miles it’s the largest (and also the oldest) Chinatown outside of Asia.

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Frank Jang: Chinatown Tour Guide Extraordinaire
We decided to be a part of a walking and eating tour for a few hours that was organized by a company called Wok Wiz. A strange name for a tour company but they really delivered. Our tour guide (and we were fortunate to be a part of a small tour of eight) was Frank Jang. He gave us some great background and historical information regarding Chinatown that framed the experience for us. Although he now lives in nearby San Mateo, Frank grew up right smack in the middle of Chinatown and also conveyed some very interesting personal stories about his childhood and how the district has changed (as well as stayed the same) over the years.

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Getting ready for the tea cupping at Red Blossom Teas
One thing that was nice about the tour is that we didn’t hurriedly go through the area but instead stopped for several minutes to learn more about the place we happened to be visiting. This was true for a Chinese art dealer, a fortune cookie factory, an herbalist, an acupuncturist, a barber, a grocer, and a tea retailer. There were probably others, I just can’t recall.

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The tour concluded at the Four Seas Restaurant on Grant Avenue for dim sum. This restaurant may or may not have been our choice had it not been a part of the tour. It was certainly decent and we had plenty of the usual things: dumplings, pot stickers, rice noodles, chow fun. And, by request, they even served a plate of chicken feet for me. Tasty, but not much meat.

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A Little Bit of Shopping in Chinatown
After the tour proper, we ventured around on our own for a couple of hours of shopping and looking around. We picked up some ginger candy and a Christmas ornament, as well as some very good oolong tea which we shipped home.

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Grace Cathedral From California Street

Chinatown was more than worth spending several hours at, and with our flight home just around the corner we hopped the California Street Cable Car for a quick visit to Grace Cathedral. This amazingly large city block-sized building was founded in 1849, the year of the California Gold Rush. In addition to regularly scheduled services, a lot of other events take place there as well. While we were there, for example, there was a jazz group setting up for a concert later that night. And several years ago, my friend Dave Nachmanoff performed a concert with Al Stewart that I happen to own on DVD.

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Stained Glass Inside of Grace Cathedral
We headed back to the hotel to pick up our things and take BART back to the airport, tired but happy that we had seen and done just about as much as possible in just a little over three days. We could have easily spent three more and stayed busy.

I’ll close with some thoughts about the city in case anyone will be visiting for the first time:

• Pack warm clothes. Even on a nice day it gets cold at night. I never did change into my shorts or thong (well…except for that time in the Castro District but that’s another blog for another day).

• Use the BART and Muni systems as much as possible (Cable Cars are part of the Muni system, too). And spend the three bucks on the Muni system map. Cars have their place in most of California but don’t bother with them unless you’re heading to wine country or something.

• Fisherman’s Wharf is just another trendy area. And they don’t make Ghirardelli chocolate there anymore. And while I’m on this topic, skip Haight-Ashbury unless you have a burning desire to see where the Grateful Dead lived for a couple of years (710 Ashbury St.)

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• San Francisco has hills. Lots of them. And lots of stairs. Bring good shoes.

• Must see: Alcatraz Island, Chinatown, North Beach (Italian) Neighborhood, Coit Tower (including the stair walk), and the Golden Gate Bridge. And if you’re a baseball fan and it’s spring or summer, AT&T Park.

• Shop around for good air and hotel rates (Entertainment Books, Travelocity, hotels.com, etc.). Our hotel, for example, was around one-third of the going rate when economic times are good.

• The restaurants are generally amazing. To fine tune your choices, consult some good websites with reviews by real people like you and me, such as yelp.com and chowhound.com.

• We found the people in San Francisco (with the exception of one surly bus driver) to be very helpful. More than once, someone asked if they could help us find somewhere even when we simply LOOKED like we needed an answer.

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One Last Ride!

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