Disappear Here: San Francisco Dreamers

This year in July, just before we left Vancouver- it was decided that while we were still on that side of the country, that we must visit San Francisco. So off Emmily, Neil, Bryan & Myself went! We stayed at the Amsterdam Hostel on Taylor Street, which is a wonderful old building with squeaky steps and it is located right down town.

San Francisco is a beautiful, relaxed, bohemian type city. The houses reminded me of the intro to Full House and the streets are so steep that I imagine living there would keep you pretty fit- me and Emmily almost died walking up a particularly vertical one and were like fallen soldiers telling the boys to "Go on without us".

On the second day we spent the day exploring the waterfront, which included Pier 39 which has shops, rides and best of all- a whole lot of sea lions that call this Pier their home. We also came across the darling Musée Mécanique, which is an arcade full of coin operated mechanical musical instruments and antique arcade machines mostly from the 1920's and up. Going through it made you feel like you were on a date in the olden days- a lot of fun.

On the third day we took the ferry over to Saulsalito, which is a small seaside community just over the bay- with an abundance of restaurants, art gallery's and locally owned boutiques full of trinkets. We decided to walk back to town from Saulsalito via the Golden Gate Bridge- which was a lot colder then I expected. Something about standing on the edge and looking over the sides of the Golden Gate Bridge gave me an eerie, haunting feeling.

Every night we went out to different bars around town- we found one that did $2 bottles of beer, which made for a VERY cheap night out! On the way to this particular bar we were hustled by a homeless man who sounded distinctly like Tom Waits... in fact I'm not entirely convinced that it wasn't Tom Waits in disguise.

San Francisco was a whirlwind vacation for me, sometimes it doesn't even feel like it really happened- not because it wasn't fantastic but because three days is definitely not enough time to spend in this beautiful town!