i'm still in the process of wrestling flickr and organizing my photos from the epic trip (you'll soon find out - if you didn't know already - that procrastination is one of my strong suits), so i'm afraid that's not the topic of tonight's installment. but fear not; i do have some blog fodder ready.
a few weekends ago (saturday, september 13th if we're keeping track), megan and i ventured out, unsupervised, into san francisco. we're fairly well acquainted with fisherman's wharf and union square (can you imagine?!), so this time around, our targets were the mission district and the haight.
after the transbay jump via BART (we're real city girls using public transportation, yea?), we began our schlep. i generally think everything interesting about san francisco is just going to jump out and slap me in the face because i mean, it's san francisco, but apparently some navigating and searching is involved. thus we, the SF newbs extraordinaire, busted out our tourist map and headed to mission dolores. After two or three run-ins with impostor missions (i.e. i can't read the map), we finally found her.
pretty, yea? you can take a tour of the inside for a "donation" of a few bucks. we contemplated taking the plunge, but we were quickly deterred by the wave of orthopedic shoe-clad tourists streaming through the door. instead we perused the gift shop where all my hopes and dreams of creepy catholic paraphernalia came alive. they soon died again once i checked out the price tags; apparently americans put a (much) higher price on their idol worship than mexicans. i guess i'll have to wait for my next trip south of the border to pick up another tacky rosary or metallic virgin mary icon.
next we pressed on toward the castro district. i was expecting montrose on steroids, but i cannot confirm as we didn't really get to experience the place fully. we skated through rather quickly, stopping every now and then to skim the menus at frou frou cafes and read about feminist art exhibition openings and, of course, to ogle all the...puppies! yes, sadly, our feminine wiles (though usually so widely effective) have no power over the boys here. but where there are boys who like boys, there are boys who like dogs; and the doggies did abound. i'm resisting the use of emoticons so hard right now!
after a slight detour (yeah, right) we began our hike to the haight. i should add here that i recently learned the correct pronunciation of this word is "hate" not "height" like i've been prone to say (though the latter would really make much more sense given our situation at the time). we had effectively avoided any serious incline for the majority of our trip, only to be faced with the mother of all hills standing menacingly between us and our final destination. so, determined as we are, we accepted our fate and braved our brutal ascent, all the while sneering at our downward-bound rivals.
the trek was worth it though; upon reaching the top, we were greeted by the sweetest grocery store i've ever seen. it's called courtney's produce (it's on 14th and castro if you're ever in the area) and it was the obvious choice for lunch. ~$12.70 will get you the following:
fresh salami, cheese, & tomato sandwich on baguette
turkey and avocado sandwich on wheat
fresh cranberry apple juice (the fiercest juice i've ever had)
salt & vinegar kettle chips
a big old bottle of water
and a home-made scone (this made my day, i mean really)
we were happy campers. i also took this time to snap the only really meaningful photos of the trip (i apologize ahead of time for any artsy fartsy content!):
after our much needed pit-stop, our next stop was buena vista park. there we were met with even more blood, sweat, and tears as we trudged further upward through the dirt until we reached the very top (yes, finally!) of the hill. our hard work was rewarded once again with those picturesque san francisco views you see on so many postcards.
that's unfortunately one of my only shots from up there. those trees are lovely, but they get in the way! oh well, just get excited about the authentic san francisco organic produce all over this blog.we stumbled down the otherside of the hill toward the haight. we were met almost immediately by some modern-day hippies...no, seriously. i have photographic evidence, see?
alas, they were probably the first AND last of our pleasant encounters on this leg of our trip; the expedition into the haight proved to be an exercise in humility for us simple texas girls (yea, we blame our lack of status in the social hierarchy on the fact that we're from texas, not on our raging nerdity...no, of course not!). upon arriving, we were thrust into a sea of skinny jeans, faces bedazzled with piercings, hairstyles that even i can't forgive, and the disapproving stares of so many teenagers holier-(er...make that hipper)-than-we. i would have liked to take some pictures for posterity, but breaking out the camera and further exposing myself as an imposter did not seem wise....though i'm pretty sure my outfit did a thorough job of outing me anyway.in short, the haight was not quite what i expected...although that should have been expected; afterall, it's not 1968 anymore. it's definitely an adventure for another day though, if only for the thrifting.
so we came to the end of our journey. physically and mentally exhausted, we plodded back to our BART station and reflected (well...in between watching bar fights and scoping cute boys on bikes!). there's still so much more big, scary city to see and i just can't wait.
