Time to tell you how our second day in SF was. You will find the first day here if you missed it yesterday.

We had a big program on day number two: the kids had their first day of vacation (well, I say “the kids” but C and R are almost adults now, at least teenagers and taller than me…). Our plan was to take the MUNI (metro and bussystem in San Francisco) downtown and to ride the well-known cable car. When we arrived at the cable car station, there was a queue, I mean a real one, with maybe one hour waiting to get in a cable car. We followed some local advice and walked to the next stop. It worked! They don’t feel the whole car at the departure, they let some places and fill in at the next stops. We had much more less to wait and made a nice ride during about 20 minutes.

Cable cars are a pretty old invention but it would have dissapeared if it wasn’t for a lady, that sponsored the machines to keep them. It takes pretty much power to break them, and from what I could read about it, it is ot easy to get job as cable car driver and most of the pretendents don’t pass the power test.

The cable running in the ground is pretty noisy as well. It seemed that some local were using the cable car as normal public transport, even if the cars we saw were all crowed with tourists.

We arrived at Fisherman’s Wharf and had lunch there: fish soup in a sort of bread bowl. It was good. and hot. When we directly looked at the sea, we saw Alcratraz in the ground. We haven’t visit the prison, because the visits were all booked. It will be for another time!

We walked the whole afternoon in this piers place and saw some lion seas taking a sun bath at the pier 39. In the ground, we had some insights of the golden gate bridge, the landmark of SF. Talking about the sea lions: before I went to SF, I thought it was kind of crazy to find these animals, that I associate with cold climates in California. This was just the beginning of killing my predjudices. It is not as warm as I imagined in SF! We had no short tee shirt at all, and even if the sun was shining almost all the time, the wind was so strong that 1) your hair go all crazy and 2) you have to be dressed properly, at least, when you are old like me, carrying more for your health than for your fashion.

We walked pretty much this day and came back home passing by the embarcadero. This is kind of a ferry station and you can take the boat for the other side of the bay. Pretty crowed.

When you turned back, you could see the finansial district, where we began the visit of the day. High buildings, with a line of MUNI running under the ground. This kind of picture is much more the one I had in my mind from american cities, but in SF, it is a rare view actually.

We had a quick dinner at home and we hurried up to a wonderful -and for the case very american- evening, M, I and the little girl. We spent the evening at a sing along movie at the Castro theater. It was the Beauty and the Beast and we had a blast! The theater was full of adults (maybe it was 10 kids total) and everyone was singing, even talking the texts in between songs and some of even the adults had costumes. The funniest part was to use the little bag everyone got at the entrance: a papper crown, some lights, some fire works and buble soap. Two singers came at the beginning of the show, explaining when we had to sing, bue or say wouha during the movie. Everyone did it! It was wonderfull to look around and see a room full with adults with papper crown on the head singing to the beauty and the beast! The best part was for sure to see the sweet M singing and enjoying the show. We had a wonderfull evening!

When we walked back home, it was maybe 10 in the evening and the Castro quarter had another face. During the day, it seems to be a very residential part of the town, but at night, every corner becomes a bar and the mood is very nice and cool. It is not like going through a bar street in Sweden, when people cannot behave after 3 beers.

It was a wonderfull day 2 in San Francisco! Tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow, I will write about day 3, stay tuned!