When planning a trip, it is often necessary to make some hard decisions. Time, after all, is usually a consideration when on a vacation. As much as you want to see everything, you must accept that you will, instead, see as much as you can.
When my husband and I decided to go to California and take the Pacific Coast Highway from north to south, we opted to add one “side” excursion to Yosemite National Park. As you know, California is a very large state filled with much to experience. In order to complete the PCH, however, we had to stick to the itinerary I carefully created.
Flights were booked with us flying to San Francisco then departing for home out of Los Angeles. After our arrival into SFO we would head for Yosemite and we opted to do that via the city of San Francisco with the Golden Gate Bridge as our main destination while there. (In case you don’t know, SFO is south of the city, therefore, you don’t pass by San Francisco unless you intentionally do so.)
I have been to the city by the bay several times but Mister Rain had not. When I asked him what else he wanted to do, he was content to just look at some of the well-known attractions. He didn’t feel the need to stop at these points of interest due to our tight schedule.
Entering San Francisco we headed to Lombard Street, the crookedist street in the country. It can get very busy with cars wanting to zig zag their way down the one-way driving course, but on this day we were the only car on the street. There were a lot of people walking Lombard, though, adding to the intricate maneuvers required to safely make it to the bottom.
My husband was very surprised by the hills in the city. When you drove up a street, you were often in the “launch position” a la Apollo 13, amazed that your vehicle can handle such an angled degree. At the top of one of the hills, Mister Rain saw, for the first time, Alcatraz. I had told him to be on the lookout, I was too via the binoculars always in the pocket of my passenger door. As soon as he spotted it, I found it in my lenses, a building seeming to rise from the choppy waters of San Francisco Bay like Atlantis come back to life. I find Alcatraz to be a touchstone in this city, I am always looking for it as I move within its limits. I had taken a ferry there once, something I will never forget. It was not the lost island civilization, that is for sure.
Making a turn to position us along the waterfront shops and restaurants, we saw the SkyStar Ferris Wheel, Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf.
I also advised Mister Rain to keep an eye out for another icon of this city, the one that many of us became aware of through a TV commercial for a rice product. It was not long before he yelled, “Cable car!”
It was fun for me to be there when my husband enjoyed these sights for the first time. We also encountered something new for both of us: a Waymo, a self-driving car. They are quite common not only in San Francisco but Los Angeles and Phoenix as well. I had heard a lot about them from a talk show I listen to that is based in LA. They work like Uber, with a similar app.
Mister Rain was initially and understandably freaked out to stop at a traffic light and find an empty car next to him. Later we were following a different Waymo when an emergency vehicle approached from behind. As my husband pulled over to allow the paramedics to pass, we both waited to see what the Waymo would do. Sure enough, its turn signal went on and it moved to the curb in front of us. As fascinated as that was for my husband, it was exciting for me. I know a lot of people are fearful of getting in a car without a driver, but I have spent the last decade aching to be behind the wheel of a vehicle. This is the next best thing for someone like myself who is unable to drive.
A cable car is synonymous with San Francisco, but I hope one day not long from now that a self-driving car will be synonymous with me.
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