What have I learned?

We finally made our way to the quintessential San Francisco landmark today – the Golden Gate Bridge. Tomorrow we pack up and leave this city, and head toward Las Vegas. I have to say I’m a bit sad to be leaving – San Francisco is a very interesting place, and I’m sure we missed all kinds of cool things we could’ve seen and visited. But that, of course, just means I’ll have to come back some day. (Provided California hasn’t fallen into the ocean before I have a chance to return…)

A few things I’ve learned about the city of San Francisco that I didn’t know before: First, it’s crazy to navigate. The streets downtown aren’t so much laid out as THROWN out in a haphazard fashion. It’s like some civil engineer was playing with pick-up sticks and liked the way they looked all tangled and crisscrossed on the floor. The fact that we were always able to find our way back to our hotel was a testament to the usefulness of an auto navigation system. Without the nav system, I’m pretty sure we’d still be wandering around strange side streets or going in circles or traveling the wrong way on one-way avenues. Maybe running over cyclists or taking up space in bus lanes. And we’d definitely be making all the locals really, really mad…

Second, San Francisco has GOT to have the most Starbucks per capita of just about any city anywhere. We took a walk today around the neighborhood – just walked a few blocks away from the hotel, then circled around and came back the other side of the block. It probably took about a half hour. And in that half hour, I counted six Starbucks. SIX – that means that every five minutes, you could walk into a brand new Starbucks and order another cup of coffee. If it’s like that throughout the entire city, you could be wired all day, constantly, and never worry about accidentally nodding off. I haven’t been to Seattle since I was a kid, but I imagine if any city might come close to that kind of Starbucks saturation, it would have to be Seattle…

Third – and this really surprises me – San Francisco does not seem to be a late night kind of town. Sure, they have a Starbucks on every corner, but if you want your coffee, you’d better get there before six o’clock, because everything shuts down. This was a realization we made the first night we were here and decided to visit the shopping center next door. There’s a four-block mall adjacent to the hotel, and I wanted to check it out. Unfortunately, just about every store was closed already. It was only seven o’clock, but things seem to start shutting down around early evening. I’m sure there must be some kind of crazy part of town that stays open all night, but it’s obviously not around here…

But I definitely hope to come back some day. And now that I know I can easily find coffee every five minutes (or maybe every thirty seconds if I drive…) I won’t give a second thought to making the journey. :)