Day 1: The Mission

After we picked up our bags, we took a BART train to San Francisco. The train took about 30 minutes, and after getting turned around and consulting our maps (thanks Dad!), we arrived at our hotel at around 11:30 Saturday night. Our room is small but nice, and it's not that expensive. We stayed up a bit to try to acclimate ourselves to PDT.

Once we woke up, we debated for a bit on how to spend our first day exploring the city. One thought was to take a bus tour of the entire city to get the big picture. Another option was to take a walking tour of The Mission. We decided to take advantage of the walking tour (free!) because The Mission is one of the neighborhoods our realtor recommended to us.

We left the hotel around 11 and walked back to the Powell Street station, about 3 blocks from our hotel. One confusing option presented itself here - we could take either a BART or a MUNI train from the station. They're two totally separate systems, with different routes and payment systems and everything. As we had already used the BART, we decided to take the MUNI which is the more confusing of the two systems. BART uses a fare card similar to the Washington Metro, so we were able to figure that out easily. With MUNI however, you just insert money ($1.50 in quarters) into the turnstile, then it lets you in and prints out a transfer ticket. This seems like a simple system in hindsight, but with no posting on what to do and several postings telling you to use the "H" option on the BART ticket machines, it definitely lead to us going in circles for a few minutes before finally asking how to do it. We paid our fares, hopped on a train, and got off in the Mission.

We stopped at Tartine Bakery which the Zagat Guide recommended (thanks Meghan and Cason!) for its "otherworldly Parisian pastries". They did not lie. We got there at about 11:30 and the line was out the door! Andy got a breakfast bun which looked like a cinnamon bun, but turned out to be covered with an orange blossom glaze rather than the normal sugar glaze. Allison got a chocolate croissant that was probably 6x3x3, beautifully buttery and filled with a bittersweet chocolate. We took the pastries to go, and walked toward Dolores Park, where our tour started.

About a dozen people showed up for the tour. Our guide focused a lot about the history of The Mission, from its founding by the Spanish to its importance in saving the city in the earthquake of 1906. But we got to spend two hours walking around and getting a feel for the place. We began at the golden fire hydrant that saved the Mission from burning after the 1906 earthquake, then walked down 20th street to Valencia, the main drag of the Mission. From there we wove around Valencia and saw the Mission Playground and the Women's Building, both with amazing murals. We ended our tour at the actual Mission Dolores. We are really happy we did this tour as it helped us see why our realtors recommended living on the West side of Valencia street and not the East side. Overall this area had a lot of flavor - it was very diverse, very unique, and very hipsterish.

After the tour, we were looking at our guide book and maps in front of a pizzeria that was closed (d'oh) when a guy on the street asked us if he could help us find anything. (As an aside, the random people we've encountered on the street so far have been much friendlier and helpful than out on the East Coast.) We asked where a good place to have lunch was, and he recommended a few places in the next couple of blocks. We ended up at a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant called Puerto Alegre. The food and margaritas were fantastic, and recharged our batteries for more exploration.

We then spent another couple of hours just walking along the streets of The Mission, and we ended up on the outskirts of Noe Valley. Our first impression was that Noe Valley was much nicer and more yuppified than The Mission, but we'll come back another day to get a better look at it.

Walking up and down the hills tired us out, so we headed back to Dolores Park to relax for a bit. We were surprised to see thousands of people doing exactly the same thing - enjoying the Sunday afternoon sunshine and relaxing in the park. It was far more crowded than any regular day we had seen on the Mall in DC, and we enjoyed people watching from a bench at the top of the park for a while. There were picnics, people sunning themselves, drinking beer, playing with their dogs; just hanging out. Allison asked a guy nearby if this was normal, and he said that any weekend when the weather is nice you will find the park buzzing with activity.

After that, we were invited to a barbecue at one of my former coworkers house in the Marina District. We took a bus there, and the bus drove through the heart of Chinatown. One of these days we'll need to take a walking tour there - it looks like there's plenty to explore there. The bus fare was also $1.50, and the buses are pretty quiet since they run on electricity - delivered through power lines running down the middle of the street.

We took a cab ride back from the Marina, and that may have just convinced us not to bring either of our cars here. :) It seemed like our driver was gunning the engine to get up the steep hills, and braking pretty hard for stop signs on the downhill streets. Allison thought it was like a cab ride in NY, but with mountains added. It wasn't nearly as frightening as our cab ride in Bangkok, but more adventurous than in any US city we've been in.

Overall, we had a great day. We liked The Mission (west of Valencia Street) and we'll keep it on the list of places for our apartment hunt. It was very laid-back, maybe a bit too hipsterish for us, but we definitely enjoyed it. Also, we're going to have monster calves in a few months due to walking up and down all of these hills!

The Mission 3.16.08