TEMPTED BY THE CHEAP
airfare displayed on
my computer screen,
I wondered aloud if
we could, or should, plan
a trip to San Francisco
three weeks out.

LAST-MINUTE FUN
One family’s
quick trip to
California BY ERICA RIMLINGER
28 WashingtonFAMILY JUNE 2019
“Sure. We could finally go to Yosemite
National Park,” my husband, Kevin, said.

I’ve visited San Francisco often enough
to know its summer streets are crammed
with tourists shivering in the cold weather
they didn’t expect. And Yosemite? At the
last minute?
“Impossible,” my friend, Felicia Sapp,
asserted. “You’ll never find a place to stay.”
Except for low airfare, the trip had noth-
ing going for it: wrong season, no advance
planning and a one-week time limit. It
would be our 14-year-old son Max’s first
visit to California, and I worried his first
impression of this iconic city would be one
of pervasive fog.

I’d discounted, however, one advantage:
expert advice. For the past 15-plus years,
San Francisco-based friends have shared
their apartment keys and California know-
how. Felicia, an emergency-room doctor,
is an avid Yosemite hiker who recently
returned from a 16-day adven-
ture on the John Muir Trail.

Her husband, Barry Beach, an
artist and art professor, is the
biggest San Francisco foodie I
know. And Robert Strong, who
grew up in Frederick County, is
a comedian-magician-performer and Ted
Talk-er whose phone never stops ringing.

My husband and I call him “the mayor” for
his knowledge of everyone and everything in
San Francisco. With these friends in mind,
I bought the tickets. The following local
advice guided our spontaneous trip.

Think Outside the Square
We lost the option of crashing for free
in San Francisco when our friends
reluctantly assumed that mantle of



adulthood — purchasing a home. All suc-
cessful professionals with respectable
family incomes, not one of them could
afford a home inside the city limits.

The tech industry renaissance that
gave the world Google and Uber gave
San Franciscans a mushrooming housing
market that recently pushed the median
home price to $1.3 million. “Rent and real
estate,” Robert says, “are the topics of
99 percent of locals’ conversations. The
other 1 percent is about the long weekend
brunch lines.”
We found a room in town at the inexpen-
sive, quirky, 1920s-era Mayflower Hotel. We
wanted to stay near the Powell Street cable
car/Chinatown/North Beach area. Gener-
ally, a hotel in Union Square will suffice,
but we didn’t need to stay at a chain hotel
parked amid chain stores in this crowded
tourist hub. It was probably too late to
book one of those anyway. The Mayflower
sits at the base of Nob Hill, closer to the
Tenderloin District than most tour guides
recommend. Felicia makes a point worth
repeating: Despite its tasty name, the Ten-
derloin District is home to tent cities, crime
and sidewalk feces that are probably human,
but why linger and find out?
Sure, the Mayflower’s old-fashioned ele-
vator could fit two people and a suitcase,
only if the two people worked cooperatively
to bend Tetris-like around the suitcase, and
electrical outlets were maddeningly scarce.

But we were happy with our find. From our
hotel, we could walk three blocks east down
Bush Street to Powell — and ride the cable
car without waiting in line.

is perhaps inevitable the fog has its own Ins-
tagram page, answering to the name “Karl.”
Sample update: “I woke up hungry so I ate
the whole city.”)
After we reached the Palace of Fine Arts,
our guide, who feared neither traffic nor
tourist hordes, led us down Lombard Street,
the “crookedest street in the world,” visited
by 17,000 people per day in peak months. All
17,000 appeared to be videotaping me as I
inched, squeaking in terror, down the plum-
meting hill with my Segway brake jammed
into my ribs.

Having covered a lot of tourist ground
quickly (and for me, fearfully), we bought
chowder on the wharf and dodged roving
gangs of thieving seagulls. One thuggish
bird plucked an entire bread bowl from
a woman’s hands and flew away with it as
she screamed. Max loved the (free!) Musee
Mechanique with its collection of antique
arcade games.

From the [Mayflower]
Hotel, we could walk three
blocks east down Bush
Street to Powell — and
ride the cable car without
waiting in line.

Eat Your Way through the City
Barry’s devotion to food is the reason I
befriended him. When he and Felicia moved
to San Francisco, he knew he’d reached his
true home: the city that invented the farm-
to-table movement. He advises cramming
in as many meals as you can.

In Chinatown, Barry and Felicia recom-
mended Hunan House, with its tiny, warm
dining room packed with Chinese fami-
lies. Max and Kevin, adventurous eaters,
perused authentic offerings like “special pig
knuckles” and “chili oil pork intestines,”
while I stuck with eggplant and rice. In
North Beach, there’s some of the best pizza
I’ve ever eaten at Tony’s Napoletana Pizza
and Il Casaro Pizzeria and Mozzarella Bar,
If you start at Union Square, you’ll stand in focaccia at Liguria Bakery and cannolis
an interminable line to ride the cable car. bigger than our heads at Stella’s Bakery. In
From Bush Street, and all stops on Powell the Mission District for our last night, we
north of Union Square, you can just stand headed for Valencia Street, sampling from
on the corner and hop on when the car Dandelion Chocolate, Bi-Rite Creamery, the
stops mid-intersection. You may not get to Tartine Bakery and Pancho Villa Taqueria.

sit down, but Robert points out, “taking fun
videos and action selfies” is the fun part.

My son concurred, hanging outside the car
( just like the garbage collectors he revered The Golden Gate Bridge is not part of
in his youth) while Instagramming. At $7 Golden Gate Park. The bridge is part of
per person — cash and exact change only the Golden Gate National Recreation Area,
— Robert calls it “overpriced, but worth it.” which includes the bridge, the Presidio and
At sfcityguides.org, there are free walk- Alcatraz and spans the bay into the Marin
ing tours. But our teenager wanted to ride Headlands and Muir Woods. Alcatraz
a Segway, so off we Segged our way through requires reservations weeks in advance. Be
Fisherman’s Wharf to Ghirardelli Square, careful when you book: Only the national
along the waterfront for fog-obscured recreational area’s official vendor is allowed
almost-views of the Golden Gate Bridge. (It to dock ■
Our teenager wanted to
ride a Segway, so off we
Segged our way through
Fisherman’s Wharf to
Ghirardelli Square.

Skip the Cable Car Line
Know Your Golden Gates
IMAGES COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES
Our guide, who feared
neither traffic nor tourist
hordes, led us down
Lombard Street, the
‘crookedest street in
the world.’
WashingtonFAMILY.com 29