San Francisco was a much different vibe than the rest of their trip. There were more typically touristy things to be done in the city. The first thing they did on their second day in the city was take a hop-on-hop-off tour. They bought tickets for a bus tour, but the tour busses were actually old cable cars that had been turned into busses. Their bus driver was a woman named Joan and she had lived in the city her entire life. She knew a lot about the city. She also liked to make up her own route because she wanted people on her tour to see different things.
“Joan is taking an awful lot of risks with this tour bus,” Suze observed as the bottom of the bus scraped along the pavement coming down a particularly steep hill.
“I’m real glad these brakes work,” Frank returned.
The five of them were sitting at the front of the bus where there were gold railings instead of windows. It was colder in San Francisco than it had been in the rest California and the wind was quite strong. Although, Joan and their guide Julie kept telling them how lucky they were to have come when there was such warm weather.
“It’s much colder than this normally,” Julie informed them during a lull in the tour. “So where are you guys from anyway?”
“Southern Ontario,” Sybil answered somewhat flatly.
“Oh,” Julie replied. “Well, not that cold.”
At one point, Joan took a hard left into Chinatown through the gates and Ye was certain they weren’t going to make it. They nearly took down an older gentleman praying under an umbrella on the street corner.
“This is a real narrow street,” Frank remarked, gripping the edge of his seat next to Suze. Ye looked at them across the aisle.
“Joan has made some ambitious choices, that’s for sure,” she agreed.
They took the tour all the way through the city without hopping off so that they could get a feel of where they wanted to go and what they wanted to see for longer. As they crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, a brisk wind coming at them off the ocean through the open sides of the cable car turned tour bus, Ye wrapped her denim jacket closer to her body.
“Next time we take this tour, let’s sit in the enclosed part as we go over the bridge,” she suggested to the others. Suze’s teeth were literally chattering.
“Good call,” Chris nodded at her.
The next time, it was worse.
When they got off the tour bus the first time, they took a break to have ice cream for lunch and then hopped on Joan’s tour bus again. They hopped off at the Painted Ladies and made Full House jokes. Suze, Ye, and Sybil took a selfie in front the Painted Ladies and Suze posted it to her Instagram with the caption “Cut it out #ohmyLanta”. Frank immediately took a selfie with Chris and posted it to his own Instagram with the caption “You got it, dude” to see which of them would get the most likes.
They hopped back on a different tour bus. It was a different layout than the other one though, so there was an enclosed area in the middle of the bus, but there was an irritating couple who had been on their last bus sitting there already. In the interest of not dealing with them ever again, Ye lead them to the back of the bus, which happened to be even more open than the last bus they’d been on. Plus, instead of regular bus seats, there were wooden benches facing outward. So the five of them were facing the open window completely as they entered Presidio Park and approached the Golden Gate Bridge for a second time. The woman from the irritating couple came back and slid into the end of the bench next to Sybil to take some photos.
“Oh my God, guys, it’s really cold back here,” she said, shivering as she snapped some pictures with her phone.
“Oh, is it?” Sybil returned, clearly aiming to play it off like they hadn’t noticed or didn’t care because the alternative was to admit that they were only sitting back there to avoid her.
“I think we’ve accidentally reinforced a Canadian stereotype,” Suze commented after the woman had gone.
This time across the bridge, it was downright freezing. The wind coming off the ocean hit them directly in the face.
“Jesus fuck!” Sybil yelled to the ocean. Suze took a photo of all of them shivering together, wind-blown and squinty-eyed. Sybil’s hair ended up in Chris’ mouth for the photo.
“Yeah, that seems right,” he said as he picked it out.
After they’d gone and forth across the bridge in the wind, the next stop they took was to get off at Lombard Street. It was about a forty-five degree incline for at least five blocks. Halfway up, Ye felt like she might never be able to walk again.
“Well this is definitely more difficult than our hike was,” she breathed heavily.
“Again, not really a hike,” Chris pointed out and Ye was pleased to note that he was just as breathless.
They walked down the other side of Lombard Street, the pretty side that winded and had lovely gardens and steps built into the cement sidewalks. Then they continued walking until they reached the North Beach area. They had pizza at an Italian restaurant and then returned to their hotel where they got drunk off of moscato that they’d bought at a winery in Paso Robles.
In the morning, they headed to the piers to watch the sea lions, which also smelled, though slightly less than the elephant seals at Ragged Point. Then they went to wait in line for their tour to Alcatraz Island. Standing in line, Ye encountered the funniest family she’d ever known. They were a ginger couple and their three children. The eldest son listened to his iPod the entire time they were waiting and kept to himself. The middle child, a boy named Antonio, spent the duration of the time waiting in line being tormented by his ginger younger sister Francesca. Francesca was ferocious and demonic. She kept shoving Antonio into the backs of strangers’ legs. Her dad literally said the words “she’s such a little fucker” in a hushed whisper to her mother. He also said the words “I know it’s funny, but you must stop” to her, which Ye and her friends found particularly hilarious. Suze liked it so much that she used it as the caption to their ferry selfie.
Alcatraz was incredibly cool. The island had been turned into a nature reserve and there were posters everywhere advertising for its natural beauty and wonderful wildlife. They were encouraged several times, by both park rangers and the posters alike, to take some time to explore the island and see nature at its finest and most exotic.
“They can’t fool me,” Chris said at one point, looking at one of the posters about different bird species that could be seen inhabiting the island. “That’s a seagull.”
As they were heading toward the prison from the ferry, they passed Francesca sitting on a bench getting a stern talking to from her mother.
“Francesca’s going to get left in one of the cells,” Frank remarked as they walked past.
“Francesca would be running the whole damn island within a week,” Sybil returned.
They spent the rest of the day walking up and down a billion hills so that Ye’s hips ached by the time they got back to the hotel. The five of them gathered in Ye, Sybil, and Suze’s hotel room with the king bed to take part in Suze and Frank’s final California broadcast and then watched HGTV while they drank yet more wine.
In the morning, they got sourdough bagels from Boudin and then ordered an uber to take them to the airport. The problem was that there was a protest march occurring in the middle of the city, and since it wasn’t actually that big of a city, there was an astounding amount of traffic. Squished in the back of the uber between Chris and Suze, Ye began to worry that they might miss their flight. But then they finally hit the expressway and their driver took off like he was trying to win the Indie 500. Ye grabbed onto Chris and Suze’s arms like that would save her life if they hit something as they flew down the highway.
They made it to the airport in time and then waited for their flight. By the time they landed in Roehampton, it was past midnight. All five of them returned to Suze and Sybil’s apartment on the night bus full of weirdos and people who worked shifts. Ye crawled into bed with Suze while Chris went to Sybil’s room and Frank took the couch. In the morning, Sybil made scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast and Frank marvelled at their couch.
“Literally the most comfortable piece of furniture I have ever slept on,” he announced.
“Right?” Suze replied enthusiastically.
“I swear to God, this couch is more comfortable than my bed,” he continued.
“Buy a new bed, man,” Chris told him with a frown.
The Roehampton Chronicle 