Stepping up some Stairs

December 31st 2016

Climbing stairs is definitely a part of the hilly San Francisco experience — and that's why we take some time today to do just that. We start from Chinatown and up the Filbert Steps that should take us to Telegraph Hill.
The steps are built just like every other street — there are signs, fire hydrants, and entryways branching off to either side, leading to the fancy homes of the neighbourhood through whose pretty front yards the steps lead us.
Up at the Telegraph Hill, we take a look at the white Coit Tower and the corresponding queue of people and decide not to head up there. Instead, we take in the view of the Bay Bridge and the San Francisco bay.

When we're walking down the steps again, I realize that we haven't yet spotted the mythical parking meter of the steps — Jan gives me an annoyed look and we walk back up the Greenwich Steps (same thing), Jan grumbling with every step.

In an overgrown garden, we meet the guardian of the treasure: An older woman doing her tai chi exercises for what feels like forever in exactly the spot where I assume the mythical meter to be. We wait patiently and indeed find parking meter number 568 47610 which, overgrown with plants, stands next to a bench in the garden besides the steps. Why? Good question — no way to park around here, at least.
Note to self: A tai chi session takes about half an hour.
After our early-morning stair climbing is done, we gravitate back towards Chinatown — we have some lunch, barely miss the opening hours of a tiny temple, find a milk tea shop and get to see the architecture of the neighbourhood in the light of day. Fun fact: The style in which most of the buildings here are designed was already outdated back in China for several hundred years when the city was built. And a nice little detail: The pagodas reserved for religious buildings and temples in China usually house banks here in America. Go figure. ^[ref]
In the buildings themselves we find countless interesting small shops — from cheap stuff all the way to jewellery and chandeliers and a store for Chinese art and calligraphy masquerading as a gallery. In the basement of the chaotic 'gallery' we find a young girl sitting amidst hundreds of paintings, sketching something while her father carries picture frames around in a back room.
The next day

We got some tickets for 13:30 at the Museum of Modern Art and nothing to do before that — sounds doable, right? We still manage to only get there b 13:50, the mid-day breakfast took a bit too long I guess.
The SF MOMA is the most visited museum on our journey so far: There are long queues at all of the counters and I'm glad that we reserved our tickets ahead online. The exhibitions show high-class artworks, some of which have made appearances in my art exams, but — compared to other museums — rather little unconventional / new / contemporary stuff.
For Jan, the MOMA scores with fast, free internet — that's something.

We were planning to head over to Golden Gate Park afterwards — but when we leave the museum, the sun is already very low in the sky and transport to the park turns out to be more complicated than thought. The winter doesn't mix well with our sleep rhythm.
Instead, we take a seat in one of the pretty historic street cars and drive over to Ghiradelli Square once more.
Eventually we start the long bus drive back home to Dublin street and our apartment. There, we do some real cooking for once — semi-homemade burgers with fries from the freezer.

After we took to the vacuum cleaner ourselves, cleaned most of the apartment, and washed our sheets, it's much easier to feel at home at our place — if only there wasn't that annoying weed smell...