Friday – July 17, 2015
We had a tasty breakfast at Joanie’s Happy Days Diner then took the cable car to the Cable Car Museum. This is more of an operation and repair facility than a museum and it’s great fun to see the cables, which pull the cars up and down the streets, churn quickly around huge wheels.
Afterwards, we climbed up and down several steep hills to San Francisco’s Chinatown. The streets reminded me of La Paz, Bolivia but at sea level.
Our destination was lunch at R&G Lounge on Kearny Street which several websites rated as the best Chinese food in San Francisco.
Oxtail Stew with Rice and Greens
After lunch, we strolled across Portsmouth Square Park where groups of elderly people played cards and other Chinese games. On a bench near the pavilion, a quartet of musicians played traditional instruments while a woman sang in Chinese.
Our destination was the landmark Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory located in Ross Alley. It opened in 1962 and welcomes visitors to observe workers making the famous sweets. There are only three employees who make 20,000 cookies daily. They charge .50 cents for taking photographs. The long line at the door limited our time inside the factory.
Then we took a bus to the Marrakech Magic Theater on O’Farrell Street to see magician Peter Morrison’s 6:30 show. His slight-of-hand and magic tricks were very entertaining. The theater is in the basement of a Moroccan restaurant and adds to the mystical ambiance of the show. Peter Morrison is ‘warming up’ the audience in the photo below:
On the way back to Fisherman’s Wharf, we visited the H&M store on Powell Street to comparison shop and we stopped off at Union Square. The palm trees were fuller and bigger than I remembered.
We waited in line for a cable car and finally hopped on to ride one back to our hotel. It was exhilarating speeding up and down the hills as the sun set and the lights of San Francisco twinkled.
Back at the Argonaut Hotel, everyone was hungry so we had late night take-out from In-and-Out Burger and ate in the room. It was a fun day!