Believe It Or Not

Friday 2/10/2015.

Wasting time and having plans ruined really pisses us off. Especially when we’re on holiday and time is limited. It’s not like we can just nip back if we miss something. We planned to get our San Francisco trip off to a great start by visiting the Winchester Mystery House but it’s in San Jose, which is an hour south by car. Major problem – we don’t have a car. Us and public transport get on as well as police and criminals.

The journey by public transport seemed overly long and exceptionally complicated. We figured the best way was to find a tourist information centre and get a map. We’d bought our first ever smartphone (Stormborn the 1^st) for this trip, so were still old school and wanted a paper map. Us and technology have the same relationship as us and public transport. It’s definitely a marriage of convenience rather than love.

Finding the Hornet’s Nest

The USS Hornet was near the same pier as the Exploratorium so we could visit them at the same time. We got a tram to the pier and ended up with the most impatient tram driver ever. He refused to go directly to the stops, instead beckoning people to come to him if he was stopped at lights, and motioning people off before the stops. Another driver who clearly hates his job. We refused to die on public transport on our first day in Vegas, and we were damned if we were going that way in San Francisco too.

We decided to look for somewhere to eat, but after walking for a while, we realised we were in the financial district. Clearly the rich live off money rather than food. We’d passed some food vans so queued for ages in the sun for Neen to get something to eat. We just ate our snacks.

Intrepid Explorers

We made our way to the Exploratorium. It was very much like Techniquest back home. We had a go at a few attractions but were very conscious of the fact the USS Hornet closed at 4 and we didn’t get to the Exploratorium until 1:30 p.m. We left at 2:45 p.m. and headed to pier 3. The ship wasn’t there. We returned to the Exploratorium, bought a map for $6 and asked the staff where the Hornet was. They thought it was at Pier 45, so we caught a tram there.

Reader, the Hornet wasn’t there.

This ship was harder to find than the Marie Celeste.

We went into McDonald’s to steal their wi-fi and had the misfortune to see the cleaner mopping the toilet floors then dragging the same mop out to wash the restaurant floors without dunking it back in the bucket. Appetites ruined. The San Francisco Dungeons and Madame Tussauds were right by Pier 45, so we decided to go there. Unfortunately, we’d left our tickets in our apartment as we’d planned to go there on Sunday. Lynx tried to find the tickets in her email, but the email didn’t go back far enough. She tried the deleted folder then synched the messages to go back a month. Twenty minutes later, it still hadn’t synched. Remember what we said about us and technology? At this rate, we’d be filing for divorce.

Odds and Sods

In the end, we went to Ripley’s Believe It or Not Odditorium. It was on our list anyway and it was either that or waste the entire day. It was really cool in there. They had models made out of car tyres, car parts and matchsticks. There was a shrunken torso and a video explaining how tribes did the shrunken heads, which was fascinating. How did they learn how to do that? What made them think ‘that’s a nice head, I’ll shrink that.’ If Ripley could turn his odd collections into a money-making museum, maybe we could too. Though our collection is sadly lacking in shrunken heads, and over-compensating in decorative skulls.

Walking with Ghosts

Neen found a ghost tour that started at 7 p.m. outside the Queen Anne hotel. Maybe this day could be salvaged after all. We left Ripley’s at 6:30, so swallowing our penny-pinching objections, jumped in a taxi. The tram would have been too slow. We got there with 15 minutes to spare and went inside the hotel. It was freezing! We’d brought jumpers with us but didn’t bring hoodies or jackets because we didn’t know we’d be doing a ghost tour, or that it would be so cold. San Francisco feels a lot like our summers, so it was like being back home with about 25 C in the day but chilly at night. Much better than Vegas.

We stayed in the hotel, keeping warm until the ghost tour started. The guide, Jim Fassbender, very kindly asked the hotel if they had anything in the lost and found. We hoped nobody had died in the clothes. He managed to get Neen a hoodie. He then returned to his car two blocks away and got a massive varsity jacket and a silver anorak. Neen took the jacket, Cat had the hoodie, Lynx had the anorak. The hoodie was ok, the other two were terrible, with the silver anorak definitely taking first place in the ugly, unfashionable, unflattering awards. But they were warm and we were eternally grateful. We started as the most stylish people on the walk then ended up with the fashion police having a warrant out for our arrest.

Street Walkers

The walk was brilliant. Jim was very funny and entertaining. It’s one of the best ghost walks we’ve been on, and we’ve been on a lot. The walk started in the hotel, which was built in 1890 and used to be a school for girls. It’s rumoured to be haunted by the former headteacher, Miss Mary Lake. She haunts room 410, which used to be her office. The hotel inside is beautiful, and just our style with red walls and dark wood.

We walked around Pacific Heights, which is a nice, residential area and has a lot of haunted places, some of which were on our list. It finished at 10 p.m. then we stayed behind as Jim wanted to tell us some stories about Alcatraz. He’s friends with some of the rangers there, so was giving us places where we could lose the tour. This is the kind of inside information we like to know. We returned the offending fashion items and walked back to our apartment. Once the wind had died down, it wasn’t too cold.

We returned to our mission on how to get to Winchester Mystery House. The train seems to be the easiest option. We relayed our frustrations to our mum, who usually has good ideas on how to solve our problems. She suggested we invite our uncle’s friend, Marcia. She lives in California and has a car. Marcia was more than happy to come. We meet up with Marcia every time she comes to Wales so we were looking forward to spending time with her again.

Read Day 2.