Panama Update #101
December 19, 2008
After 3 days of doing errands in San Francisco, I had completed all of the things I wanted to do, so today I decided to do some tourist activities and Nikki was able to join me. We walked down to Fisherman's Wharf and along the way stopped at a tea store where they make samples for you of exotic and expensive teas. At Fisherman's Wharf we rented bikes and went along the trail to the Golden Gate Bridge. We didn't go all the way to the bridge, but saw some nice sites along the way such as a view of Alcatraz and the Palace of Fine Arts. It was a beautiful sunny day here but windy and cooler than average, maybe about 50 for a high. We returned the bikes and took a cable car to Chinatown where we found a vegetarian Chinese restaurant. From there we took a bus to a huge Old Navy Store on Market Street in the shopping district and Nikki found a few things to buy. After that we walked back to the Youth Hostel. Nikki has a meeting in Berkeley tomorrow (Saturday) so the plan is for me to meet her there later in the day and go to an Ethiopian Restaurant. I may go early and rent another bike and explore around there in the afternoon.
It has been about 30 years since I have spent time looking around SF, but my impression this trip is that it is a city that works. The population is large enough and dense enough that the public transportation system here is great. The buses come so often that you don't need to check a schedule and they are only $1.50 to ride. We plan to take the BART system to Berkeley tomorrow. This is in contrast to Panama City, where the traffic is terrible and the public transportation does not work well. There also seems to be a vibrant, open, fluid, and accepting energy here with a large diversity of people. It is a real international city like Panama City is. There are a lot of street people, but even they (the ones that are awake) seem happy somehow. It is easy to see why people like it here. They have something for everyone and more.
We are scheduled to leave for Spokane early on Sunday AM. They have been having some big storms there and had to close the airport a couple of days ago, so whether we go there is a day to day decision and we will have to call the airlines again tomorrow night to check the status. We found out that Southwest will refund flight amounts, if necessary, without a hassle, which makes it very different than the other larger airlines.
