The kids are not the biggest fans of city holidays especially if it involves some amount of walking. There were going to be some challenges keeping them entertained in the next two days. We started Day 3 with a walk through Chinatown to the Transamerica Pyramid (TP). Being from Asia, the kids did not find Chinatown that interesting. It felt too much like home for them. I would have loved to take in the sights and sounds of this historical part of the city. We took a few quick photos and marched on.
I did not visit TP when I was in San Francisco many years ago. Come to think of it, I didn't do many things on that trip. And after more than quarter of a century, I finally see it, all of 10 minutes. The "What so interesting?" question came up a few times from the kids over the next 2 days, which made be laugh. They did however enjoy the Transamerica Redwood Park next to the iconic building. So for those who don't plan to venture out of San Francisco, you can see the redwoods right here.
We went to the Ferry Building for lunch. Many of the eateries did not have sitting space so we decided on The Slanted Door, a Vietnamese restaurant. Although my son wasn't so keen to eat in Chinatown, he was quite pleased to find Beef Noodle Soup on the menu. The helpful waiter said that the soup was quite large and customers normally ordered to share for two. As the Beef Noodle Soup was in the Soup section of the menu rather than the Mains, we asked him if there were lots of noodles in the soup. He said there is quite a lot so we ordered three of those and a main for my daughter. The waiter sounded slightly confused with our choice of order, I think because we were ordering 3 starters which would have been enough to share for 6 persons. But it turned out to be our regular order of pho by Asian standards so we were really happy. Slightly different cultural understanding between us and the waiter on whether Beef Noodle Soup is a starter or a main.
After lunch, we walked from the Ferry Building to Pier 39 to look at the sea lions. The kids were counting the number of piers they walked passed and were relieved to discover that the pier numbers skip. I loved the buildings at the piers, the sea view, the view of the north end of the city and the trams that run along the Embarcadero . At Fisherman's Wharf, my wife tried the clam chowder at Boudin and we visited its museum. After a decent amount of walking for the kids, we headed back to the hotel for an early night. Later in the evening, I took a walk up to Coit Tower, which offers an amazing night view of the city.
My eldest son arrived on Day 4 morning and we were excited to see him. He tried to catch a nap but wasn't very successful so after breakfast we headed out. My wife stayed in for the day because she caught a bug. We headed to Market Street for the cable car. I was expecting a long queue but it turned out to be okay at this time of the year. I got tickets in advance on the Muni app the night before. We stood at the back of the cable car and got a great view of the city behind us. We spotted Swensen's first ice-cream store on Hyde Street before we disembarked at Lombard Street to stroll up and down the most winding street in the world, well next to it at least. After that we went for a walk on the Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of Fine Arts, where we saw a car theft; two car related encounters in 4 days! Later we went back to Pier 39 for lunch and to show my eldest son the sea lions. Another early night for the kids as we were heading off to Hawaii the next morning. I took a stroll down California Street to the Ferry Building for some night photos and used the extra cable car ticket that I had leftover to get back to the hotel.
All in all, I think the kids moderately enjoyed San Francisco, which was better than I had expected. At the very least they could better relate to the names of some items on Swensen's menu when we had dinner there last weekend. They also enjoyed reading a children's book on the Golden Gate Bridge which we bought from the Welcome Centre.
Next stop - Oahu, Hawaii.
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