San Francisco on Foot: A Two-Day Whirlwind
San Francisco has a way of testing you before it rewards you—fog, hills, a transit system with as many acronyms as sense. This trip delivered the test nearly on schedule, starting with an alarm that jolted me out of bed.
Getting There, Barely
My trio of alarms (watch, phone, and Apple Homepod) went off at 5:00 a.m., which left just enough time to take my customary cold shower, eat, and put on my shoes before my Lyft driver, Jason, arrived. From there, Frontier Airlines got me to SFO with only a slight delay.
Andrea’s journey was less polite about it. Her flight out of Porto left on time, but toward the end of the first leg, as the plane descended, her seat neighbor got sick—and, in that special kind of solidarity nobody asks for, so did she. Things didn’t improve in Newark: she got in too late to make her connection and had to be rebooked on a later United flight, finally landing at 6:30 p.m., still a little queasy. Meanwhile, thanks to my iPad Pro, I was able to get a bunch of digital work done at SFO while waiting.
We took BART into the city, then a Waymo the rest of the way to the hotel—Andrea’s first ride in a self-driving car. It was a smooth, silent introduction to San Francisco’s favorite party trick. It was also, in hindsight, the more expensive and slower way to get there—apparently, in San Francisco, a Waymo costs quite a bit more than an Uber or Lyft, unlike in Phoenix. And since there were two of us, one of those ride share options directly from the airport would have beaten BART+Waymo on price, ease, and time. Ah, well. This was the more novel experience for sure.
We were staying at the Hotel Majestic, considered San Francisco’s oldest continuously operating hotel. Built in 1902, it was one of the few structures left standing after the 1906 earthquake and the fires that followed—the flames stopped just two blocks away, at Van Ness. The place still wears its Victorian bones proudly: creaky charm, clean rooms, and a location a few blocks from Japantown.
We walked over to Japantown for dinner. The restaurant Claude had suggested had already closed for the night, so we pivoted to Izumi Sushi in the Japan Center malls instead—fast, unfussy, and exactly what two travelers running on airplane/airport food needed.
A 30-Kilometer Day on Foot
The next morning, Andrea and I set out to see San Francisco the athlete way: on foot, for more than 30 kilometers, which is either an ambitious sightseeing strategy or a mild form of self-punishment, depending on how your healthy are your knees (ours are good).
I actually augmented that with an easy, solo run through Lafayette Park, where the most notable local wildlife wasn’t wildlife at all—it was Teslas. They seemed to be the dominant species on San Francisco streets, and more than a few wore bumper stickers airing some very specific feelings about their manufacturer’s owner. FELON. F ELON. One driver’s sticker read, literally, in my defense, I bought it before I knew what he was like.
Say what you will about Tesla owners; a fair number of them have developed a healthy sense of humor about their commute.
Breakfast back at the hotel was a proper spread—fruit, eggs, a waffle maker—served in a large room with tablecloths that made the continental breakfast feel like an occasion rather than an obligation.
Then we started walking, and kept walking. San Francisco’s yellow cabs, all Toyota Priuses, share one taxi number: (415) 333-3333. Andrea and I got a laugh out of it—it reminded us of a Spanish insurance company’s ad campaign built around the phone number 555 55 55, which suggests that marketers everywhere eventually land on the same idea: make the number impossible to forget.
We passed rows of colorful, immaculately restored three-story townhouses on the way to the Panhandle. Several of these homes were perched on streets steep enough to double as ski runs, before reaching Haight-Ashbury.
Haight Street delivered on its reputation—tie-dye energy still intact half a century later. We stopped for coffee, admired a mural dedicated to the neighborhood’s identity, and paid our respects at the Jimi Hendrix Red House.
A block later, we found the famous pair of legs suspended above the Piedmont Boutique at 1452 Haight Street—still hanging around, no pun avoidable.
From there we drifted into Golden Gate Park. Near the Conservatory of Flowers, giant LOVE-shaped blocks gave us an easy excuse for a photo.
Deeper into the park, we found Gillie and Marc’s Rabbitwoman and Dogman sculptures—bronze figures I’d already seen versions of scattered around London, which made them feel less like a discovery and more like running into an old acquaintance who gets around.
We wandered past a stand of redwoods, tall enough to make the fog feel like it belonged there.
San Francisco also still has a surprising number of Smart cars puttering around, holdouts from a brand that stopped selling new ones in the U.S. and Canada after the 2019 model year. Somewhere out there, a very loyal owner refuses to let go.
We paid our way into the Japanese Tea Garden, where we had soup, edamame, and mochi at a small table—until one of the local squirrels decided the edamame was communal property and made off with a piece.
We circled a Buddha statue and crossed the garden’s round bridge, the kind that looks more decorative than functional until you’re the one climbing it.
The Palace of Fine Arts came next, its rotunda as photogenic as ever, followed by Crissy Field, where a large “Escape from Alcatraz” sign and rows of bike racks were staged for that weekend’s triathlon.
Seeing the sign brought back my own Alcatraz Challenge Aquathlon from 2009, when I swam from Alcatraz to Crissy Field and then ran over the Golden Gate Bridge and back—a considerably less leisurely way to see the same view.
Near Marina Green, a Porsche 911 Cabriolet sat parked like it knew it was the best-looking thing on the block.
We continued past the Ghirardelli factory to Fisherman’s Wharf, where a colony of sea lions wrestled and napped in equal measure, apparently unbothered by their audience.
Lunch was at Boudin, home of San Francisco’s famous sourdough, followed by a detour to the Pepper Paradise Hot Sauce & More shop, where Andrea stocked up on a handful of mini hot sauces to smuggle back to Spain in her suitcase.
At Pier 39, a mural of the state of California gave Andrea one more photo backdrop before we pushed on to North Beach.
Chinatown was in full swing—busy sidewalks, brisk business, and a fair number of people still wearing masks. On Nob Hill, some fellow tourists actually stopped to ask us for directions to Chinatown, which felt like a small victory for looking like we knew what we were doing.
Along the way, San Francisco’s robotaxi rivalry made itself obvious. Waymo’s white domes are inescapable at this point, but we also spotted Amazon’s next-generation Zoox vehicles undergoing testing, plus a Ford Mustang Mach-E fitted out by Wayve, the British self-driving startup, quietly running its own autonomous software through city streets. Three different companies, three different bets on the same driverless future, all sharing the same potholes.
By evening, our legs had logged the day’s more than 30 kilometers:
An Evening in the Castro
We took an Uber to the Castro District for dinner at Kasa Indian Eatery, which more than made up for the day’s mileage. Afterward, we stopped for drinks at the Edge, a bar that filled up quickly as the night went on—Andrea was the only woman in the room for a long stretch, and the entertainment, let’s say, leaned enthusiastically into the neighborhood’s spirit.
In fact, as we were leaving, there were three guys (presumably employees) dancing on the bar top. The first one—which Andrea nicknamed “the bear,” had a round beer belly, no butt, and was wearing only a thong. The second could have passed for a female. The third was a short, skinny dude wearing as much (or as little) as the first. By that time, all seats in the bar had filled.
We wound down the night at Twin Peaks Tavern, a cash-only spot with a friendlier price list and a considerably calmer atmosphere—apart from a certain calendar hanging in the back room next to us that left little to the imagination. From there, an Uber carried us back to the Hotel Majestic, closing out a day that had asked a great deal of our feet and delivered on nearly everything else.
Civic Center, Errands, and a Farewell to the City
Our last morning started early, with a 6:30 a.m. solo run of two and a half loops around Lafayette Park, followed by a hotel-gym session of dumbbell squats, deadlifts, shoulder presses, and shrugs—the kind of morning that makes the rest of the day’s walking feel optional rather than mandatory. Breakfast with Andrea followed: a two-egg-and-cheese omelet, orange slices, an apple, and a quarter of a Nutella-topped waffle Andrea had made herself. Then it was packing, checkout, and leaving our luggage at the hotel to explore the Civic Center before hitting the road.
Outside City Hall, a protest against gun violence was underway, signs and all—among them a few reading “more love, less hate,” which is either a political statement or simply good general advice, depending on your mood that day.
From there we wandered to the Dyson Store, which hadn’t opened yet, so we killed time at Macy’s (no Dyson stock to be found there either), the Apple Store, and Sunglass Hut, where Andrea tried on a pair of Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer (Gen 2) smart glasses and liked them enough that I’d end up buying myself a pair for my birthday a few weeks later.
We ducked into a small Italian shop two blocks from the hotel on Sutter and Van Ness for ginger ale and chips—the first crack in what would become a day of eating less than virtuously.
By the time the Dyson Store opened, Andrea picked up a travel hairdryer built to run on the local voltage of wherever she happens to be, a genuinely useful upgrade for someone who packs for a different country every few weeks.
We made one more stop at a sunglass shop near Union Square, where Andrea had me try on some Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer (Gen 2) sunglasses to confirm her suspicion that they looked good on me. A few weeks later, I’d get a pair as a birthday present, just in time for heading back to Europe (impressions are here).
Half Moon Bay and a Detour to Google
A few hours later, we took an Uber to SFO, where we picked up a white Buick Encore GX from Hertz. We drove down to Half Moon Bay and stopped at a couple of beaches along the way. At the second one, we sat on a bench and ate a salad and eggs—compliments of a food voucher United had issued Andrea for her earlier travel troubles, which felt like a fitting bit of closure.
Drinks at the Half Moon Bay Brewery turned into a small comedy of errors. Wanting a table with a view meant ordering at least an appetizer, the brewery had dozens of types of beer but none that were alcohol-free, and my request for grilled artichoke was denied and arrived deep-fried instead. I dug out what artichoke I could from the batter and left most of the breading behind, joking that they figured out a way how to make perfectly healthy artichokes into a heart detonator.
We closed out the peninsula side of the trip with a stop at the Google Visitor Experience in Mountain View. It was a fittingly Silicon Valley bookend to two days spent riding in, walking past, and occasionally getting startled by some of the most advanced machines the San Francisco Bay Area has to offer.
