Day Three continued: We went along to the Beach Blanket Babylon cabaret in the evening (thanks Richard, thanks Haysey) and enjoyed it enormously. Hillary Clinton and Tina Turner were my favorite send-ups. Amazing to think they have reinvented that show for more than 30 years and it’s still topical and funny.
Day Four: We had a lazy day today, wandering along the waterfront, eating ice-cream from Ghirardelli’s and visiting the maritime museum. So glad we didn’t bust ourselves with a big trip out of the city to the Napa Valley vineyards or the redwood forests…
Thankfully we had pre-booked a night tour to the notorious Alcatraz prison - on an island in Sam Francisco Bay - as it is booked out until late August. We had planned to take a cool 1950s replica tram along the waterfront (the Embarcadero) to catch our ferry but it had broken down. We ended up doing a very brisk kilometer or two by foot in Olympic time …and were the last onto the ferry.
Alcatraz is a spooky place with a spooky history, told well by the Parks Service guides and their audio tour. You’d think at least the prisoners had wonderful views but none of the tiny cells faced outwards…they could, however, hear the laughter and clinking glasses of New Year’s revelers across the water. Another meal afterwards at Fisherman’s Wharf, this time at Alioto’s, for a warming clam chowder.
Day Five: A late start and bus over to the Haight- Ashbury hippy district for the Flower Power walking tour. This was the cheap area to which the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and others moved around the 1967 Summer of Love to smoke dope, play music, avoid the Vietnam War and love each other.
Real estate prices there are now worse than Sydney, with the magnificent decorated timber terrace houses all going for well over $2 million. At least the locals have a sense of humour: a sanitation truck for the Ker Plunk company passed us on Haight Street.
Our guide Izu (that’s Suzi backwards without the s) was fashionably late but so passionate about the sixties that our small group had to beg off after 3 and a half hours. Uzi was a child of the hippy era, had been at Woodstock (All I ate was one tomato in 3 days), was a little the worse for wear but totally charming and still a firm advocate of tie dye fashion. Her dachshund Benny reminded me of our childhood dog Mitty – small, brown, opinionated and very loyal.
Tonight we are off to Brandy Ho, a Chinese restaurant recommended by a local on the cable car who says most of the Chinatown restaurants favour cheap over quality. We will be sad to leave this city: it has been great fun and a younger me would be plotting to come back and live here! Tomorrow we fly to Montreal.
