Today started with a ham, mushroom, and egg bagel while we enjoyed a lazy morning in the hotel. We'd been out late the night before, so the plan was to keep everything fairly local and avoid spending half the day bouncing around on buses.
Gravity Wins Again
What I hadn't realised was that we could have caught a bus near the hotel and then changed onto the Number 19, which runs along Polk Street. Still, you live and learn.
The plan had been simple enough: get off the Number 19 at Lombard Street and walk a couple of blocks uphill to what is often claimed to be the most crooked road in the world. This was always going to be the toughest part of the day because, no matter which direction you approach it from, this hill is steep. And when I say steep, I mean the sort of steep where you start wondering whether the road planners accidentally confused a street with a ski slope. Some of the parked cars look as though they're hanging on through sheer determination.
This wasn't our first attempt at getting there either. The previous time we'd tried to scale what felt like the south face of a city-centre mountain, we'd met exactly the same problem. Honestly, I think even a mountain goat would take one look at this hill, quietly mutter "not today," and turn around.
Even if you don't have any mobility issues, it's a challenging climb. It quickly became obvious that there was no way Jane was going to manage the two-block ascent. The only realistic alternative would have been taking the cable car, but the high steps make boarding difficult for her. I'm fairly sure we'd attempted this exact route on a previous trip with exactly the same outcome.
Still, I haven't given up hope of getting up here with Jane one day. The views from the top across downtown San Francisco are spectacular when the weather is clear, as it was today. We just need to be a bit smarter about it and approach from the eastern side next time rather than trying to tackle the hill head-on.
With the plan defeated by gravity once again, there wasn't much else to do except head back towards the bus stop where we'd got off. The Number 19 can be a little unpredictable when it comes to actually appearing, so we decided it would be quicker to walk the five or so blocks downhill to Ghirardelli Square instead.
Of course, downhill isn't always the easy option when you're pushing a wheelchair. Going up is hard work on the legs; going down is hard work on the arms, the brakes, and occasionally the nerves. San Francisco has a wonderful ability to turn even a simple downhill stroll into a team sport'
Free Samples & A Live Stream Fail
Never mind. There were plenty of other places to visit today, and reaching the top of Lombard Street would have added at least another couple of hours to the day. Instead, we continued down what remained of Polk Street and headed into Ghirardelli Square.
Today, it's a mixture of luxury shops, high-end restaurants, and eye-wateringly expensive apartments occupying the upper floors. But long before it became a destination for ice-cream sundaes and boutique shopping, it was a bustling industrial powerhouse.
Its story is a fascinating blend of Gold Rush ambition, chocolate-making innovation, and one of San Francisco's earliest historic preservation success stories.
Domingo Ghirardelli arrived in California in 1849 during the Gold Rush and quickly realised that selling supplies and sweets to miners was considerably more profitable than digging for gold himself. After opening a number of successful stores across Northern California, he founded the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company in San Francisco in 1852.
In 1893, the company purchased an entire city block near the northern waterfront. Over the following decades, a collection of handsome red-brick industrial buildings rose on the site, culminating in 1915 with the installation of the giant illuminated Ghirardelli sign that still dominates the skyline today.
By the 1960s, however, the factory operations had largely moved elsewhere, and many of the buildings stood partially vacant. Given the location, developers saw prime waterfront real estate and proposed demolishing the complex to make way for apartments. Thankfully, the site was purchased by the Roth family, who transformed it through one of the country's earliest large-scale adaptive reuse projects, preserving the historic buildings and giving them a new purpose.
It's hard to imagine now, wandering through the neat courtyards and cafés, that this was once a working chocolate factory producing thousands of pounds of chocolate every day.
There are still two Ghirardelli retail stores within the square, which is spread across two split levels. Better yet, there always seems to be somebody standing at the entrance handing out free chocolate samples.
Naturally, we visited both shops and collected a sample from each.
Then we needed to use the lift in the first shop to get down to the lower level, which meant walking back through the entrance and, rather inconveniently, being offered another free sample. I suggested to Jane that we'd missed a trick by not bringing disguises. You can just picture it: fake moustaches, oversized glasses, perhaps a suspiciously obvious wig. "No, sorry, you've mistaken us for somebody else. I am clearly not the same person who was here thirty seconds ago collecting free chocolate." I'm sure nobody would have suspected a thing.
The square also has free Wi-Fi, which seemed like the perfect opportunity to experiment with Facebook Live. This turned out to be considerably less exciting than I'd imagined because the only person watching was Jane, who was sitting right next to me.
What made it even stranger was the delay. Despite being connected to exactly the same Wi-Fi network, what appeared on Jane's phone lagged behind what I was actually saying. Once the audio started feeding back into itself, the whole thing descended into technological chaos until she finally muted her phone. Even then, she remained my entire audience.
Still, it was fun to try. I probably won't use Facebook Live very often, but I like understanding how these things work. Besides, it seemed wise to stop before we accidentally crossed the live streams and opened some sort of internet-based portal to another dimension. The Ghostbusters warned us about that sort of thing.
Remains Of The Past & Tense Situation
We left Ghirardelli Square via the lower level, which brings you straight out into the Aquatic Park area. The weather was far too nice to rush anywhere, so I parked Jane in a sunny spot overlooking the water while I took a stroll along Municipal Pier. The surface along here isn’t exactly wheelchair friendly.
The pier curves gently out into the bay and offers some wonderful views back towards the city. It's also one of those places where San Francisco's history feels surprisingly close. This was once part of the city's busy maritime and fishing district before being transformed into a fashionable swimming destination during the 1930s. Back then, Aquatic Park was home to a grand Art Deco bathhouse and attracted swimmers from across the city.
If you look carefully, you can still spot traces of that past. The old tram tracks remain embedded in places, reminders of the streetcars that once ran along the waterfront and through the tunnel towards Crissy Field.
That tunnel is now permanently gated off. From what I've read, the closure was largely due to problems with people camping inside and the constant maintenance issues that followed. It's a shame, really, because it would provide a useful shortcut for anyone wanting to avoid the substantial hill between Aquatic Park and Fort Mason. Unfortunately, some places reach the point where keeping them clean, safe, and accessible becomes an ongoing battle.
The area is also home to several historic ships, their masts and rigging standing out against the skyline. We didn't venture aboard any of them today, but they're fascinating to look at from the shore. Every now and then, a sea lion would pop up in the water and perform a few acrobatic manoeuvres before disappearing beneath the surface again, seemingly determined to entertain anyone willing to watch.
From there, we wandered over to Hyde Street Pier with a slightly unusual mission.
For months before the trip, we'd been watching one of the EarthCam live streams from San Francisco on the tablet back home. It had become one of those little routines that makes you feel connected to a place you're looking forward to visiting. Naturally, once we were actually here, we wanted to find out exactly where the camera was mounted.
And we found it.
The camera sits on top of a two-storey building mounted on a pole, quietly broadcasting San Francisco to living rooms all over the world. It felt oddly satisfying finally seeing it in person. From that vantage point, the camera captures fantastic views across the bay towards Alcatraz, over Fisherman's Wharf, and all the way to the Bay Bridge.
It's funny how something so ordinary can become familiar. Watching that camera feed at home always gave us a little glimpse of San Francisco whenever we felt like escaping for a few minutes. Just across the road sits the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park and Museum, which tells the story of the city's maritime heritage and how San Francisco grew from a small settlement into one of the most important ports on the west coast.
Much of this waterfront stands on reclaimed land, created from the debris left behind by the 1906 earthquake and subsequent rebuilding efforts. Over time, it developed into the city's main fishing port. While most of the commercial fishing fleet has long since disappeared, the area remains closely associated with seafood. Fresh crab stalls, fish markets, and seafood restaurants line much of the waterfront.
As two people who aren't particularly enthusiastic about seafood, however, the smell alone was enough to keep us moving.
We continued into Fisherman's Wharf before taking a look around The Cannery. Once an enormous industrial complex producing canned goods, it's now home to restaurants, cafés, and shops. Like many former industrial buildings in San Francisco, it's been transformed into something considerably more upmarket than its original purpose ever suggested.
Unfortunately, this was also the point where we encountered one of the more unpleasant aspects of the tourist areas.
A man started trying to sell us CDs and simply refused to take no for an answer. At first it was merely annoying, but he became increasingly persistent and noticeably more aggressive the longer we ignored him.
In situations like this, we've learned that the best approach is usually to avoid engaging altogether. Most eventually lose interest and move on once they realise you're not buying whatever they're selling.
This one, however, seemed determined to hang around.
For a few uncomfortable minutes, I genuinely wondered whether the situation was about to escalate into something more serious. Thankfully, just as suddenly as he'd appeared, he lost interest and wandered off in search of somebody else to bother.
It was a good reminder that even in places as beautiful as San Francisco, not every encounter becomes a happy travel story.
Retro Games, Quarters & Curiosity
From there we continued past the endless rows of tourist shops and headed for the Musée Mécanique, one of my favourite places on the waterfront.
The museum houses arcade and amusement machines spanning more than a hundred years, and remarkably, most of them still work. You can actually play the exhibits rather than just look at them, which immediately makes it far more interesting than the average museum. They even have a two player Pac-Man machine, and the attendants glide around on roller skates, which somehow feels perfectly in keeping with the place.
The atmosphere inside is loud, nostalgic, and wonderfully chaotic. Rather than rows of exhibits sitting silently behind glass, everything here is alive. The air is filled with the sounds of player pianos, clanging metal, mechanical laughter, bells ringing, and the constant whirring and clicking of century-old gears. It feels less like a museum and more like stepping into an old seaside amusement arcade from another era.
Housed inside a large warehouse-like building on Pier 45, the collection exists largely because one family spent decades preserving these machines. From what I understand, the collection was passed down from father to son, and the philosophy was always that these machines were built to be played, not locked away behind barriers.
Keeping a place like this running can't be easy. The building itself needs maintaining, staff need paying, and many of the machines require constant restoration and repair. Yet much of that is funded by the steady stream of quarters people feed into the games every day. Every coin dropped into a machine helps keep another little piece of history alive.
They even have a large red button on the wall with a sign that clearly says, "Do Not Push."
Naturally, you have to push it.
As it turns out, the button doesn't launch missiles, trigger alarms, or unleash mechanical chaos. It simply adds one more number to a counter showing how many people have ignored the instruction not to press it.
Human curiosity remains undefeated.
By this point it was feeding time, so we stopped at McDonald's for a quick bite to eat before crossing the road to buy a coat I'd spotted on Pier 39 a few days earlier.
This was exactly the sort of coat I'd been looking for back home but had never quite managed to find. At $28, which worked out at roughly £20, it seemed like a bargain. Better still, it had "San Francisco" embroidered across it, making it both practical and an acceptable holiday souvenir.
What amused me most was that, as soon as I'd bought it, I suddenly noticed dozens of other people wearing exactly the same coat.
Clearly, I wasn't the first tourist to arrive dressed for a warm California afternoon only to discover the reality of San Francisco's weather.
Some of them had probably been caught out by Karl making one of his surprise appearances. Others had likely fallen victim to the city's unique ability to be sunny, windy, cold, and warm all at exactly the same time.
Whatever the reason, there seemed to be an unofficial club of people who had underestimated San Francisco and ended up buying emergency outerwear.
Membership apparently cost $28.
With that important purchase completed, we crossed back over the road and caught an F-Line streetcar back towards Market Street.
E not F to Market Street
Travelling back towards Market Street is never one of our favourite San Francisco experiences. The historic streetcars are great to look at, but once they're packed solid with tourists, the novelty wears off fairly quickly.
Thankfully, they had recently introduced the E Line, which runs along the Embarcadero but doesn't continue up Market Street like the F Line. The idea is simple enough and works rather well, at least in theory.
Unfortunately, a surprising number of people seemed unable to grasp the fact that an E tram is not an F tram.
The driver would patiently explain where the tram was going. Then explain it again. Then again. By about the seventh explanation, it would finally dawn on somebody that they were on the wrong tram. At which point they would stand directly in the doorway looking confused while everyone else tried to board.
In the end, we simply pushed our way through the crowd to get on.
Our plan was to use the lightly loaded E Line to reach the Ferry Building, walk across the plaza where many of the bus routes begin, and then catch a bus up Market Street. Compared to squeezing onto a packed F Line tram, it seemed a much more civilised option.
As it turned out, it worked perfectly.
The driver was also incredibly helpful. We waited at the raised platform, he then get out and deploy what looked remarkably like a miniature drawbridge so Jane could board and leave the tram. The system is actually quite clever. Because the historic streetcars were built in different countries, in different decades, and to completely different designs, there isn't a single platform height that works for all of them. Think of the variety of old trams you might see in Blackpool and then imagine trying to make one platform fit every single model.
Instead, each tram carries its own specially designed boarding bridge. Stored in a cupboard onboard, it folds out across the gap between the tram and the platform, creating an accessible route for wheelchairs and mobility scooters.
The only downside was that once the bridge was in place, the effective height of the doorway dropped to somewhere around four feet. This meant I had to perform an awkward crouching manoeuvre when I got on or off while pushing the wheelchair.
It probably looked like I was attempting some sort of tram-related limbo competition.
Still, for a fleet of historic vehicles operating a modern public transport service, it's an impressively practical solution. I certainly couldn't think of a better way to make trams built decades apart accessible to everyone.
While waiting at one stop, we could see the next F Line streetcar approaching behind us. Out of curiosity, we watched it pull in. It was absolutely packed.
People were standing shoulder to shoulder, pressed against windows and doorways like tourists in a tin can. The whole point of introducing the E Line was to relieve some of that pressure and spread passengers between the two routes.
The irony was that once the F Line reached the start of Market Street, a large proportion of those passengers would probably get off anyway.
Meanwhile, we had been sitting comfortably on a relatively empty tram, feeling rather pleased with ourselves for having discovered what was possibly San Francisco's best-kept public transport secret.
Subs & Cupcakes
As luck would have it, and with a little assistance from the internet, there was a Number 9 bus due to leave in about five minutes. We jumped aboard and headed up to Kearny Street before making our way into Crocker Galleria for some more Jimmy John's subs to take back to the hotel.
These were quickly consumed alongside a well-earned beer, because after a day of battling hills, crowds, and public transport, it would have been rude not to.
By now it was around five o'clock, so we spent a relaxing hour or so back at the hotel before heading out again at about 6:30.
The evening was pleasantly warm as we wandered through Union Square towards the Giants Dugout Store, about a fifteen-minute walk from the hotel. Even though the Giants were having another less-than-stellar season, we still wanted to pick up a few bits of merchandise while we were in town.
Unfortunately, this branch is fairly small and carries only a limited range compared to the enormous store at the ballpark. After a good look around, we struck out and failed to find what we were looking for.
Still, it wasn't a wasted trip. Just a block away on O'Farrell Street is Cako, home to what may well be the best cupcakes I've ever eaten. They're not cheap either. At $3.50 each, plus tax, they're firmly in the "this had better be worth it" category. Thankfully, they absolutely are. The cakes are ridiculously rich, and almost impossible to eat gracefully.
Our arteries probably had a very different opinion on the matter, but fortunately they were off duty from the decision-making process. The only logical conclusion is that anything tasting this good must contain at least a billion calories. Either way, it was delicious and therefore completely justified.
A Cunning Plan
By this point Jane's leg was starting to hurt, so it was time to put my newly acquired public transport expertise to good use. I had a plan. A cunning plan.
Outside Cako, the Number 38 bus stops. Now, it doesn't go anywhere near our hotel, which might seem like a flaw in the plan, but bear with me.
The idea was to ride the Number 38 for two stops until it reached the end of its one-way loop. We would then cross the road, catch the Number 30, ride that for two stops around a different one-way loop, and end up just around the corner from the hotel.
Reading that back, I'm not entirely sure it makes sense. In fact, if somebody had explained it to me like that, I would probably have nodded politely while understanding absolutely none of it. What matters is that it worked.
Whether this was the result of me becoming some sort of San Francisco transport guru or simply getting spectacularly lucky remains open to debate.
Either way, Jane didn't have to walk back, and that's what counted.
Back at the hotel, I settled down with a beer safely stored in my thermal flask, although I knew I'd need to venture out later to replenish supplies. It's important to stay hydrated when travelling. Or at least that's the excuse I was using.
Refections On The Day
Today was a reminder that not every successful day has to go exactly to plan. San Francisco's hills once again proved that they don't really care what you've got written in your itinerary, but rather than feeling frustrated, it felt easier to adapt and enjoy wherever the day happened to take us.
What struck me most was how familiar the city was starting to feel. The transport routes that seemed complicated a few days ago were beginning to make sense, and places we'd only ever seen on webcams or maps now felt like part of our own San Francisco story. The city was slowly becoming less of a destination and more of a temporary home.
The best memories weren't the big attractions either. They were the small moments: free chocolate samples, a sunny spot by the bay, an unnecessarily complicated bus journey that somehow worked, and a cupcake that probably shortened my life expectancy by a few minutes.
Tomorrow will be louder and busier with the Cinco de Mayo celebrations, but today was a good reminder that sometimes the simplest days are the ones you enjoy the most.
⇧
