Come on Brain, We Can Do It
This also provided another reminder that my British road-crossing instincts were still very much
alive and well. Despite knowing perfectly well which direction we needed to travel, my brain kept
insisting that the bus would arrive on the left-hand side of the road. Thankfully, a last-minute
moment of clarity struck before we stood there looking foolish as our bus disappeared into the
distance from the stop opposite.
By this point, Jane had also developed a useful San Francisco transit skill of her own. She had
learned how to tell the older buses with steps from the newer low-floor accessible ones. The secret
lies entirely in the paintwork on the front and the shape of the headlights. Jane could now spot the
difference from a surprising distance, making her something of an honorary Muni bus expert.
Turtles, Steps And What A View
When we got off the bus at the De Young Museum, we spent about twenty minutes rolling through
the park toward Stow Lake — a place that always feels like its own little world tucked away inside
Golden Gate Park. The lake is absolutely teeming with wildlife, including what looks like hundreds
of turtles sunning themselves on rocks and logs. A legacy of the Ninja Turtle craze, I suspect,
judging by the sheer number of them.
Stow Lake was the first man-made lake in the park, created thanks to a $60,000 donation from
W.W.
Stow. It was built around a tall rocky outcrop that became Strawberry Hill, with Huntington
Falls cascading down its eastern side. The waterfall is fed by water pumped up to a reservoir hidden
among the trees before making its way back down the hillside. Unfortunately, the falls weren't
running during our visit. The same thing had happened on previous trips, so perhaps we're simply
unlucky with our timing.
This whole area isn't really suitable for Jane, so I crossed the bridge onto the island in the middle of
the lake and headed toward the Chinese pagoda before tackling the steep climb up the steps to the
summit. There are a couple of small bridges crossing the waterfall route on the way up — scenic
even without the water — and the climb is definitely a proper calf-burner.
Once at the top, though, the effort is rewarded with some spectacular views. You don't get a full
360-degree panorama, but you do get a real sense of just how rugged San Francisco is, with hills
and rocky outcrops rising and falling in every direction.
Boats, Brews And A Breather
From there, I carefully made my way back down the very steep steps to where I had left Jane. We
then wandered around the edge of the lake, admiring the wildlife and soaking up the peaceful
atmosphere. It really is a beautiful corner of the park and feels a world away from the busy city
beyond its borders.
Before long we arrived at the boathouse. They hire out both rowing boats and paddle boats, but I
think I'm probably too old for either these days. In fact, I'd likely have had more trouble climbing
into one than Jane would. Instead, we did the sensible thing and headed into the café for a coffee for
me and a hot chocolate for Jane.
Although it wasn't particularly cold, it wasn't especially warm either, so it was nice to sit down and
warm up for a while. When I say it wasn't warm, you still didn't need a coat, but as I've mentioned
before, San Francisco's microclimates can make the temperature feel completely different after only
a short walk.
Eventually, it was time to move on, so we retraced our steps around the lake to the De Young
Museum and caught the number 44 bus for a couple of stops to Irving Street.
Inner Sunset, Pies, Glorious Pies
The area around 9th Avenue and Irving Street in the Inner Sunset feels like one of those
neighbourhoods where the city suddenly remembers to breathe. It's busy, lively and full of people,
but not in the frantic way you find downtown. Instead, it feels more like a village built around
coffee, food, bookshops and the constant rumble of the N-Judah tram squeezing its way past parked
cars and pedestrians who have clearly made their peace with it.
This crossroads is essentially the heart of the Inner Sunset. Irving Street is lined with restaurants,
bakeries, ramen shops, tiny independent stores, bubble tea cafés, old pubs and coffee shops packed
so tightly together that a simple walk down the street usually turns into accidental window
shopping. It's energetic without being overwhelming, urban without losing its community feel. You
get a real sense of local life here — the kind of place that makes you slow your pace and start
studying lunch menus you had no intention of reading five minutes earlier.
Which brings me neatly to Peasant Pies. Sweet and savoury homemade pies for four dollars each. I
went for the beef and potato, while Jane chose the ham and egg. Add a coffee and the whole lot
came to less than eight dollars between us. This is exactly what I mean when I talk about living like
a local: proper independent shops, simple food done well and no crowds of tourists getting in the
way. You can't beat it.
A little further along the street was a Radio Shack which, I'll admit, I thought had disappeared years
ago. This one was holding a closing-down sale, so at least it was making its exit in style, even if I
couldn't find anything worth buying. It had that familiar air of a place that was once essential and
was now quietly packing up its things. The kind of street where, if you stumbled across a
Blockbuster Video somehow still trading, you probably wouldn't be shocked. You'd just nod
knowingly, wander inside and spend twenty minutes browsing DVDs for old times' sake.
A Stairway To The Skyline
We headed back to Irving Street to catch the number 66 bus. This is where something rather strange
happened with the real-time information display. I'd heard people talk about it before but had never
actually seen it myself. It's known as a "ghost bus" — when the tracking system shows a bus
moving along its route and the countdown clock happily ticks away, yet the bus itself never appears.
The really odd part is that the same information is fed to the phone apps, so they often show exactly
the same thing. As far as anyone seems to know, nobody has ever fully explained why it happens.
Whatever causes it, it appears to affect buses far more often than the trams.
After a thirty-minute wait, a bus finally materialised and carried us up some of San Francisco's
famously steep hills to the 16th Avenue Tiled Steps Project.
Created by the local community and opened in 2005, the project transformed 163 ordinary steps
into a giant mosaic artwork depicting a journey from sea to stars. This is one of those places that
somehow manages to feel both hidden and famous at the same time. Tucked away in the residential
streets of Golden Gate Heights, the staircase climbs between ordinary houses before suddenly
exploding into colour, as though someone had tipped an enormous box of mosaic tiles down the
hillside.
Officially known as the Moraga Steps, every section forms part of a single flowing artwork. At the
bottom, underwater scenes feature fish, shells and rolling waves. Higher up, the designs gradually
transition through plants, birds and flowers before ending among the stars and sun motifs at the top.
Climbing the staircase feels a little like moving through different layers of nature.
San Francisco is full of stairways. Many began life simply as practical shortcuts connecting streets
built across the city's countless hills and have been used by local residents for generations. The
Moraga Steps take that idea and turn it into something far more memorable. They're not the easiest
place to reach, which perhaps explains why relatively few tourists make the journey, but they're
well worth the effort.
Jane decided she was quite happy to admire the artwork from the bottom, so after taking a few
photographs I began the climb alone. I'm not as young as I once was, and the ascent felt rather
longer than 163 steps would suggest. By the time I reached the top, it felt as though I'd climbed the
equivalent of a ten-storey building.
Grand View Park, A Bench Above The City
It's a real slog to get up here.
The tiled staircase itself climbs around 90 feet over 163 mosaic-covered steps, but that's only the
first stage. Once you've reached the top of the artwork, there's still another series of wooden and
concrete stairways leading up into Grand View Park itself. The summit stands 666 feet above sea
level, which is probably why it's such a devil to climb.
In total, from Moraga Street to the summit viewpoint, you're gaining somewhere around 190 feet of
elevation. It's hardly mountain-hiking territory, but San Francisco's hills are basically nature's
StairMaster, and they do a very good job of reminding your legs that gravity exists. Most people
seem to adopt the classic "pause to admire the view" technique about halfway up, which just
happens to coincide with the point where breathing becomes noticeably more important.
When I finally reached the top of the tiled steps, there was still work to do. First you cross a road,
climb another set of concrete steps, cross yet another road, and then tackle the final stairway up to
Grand View Park itself.
The name makes perfect sense once you get there. From the summit, you are rewarded with
sweeping views stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Standing on this rocky outcrop, with the
city spread out below and the ocean beyond, you get a real appreciation for just how hilly and
rugged San Francisco actually is.
The wind up there was ferocious. Although the temperature was probably around 12°C, the
combination of the elevation and a wind of around 25 miles per hour made it feel closer to 6°C. I
even had to tighten my hat to stop it disappearing into the next neighbourhood.
The summit itself is surprisingly small, little more than a rocky platform with a single bench and
enough room for a handful of people. On this occasion, though, I had it completely to myself. It felt
like a private viewing platform suspended above the city. Sadly, there was no realistic way Jane
could have made it up there.
After taking a few photographs and spending a few minutes admiring the view, it was time to head
back down before I froze to death and became the first casualty of suburban Mount Everest.
Hidden Garden Steps, The Secret Sibling
Back at the bottom, I found a rather chilly Jane waiting patiently, so we continued a little further
along the road to the Hidden Garden Steps.
These are another set of mosaic-covered stairs, but they attract far fewer visitors than their famous
neighbour. Part of the reason is that the staircase bends halfway up, so you can never see the entire
artwork in one glance. They feel like the quieter, slightly more secretive sibling of the 16th Avenue
Tiled Steps.
Located on 16th Avenue between Kirkham and Lawton Streets, they're only a short walk away, yet
many visitors never discover them because they're too busy photographing the more famous
staircase nearby. Instead of the ocean-to-stars theme of the Moraga Steps, these mosaics celebrate
gardens and wildlife. As you climb, you pass giant flowers, mushrooms, butterflies, birds, insects,
snails and twisting plants, all created from brightly coloured tiles.
What really makes the place special, though, is the atmosphere. It's noticeably quieter than the
nearby tiled steps. Instead of crowds, you hear birdsong, the wind rustling through the plants and
the occasional distant sound of the city. Succulents and native plants line the staircase, making it
feel less like a public footpath and more like a hidden passageway through somebody's surreal
mosaic garden.
With 148 steps, there's not a huge difference in height compared with the Moraga Steps, but
personally I thought the artwork here was even better. The challenge was photographing it properly.
Because the staircase is lined with trees on both sides, the light is surprisingly subdued even on a
bright day. Capturing the colours meant experimenting with different angles, including the slightly
ridiculous technique of holding the camera above my head and hoping for the best.
I don't think I'd fancy walking down here at night. There didn't seem to be much street lighting,
although that's not unusual in many American residential areas. If you tripped and fell, you'd
become a human bowling ball. Knowing my luck, I'd finally come to a halt at the bottom only to get
run over, Wile E. Coyote style.
By now my legs had started filing formal complaints. This was supposed to be a holiday, not a boot
camp for the vertically challenged and moderately unfit. It was time to go and find the ever-patient
Jane once again.
A Tale Of Two Bus Stops
It was now time to climb back up to where I had parked Lady Jane and wait for the bus back down
the hill. The route only runs every twenty minutes, but I had seen one go past not long beforehand,
so I reckoned we had about a fifteen-minute wait.
Standing patiently beside the line painted on the lamppost that marked the bus stop, I suddenly
realised something rather important.
We were on the wrong side of the road.
Again.
For some reason, over the last couple of days I had managed to do this two or three times. I know
perfectly well that Americans drive on the right, yet my brain kept insisting otherwise. What's even
stranger is that I never seemed to have this problem on previous visits to San Francisco or other
American cities. Perhaps I'm getting old. Come on brain, help me out here — we're supposed to be
a team.
Fortunately, the stop on the correct side of the road was only a short walk away, although finding it
wasn't quite so straightforward. Unlike the clearly marked stop we had been standing at, this one
appeared to consist of a yellow line roughly a foot long painted on the edge of a junction. Bus stops
can be a little mysterious in San Francisco.
By the time we relocated ourselves, there were only about five minutes left to wait. When the bus
arrived, the driver lowered the suspension and deployed the wheelchair ramp, which unfolded rather
dramatically like a hydraulic drawbridge. Unfortunately, despite all this engineering wizardry, it still
didn't quite reach the ground. In the end, both Jane and I stood on it to persuade it down the last few
inches.
That probably wasn't helped by the fact that the road was being dug up and covered by a temporary
steel plate. Roadworks seem to be a universal pastime these days. Wherever you go, somebody is
digging a hole. The strange thing is that you rarely see anyone actually working in it.
Back at the bottom of the hill, we only had to walk around the corner to catch the N-Judah tram
back towards the city. By now it was rush hour, and despite being made up of three coupled units,
the tram quickly became packed. I found this slightly surprising because we were travelling into the
city rather than away from it, but clearly everyone else had similar plans.
The only downside of using the tram is dealing with some of the station lifts downtown. To say they
have a distinctive aroma would be generous. Some are worse than others, but let's just say you don't
press the buttons with your fingers. This is a job for elbows. Veteran San Francisco transit users
probably develop a technique for it.
The Beer Shop Loyalty Scheme
It's surprising where the time goes on some days. Before we knew it, the evening had crept up on us
and it was time to sort out the essentials — something to eat from Jimmy John's and a resupply run
to the beer shop around the corner.
By this point, I was beginning to think I'd become something of a regular in there, which is either a
sign of customer loyalty or a mild cause for concern, depending on your point of view.
The evidence for the latter arrived one evening when the chap behind the counter handed me my
purchase in one of those beer-can-sized brown paper bags. You know the sort — the ones people
carry around on American television while sitting in doorways wearing a coat they may or may not
have slept in.
I genuinely wasn't sure whether to be offended or touched by the gesture. Perhaps I give off a
certain energy. Perhaps I just have one of those faces.
What really sealed my status as a regular, though, was the day I brought my own bag.
They still put it in another one.
Whether that's a legal requirement, company policy, or a quiet editorial comment on my lifestyle
choices, I never quite worked out. Either way, I was clearly now recognised as a valued customer —
and apparently one who, in their professional opinion, needed his beer discreetly concealed for the
journey back to the hotel.
Assuming, of course, that the beer actually made it that far.
Reflections On The Day
oday felt like a reminder that some of the best parts of travel aren't the famous landmarks or the
postcard views, but the unexpected corners in between. There was something satisfying about
venturing beyond the places most visitors see and discovering parts of the city that felt quieter, more
personal and more connected to the people who actually live there.
It was also a day that highlighted the contrast between what each of us could experience. There
were places I could climb to that Jane couldn't reach, and moments where we had to split up briefly
before finding each other again. Yet somehow that never diminished the day. If anything, it
reinforced how much of travelling together is about sharing the experience afterwards, comparing
perspectives and helping each other enjoy places in different ways.
As the evening drew in, there was a comforting sense of familiarity beginning to creep into what
had once felt like a completely foreign city. The buses, the neighbourhoods, the local shops and
even the small routines of daily life were starting to feel familiar. San Francisco no longer felt like
somewhere we were simply visiting; for a little while at least, it felt like somewhere we belonged.
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