Welcome

I wake up at 5 am. I’m still not used to the time difference, some 9 hours earlier than home. I wake up again at 7. I’ve had enough, so I get up. The gold fish in my hotel room seems a bit more active than the day before. I get ready and head downstairs for some coffee in the lobby, or the living room, as the hotel staff tends to call it.

I meet up with a colleague and we head over to Roxanne’s Diner for breakfast. It’s apparently been renovated since the last time I ate there, but there is no real difference at all. It still looks rather run down and acts as a time machine back to the 70s. No surprises on the menu: pancakes, bagels, and fresh fruit in different varieties and combinations. The coffee looks and tastes more like tea than anything else.

We head out. Up and down the hills, back and forth between the streets. My feet ache and my legs hurt. It’s typical weather; warm on one side of the street and cold on the other. The sun is hot and the wind is cool. We see it all: Coit Tower, Nob Hill, Pacific Heights, China Town. The cable cars slowly roam the streets, and so do we.

It’s 10 am and the stores are opening. Borders is the first stop on our route. Macy’s next. Apple, Puma, Adidas, Lucky Brand; we visit them all. Lunch is on the roof terrace of Macy’s, at the Cheesecake Factory. The burgers are juicy, the wine tastes good.

The taxi drops us off on Hayes Street, filled with it’s small shops. All look the same, but also have their own feel and stock of merchandise. Clothes, bags, shoes, all with unheard brands. No shops carry XS clothes, and the S clothes are all too big for me. We grab a coffee at a Belgian café. “No thanks, no fries with that latte.” The place is a public health hazard, with gross toilets and a dirty kitchen. Still, there’s a constant queue of 10 people in front of the counter.

We head back to the Triton by foot on Market Street. I wouldn’t walk this route at night. The homeless fill the sidewalks. The buildings are run down and the air is filled with foul odours. Gangs form at the street corners. Some are screaming and some are laughing. Most of them maniacally. There’s a man in an fancy-looking suit walking east, no doubt towards his workplace at a bank in the Financial District only a couple of hundred meters down the street. The contrast is striking.

At 5 pm the hotel’s guests gather in “the living room”, having a glass of wine. So do we. Next door, in the wine bar, we have a glass of sparkling before we get into a taxi.

Dinner at Blowfish. Their tag line is “sushi to die for”, and that’s no exaggeration. It’s a hectic place. Anime on the big screens, loud music in the speakers with thumping bass. If you have trouble making yourself heard, just eat and enjoy the amazing sashimi.

This is San Francisco, and I love it.