We had a big breakfast at Dennys which lasted me the entire day. 2 pieces of french toast, 2 pieces of bacon, 2 mini sausages and 2 eggs. SHIT, didn’t seem that big when I ate it!!! 🙂 A guy and a young girl were in the booth beside us discussing a cartoon character so I was surreptiously glancing over to look at the drawings. We are only a block or so from the Art Academy but I didn’t recognise the drawings. Had fun busybodying their conversation though.
Hopped on the Powell/Hyde line to the Cablecar Museum where I got to see the wheels that actually moves the cables running through the streets. The museum displayed old cablecars, new and used items from the cablecars and best of all it was free! The cables are replaced approximately every 120 days, and the brakes on the gripper are changed every 4 depending on the traffic. They have to pull out the grip everytime they want to replace them so it seems pretty high maintanence to run these wonderful vehicles. Of course, they don’t have museums about buses here to dazzle me with maintanence stats.
I then embarked on my mission to take a picture of the houses which they showed at the beginning of the tv show “Full House”. First headed to Alta Plaza park, but all I got was an eye from a woman with a dog, dirty shoes from walking in the mud mixed with a hint of dog poo (which smelt the rest of the day) and a laugh at the dog who took an hour to walk to his owner. Saw some nice houses but nothing that looked like the shot so I head to Lafayette Park. It had a couple of houses that sort of looked like the right thing, but the trees must have grown so much in the past 12 years or so so I didn’t get the shot.
Headed down to the Mission District to take a picture of the mission and the basilica. Dolores st is very picturesque for being virtually in the middle of town. A few blocks down and I wandered Valencia St stopping at the woman owned porn shop mentioned in the lonely planet. Walking in I was greeted by a dowdy looking lady who offered to help if I needed anything. The shop was dissapointingly normal, not seedy – more like shopping at Sportsgirl or something. However the items sold aren’t quite the same sort of market! The dowdy lady told me if I had any questions just ask and when I turned to say thanks I realised it was a man dressed as a woman!! Way perceptive Amy!! doh!
Wandered the streets after that acting like a local and stopping in shops that I thought were interesting. I was basically just killing time until I met Pauline to go see a movie. We headed off to the Embarcadero Centre to see Monster, the Aileen Wiernos serial killer film. Charlize Theron was amazing in it, she was totally the character. It reiterated the fact that 80s had awful fashion sense. But honestly that film should seriously be nominated for best actress oscar because she was great. I’ve only ever seen her in who magazines all glamoured up. BTW, american popcorn with butter is pretty nice, but I refrained from putting the weirdass chocolate marshmallow flavouring on it. GROSS!
With only a day and a half to go, I’m starting to feel melancholy about having to go home, even if Pauline is breathing a sigh of relief. Even after exploring so much of the city I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface which is so refreshing after feeling like I know every inch of Brisbane inside and out. It seems like a city where there is a surprise around every corner and you don’t get that with every city. I’ve been tossing up advantages and disadvantages to San Francisco/America and will probably post that in the next day or so.