So Wednesday came and I decided to ‘finish off’ Fishermans’ Wharf and then ride the historic Cable Car (you have to do it just once). Fishermans’ Wharf is a __real__ tourist trap, but there is a reason, it is really very cool. There are a ton of restaurants there and you can get up close and personal with a Dungeness Crab or two if the mood takes you; they cook ’em up in batches right out on the street like this:
Anyway, I was there mostly to eat Clam Chowder, from a bowl made of a large sourdough roll – a true San Francisco cliché, but you have to do these things at least once! I wandered around for a while tkaing pictures and trying with no real frame of reference or prior intelligence to choose a good place to try out the aforementioned chowder. In the end I chose Tarantino’s – come on, with a name like that I just HAD to. I ordered the Clam Chowder lunch special and a pint of Anchor Steam and settled back to watch the comings and goings of the smaller pleasure craft and fishing boats that were using the wharf below the restaurant. The food was magnificent, I can’t tell you how good it was, and at $8 I’m sure I paid more than I might have done if I shopped around, but as far as I was concerned it was worth every nickel. If you don’t believe me, check it out:
Once I’d eaten I wandered around the tourist stores, picked up the cheesiest keychain I could find, as per Kendal’s request, and then headed up to the Cable Car turnaround to join the Powell & Mason Cable Car to get back up to Downtown. When I arrived at the turnaround there was some kind of problem and there was a guy literally underneath it fixing something. Eventually they go things moving again, and I got to see the turnaround crew get the cable car ready for the return trip:
The ride back up to Downtown was well worth the $5, but I have to be honest I would not recommend the Cable Cars as one’s main mode of public transport if you visit SF – they are just so much more expensive than MUNI and / or BART, and they are always in high demand because of the tourist trade.
Here are a couple more pictures from my Cable Car Ride:
Once I had arrived back in Downtown I was pretty tired, still having not properly recovered from the journey in from Canada, so I headed down into the BART station at Powell and made my way back to Kendal and Steve’s place in The Mission.
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