Tales of San Francisco: Catching Up to Food, Art Fair, Friends & Shopping!

After spotting that twin spired cathedral, which I recognized from the cab ride the day before, I knew sort of where we were. Food and drink was next on our menu of activities and it was hot out. Given that we were in the general neighborhood, we hoofed it –albeit with some missteps and turnarounds (meaning we went the wrong way) we made it to Washington Square.
My thought was based on an earlier trip with my BFF Tricia that we would hit Mama’s and have a nice fun lunch of anything that was still available. However Mama’s at 1 PM still had a line and about a 20 minute wait to get to a table — much less food so that was a big “no”. (sigh I so wanted the french toast too).

Cafe Divine, on Stockton @ Washington Square.
We wound up at the Cafe Divine that was down the street on the other corner from Mamas. This little Italian cafe had lots going for it and one of them was a table waiting for us! So we sat down, ordered up water and more drinks and perused the menu. Having so much food around you that looks great and smells amazing when it’s being carried by makes decisions hard. However since we wanted something pretty quickly, pizza to split was the ideal choice. It did take a while to get to us, but it was presented on a toasty platter and it was perfection. Light, crispy crust and gooey cheese and lots of tea and lemonade made for happy (and very full ) campers.
They have entertainment on some nights so you might want to put this on your “must visit” list along with Mama’s down the street.
We walked around Washington Park since there were buskering muscians and an art fair going on along with the requisite shops that are all over San Francisco. We were killling time to meet up with our friends at Caffe Trieste

While we walked up and down Green Street and Grant Street, we window shopped and perused various stores of antiques, weird clothing (and there were some with weird clothing.. redone vintage that one could not touch.. and it was a pack rat paradise).
The leather store we had walked by had closed or she went to lunch–either way I was disappointed because she had shoes, belts, bags and jackets to drool over. (c’mon.. I might be warm in 90 heat but I am not walk away from gorgeous colorful leather fashions !)
We stopped at this little store called Kabul Tribal RugsActually we didn’t know that was the name till we left the store. We must have spent an hour there talking to the man in the store. What caught our eye were the rugs, the furniture and the jewelry in the window. So we had time to waste, in we walked. The man, Farhad, pulled out all kinds of jewelry, clothing, antiques, rugs. Literallly ancient pieces and current pieces that reflected the Russian incursion, and all kinds of stuff. It was amazing.

Farhad, Kabul Tribal Rugs, Grant Ave. San Francisco. http://kabultribal.googlepages.com
Who knew we were going to get a lesson in Afghan history but we did and we saw a ton of things that were gorgeous– and some were at least 100 years old (the furniture was hand made!). We walked out with several pieces of jewelry and an offer from Farhad to take us to meet his family and have tea. So if you are in the area of Grant near Columbus and Stockton area, do stop by this store. it’s worth going into because the rug prices are phenomenal for handmade rugs.
Running late, we ran off to Caffe Trieste and grabbed some sodas and coffee and cookies. (sue me, I was hungry again– we had walked almost 5 miles) . Met up with our friends Richard and Alan for a long chat about life in San Francisco and LA and what was going on with the people that we knew.

We had to practically beg this girl to take a photo of the 4 of us.
After the guys had left to go to work, we took off down Columbus Ave to catch a cab because there was no way I was walking all the way down to the Ferry Building . We were exhausted and tired. After about 30 minutes of walking and trying to hail a cab, we finally got one and we zipped along the city streets through the financial district. The driver was chatty and that was nice. We were dropped off in front of the hotel and we went up to peel off shoes . Wish there had been a pool or a jacuzzi, but there wasn’t one– but it was certainly warm enough.
Debating where to eat for dinner, we wound up downstairs at Perry’s on the Embarcadero

The restaurant has large booths and tables and it wasn’t crowded at the time we came in. We sat down and waited a good 10 minutes for a waiter to approach us with menus.
Once he arrived, we gave him a drink order, a glass of draft specialty beer and a glass of wine, it was another 20 minutes before that showed up. We smiled at each other knowing that this was not a good sign for a restaurant less than 50% full and it had people working.
So while we decided what to eat, we played it safe with fish and burgers and that was pretty much it. However I did let my sweet tooth get to me. San Francisco is a chocolate destination and I wanted the hot fudge sundae — which also took about 20 minutes to be presented at the table and the hot fudge was no longer “hot”. It had congealed into cold and while we shared it, I wasn’t happy .
The service was rather lacksadaisical and the server didn’t seem to be too concerned about us. The tip was still good given the size of the bill and i wrote it off to the trip and being tired.
And we were tired– and this was the one time I wish I had asked for a change of rooms. Despite the things that were not quite right about the room, when you are really exhausted, being directly across from the elevator, you can hear everyone and everything going in and out of that elevator. By 1 AM, I was really tired of hearing people’s voices!!
The next morning, we packed up quickly, had a quick breakfast, paid the bill and walked to the Market Street Bart entrance to go back to SFO and get on a blessed plane home.
Well we wanted to get on that plane, but it turns out that we were delayed more than an hour because the original plane hadn’t shown up yet.
(What the heck?) United just shrugged and apologized (remind me again WHY we flew United? OH yeah.. Frequent Flyer miles. hmmm that they charged us $75 dollars because it was a less than 21 day booking. ( I would have booked for the following weekend had I known that!)
By the time the plane did arrive, everyone was tired, it was a quiet flight and when we arrived at John Wayne Airport in the OC, it was scorching hot– like the weather came with us. It was 93 degrees according to my car (and it was inside a parking structure).
I took many more photos than you saw.– and there will be another post with a silver man video and photo that was common on the streets of San Francisco. I will explain the Silver Man phenomena when I post.
This is the last of the Tales of San Francisco posts. I do have more coming from another trip with a video of me telling you where I am and talking about it. I was gone 5 days and I have the photos — and the shopping to prove it. i will take some photos of stuff that I bought as fashion trend items that I found that will translate into fall nicely.
If you have been to San Francisco, live in San Francisco, have any comments, please feel free to make them.
Stevie Wilson