Want to get around? Leave your car at home!

Departing from our Thanksgiving tradition of a Vegas trip, I insisted we go either to San Fran or Napa. Really, with the kind of rents and taxes we pay here in the bay area, coughing up air fare and car rental fees is really painful. So, we decided to have a short and sweet night out in the big city. Parking at the Sunnyvale caltrain station was cheap, just 2 dollars for 24 hours.

The train ride was painful though - a really long hour and fifteen minutes. However, after we reached San Francisco, I realized the true bliss that comes with being a backpacker. We did not have to worry about traffic, or maps, or finding parking, or dodging crazy bicyclists. Of course, on the sidewalks, we did have to contend with a lot of second hand cigarette smoke and spitting (oh yea, they do that here as well...ewww...)

But the beauty of the city eclipsed all the grubbiness around us. San Francisco derives much of its character from the various hills that the city is built on, giving a quaint old world feel to the city streets. Amidst the boring sky scrapers, flashes of beautiful architecture still remain. The city's population is incredibly diverse, and much to my chagrin, there were a lot of incredibly good looking women around, intent on giving me a complex.

We contained ourselves to the Union square area for this trip. It is a lot of fun, and a shopper's mecca, surrounded by immense flagship stores (Macys, Armani, Tiffany etc etc). I paid for not doing my due diligence as a tourist by missing the Macy's Christmas tree lighting ceremony by ten minutes. Still, we managed to find our way to the base of the tree squeezing past milling crowds that you would normally find only in Ranganathan street.

A short trek past Union Square took us past several fancy art galleries. Of course, most of them had their doors shut to ward off pesky tourists (self included). One art gallery seemed welcoming enough, and we were rewarded with glimpses of rare prints of Renoir and Rembrandt. We then made our way to the Millennium restaurant for a spectacular meal (and it deserves an entire blog post, so more on this later).

After a lazy morning with lots of shopping (I now consider it my patriotic duty as an American resident to stimulate the economy with my hard earned dollars), we finally made our way back to the oh-so-dull bay area. I cannot wait for our next day trip - I really want to relive the sixties and its magical flower power in the legendary Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.