Do any of you know where the crookedest street in the world is? If you said San Francisco, then you are correct! According to the Guinness Book of Records, Lombard Street in San Francisco, California is the crookedest street in the world. The crooked part is only a 400-m (1/4-mile) long section of Lombard Street, as it descends a 27% incline. It has 8 hairpin turns, and a total of 1,440 degrees twisted and turned into only 400 m. It was really fun to walk down this street, and follow the turns, but walking up is actually hard. The steps on the sidewalk were teenie tiny, and somehow that makes it tiring. 🤷‍♀️ But then we also drove down, and it was fun! Kind of like a roller coaster…, but not really because the speed limit is 5 miles per hour. You can watch my YouTube video below to see my dad show off his driving skills on this street! My dad wanted to bring my mom and I to California, so we flew from Orlando to San Francisco. It had been two years since the last time I’d been on an airplane. The only difference was having to wear a mask on the entire flight. I was glad to get it off after I had worn it for 6 hours plus the whole time at the airport. But before we boarded the plane, there were these funny little reminders…

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We were up early to see the city. San Francisco is a very nice city; I really loved the architecture of all the houses and buildings built on a hill. One downside is a LOT of homeless people. When we took a hop-on-hop-off bus tour around the city. I could see a lot of tents on the sidewalks and in the parks. Some are living in their cars, or in old trailers. They are parked everywhere they are allowed to. It’s really sad. I hope the city of San Francisco does something about it really, really soon.

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San Fran is a city built on LOTS of hills and because it is on the Pacific coast it’s also foggy in the morning. It’s a lot like where I live, in Saint John, New Brunswick but ten times bigger. Here’s a tip: Book a hotel close to the places you want to see so you can just walk there! We had a rental car, but looking for parking spot might be hard especially a big city like San Fran. We also plan to visit another city that’s why we had a rental car. We stayed at the Hyatt Centric Hotel, and we walked two blocks to take the world-famous cable car that took us to the crookedest street in the world, Lombard Street. The cable car ride was fun because you could stand up and hold onto the railings with your back to the street. Just uh, don’t lean back… you could get ran over… I wouldn’t recommend this for people with sweaty hands…

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After a visit to Lombard Street, we walked over to the other side of Fisherman Wharf. Pier 39 is a pretty busy spot! Lots of restaurants, souvenir shops, aquariums, fast-food chains, boutique stores, museum, tour operators, and bike or Segway rental. From here, you can also see the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. You have to take a ferry ride to the island and take a tour of the old prison. We skipped the tour though. It’s popular because inmates tried to escape this maximum security prison, but they were unsuccessful. In 1962 there was three inmates tried to escape. Until now, there was no hard evidence if they drowned or they made it alive. Do you think they survived or they drowned?

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In Pier 39, you can see the seal lions basking. The photo was taken around 9:30 a.m. and it was still foggy. You can also visit USS Pampanito & SS Jeremiah O’ Brien, but we skipped to this one also because we visited many battleships before. It was fun watching the sea lions because they were barking and playing with each other. You’ll see this on my video also!

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After walking around the Fisherman’s Wharf, we took a Hop-on-Hop-off tour to see the rest of the city. This will be the best way to see the city because it will be hard to find a parking spot to the place you want to see. The bus tour has a recorded commentary that tell us about the places we are stopping. The locals told us to have pizza at Tony’s so that’s what we did. We hopped off the bus and had lunch at Tony’s. It was one of the best pizza we had. So our next stop was the Golden Gate Bridge. Fun fact: the bridge is actually a reddish orange because if the bridge was actually golden it would clash with the landscape and stuff like that. In 1937, the Golden Gate was the longest and tallest suspension bridge in the world. And going across the bridge in a double decker bus on the top can get pretty cold. Like really cold, and the nice robotic voice in my headphones warned me in advance. Oh yeah, and the bus tour gave us free headphones! If you have a lot of time, you can walk on the bridge or rent a bike on the sidewalk.

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My dad want to visit San Francisco because his favorite brands were here. During the bus tour, we visited Patagonia and Filson. They are clothing brands. My dad loooooves some good homemade ice cream, so we stopped at Swensons. An ice cream place that’s been around since 1918 and is also world famous. Gosh, everything in California seems to be world famous! When we were in Phuket, Thailand, we always went to Swensens for ice cream. I always looked forward to go to Swensens at the end of a hot day!

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Another place we visited for ice cream sundaes was Ghirardelli. Ghirardelli is pretty much everywhere. There’s even one in Orlando that we go when we’re craving a good chocolate sundae! 😋 it was cool to visit the one in San Fran, because Ghirardelli was founded in 1852 in San Francisco. So we got to see where it all began. But they don’t make chocolate in this location anymore. There’s restaurants and stores at Ghirardelli Square. You can buy Ghirardelli chocolates, and eat ice cream, shakes, coffee, hot cocoa, and sundaes! I’m full of sugar right now!

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I’d say that we’ve done everything we wanted to do in San Fran, so stay tuned for my next post about my trip to California! Bye, and thank you so much for reading!

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