Rice-A-Roni

San Francisco, CA

February 27, 2015

I can't help it. Being in San Francisco makes that old Rice-A-Roni jingle loop through my brain. I can even hear the cable car go clang-clang at the end of each verse.

Watch Vintage Rice-A-Roni Commercial 

It's a turnaround day for the ship and a shore day for us. We started out with a walk along the windy Embarcadero.

Coit Tower

Along the Embarcadero

Alcatraz under the rainbow

Scale model of Alcatraz

Cable Cars

Ghir-ar-tourist-i

After switching direction we walked along a street parallel to the Embarcadero. We decided to stop at the famous, "must see" Ghirardelli Square to get a cup of coffee. Honestly, I have to say "Don't bother going to Ghirardelli Square." There is nothing there worth seeing, the directory of shops is useless, and if there was a coffee shop there, we couldn't find it.

 As we headed down the street in the direction of the financial district we continued our quest for coffee. We did find a Starbucks, but it only had 3 tables, all taken by people using the free wi-fi and drinking coffee not so much. The counter for ordering coffee was right behind a pillar and people came around the other side of the pillar and cut in front of me. There were two or three other people behind the counter not doing much and not taking orders. It was my worst Starbucks experience ever and we left without coffee. We never came to another coffee shop. 

A crowd of crabs at Fisherman's Wharf

We came to a building marked "Safeway" and we thought we could find a coffee shop there. We were on a corner, but we didn't see an entrance in either direction. Looking through spaces between the bricks we saw that there was a parking garage inside. At the other end of the block we finally came to an entrance and found ourselves in an uninteresting mall reminiscent of the Northway Mall or the Sears Mall in Anchorage.  At the very end of the mall concourse was the Safeway - sans coffee shop.You would think that in such a touristy part of town there would be a coffee shop on every block. You would think that I could go without coffee for a few hours without becoming grumpy.

After two hours of walking we still weren't too close to Chinatown, so we caught a cab to a dim sum restaurant called City View. It's not the name you would expect for a Chinese restaurant, but the food exceeded expectations. There was a medium-sized line, but it moved very quickly. We checked in with the hostess/expediter and within 15 minutes we had a table.

The place was starkly decorated, with white walls and white tablecloths on every table. It looked vaguely Scandinavian. There were patrons from the financial district, tourists, and Chinese families. It was noisy in a cheerful sort of way, and servers were rushing around everywhere with carts of dim sum. Each cart had a selection of small plates with two or three "bites" on each. We exceeded our ability to eat before we had tried everything. All of it was fantastic. If I go back to San Francisco I WILL return to City View.

Some dim sum. Yum!

The pyramidical Transamerica Tower

When we returned to the ship we encountered a new set of passengers in the process of boarding. We ate dinner with four of them. They were boring but refreshing. None of them were from California. They were not jaded. They loved Fisherman's Wharf and did not experience it as a kitschy tourist trap. 

Although Shabbat services were not listed in the Patter, a small group of us managed to make our way there. I met a man who came from the same city in the Ukraine as my grandfather.

After dinner I watched most of The Fault in Our Stars. While I thought the movie was actually better than the book, I didn't feel the need to watch it all the way to the end.