The Wanderful Life of Jasmine : I left my heart in San Francisco

After spending two days in Las Vegas, we rented a 15 passenger van and headed out to our first destination in California--San Francisco.
The road trip there wasn't too long and took only about seven hours.

We arrived to San Francisco late at night and checked into our hotel. Our hotel was the Fitzgerald hotel that was located on Post street, just a few blocks down from where many iconic movie scenes were filmed. The hotel was completely different from our Vegas hotel. It was not very modern and had a tiny old style elevator with a manual door and gate. The rooms were fairly small and cramped. However, I didn't mind that the hotel was old and small since I've definitely been in hotels that are much older (in Rome) and much smaller (in Paris.) What I did mind was that our hotel rooms were somewhat spooky...

While we were unpacking our stuff during our first night, my oldest sister exclaimed "Hey guys, look! look!" When my other sister and I turned around, we saw the opened drawer that she was pointing at. We were a bit confused at what we were supposed to be looking at. Then, my oldest sister exclaimed that the drawer had just opened on its own...We reasoned that the floor of the room was not leveled, which in turn causes the drawer to slide open. I'm not sure if any of us actually believed this, but it was better to have a logical explanation than to suspect paranormal activity. Over the course of the next two days we experienced our hotel door and bathroom door shutting on its own as well. The first night I ended up with nightmares and couldn't sleep very well. It didn't help that we were right next to the a main road where peace and quiet didn't exist. Luckily, the next two nights I was exhausted enough to quickly fall into deep sleep and not wake up in the middle of the night.

During our first day in San Francisco we met up with my mom's childhood friend that she hadn't seen in over 40 years. He and his wife bought us tickets for the double decker tour bus and so we all got on and toured San Francisco by bus. It was very hot that day, around 94 degrees, which we were told was extremely unusual weather for S.F. The bus tour was around 2-3 hours and it took us to all the popular spots in the city such as the famous Golden Gate Bridge and Pier 39. After the bus tour, we headed down to Chinatown for a late lunch. Then, my mom's friend headed home and my family and I ventured out to do some exploration on our own. We explored North Beach and Fisherman's Wharf our first day. Afterward, we headed back to my mom's friend's apartment for dinner. Later that night, we stopped by Union Square before heading back to our hotel. We spent about half an hour at Union Square just chit chatting with each other. I was sitting with my siblings on some steps while my parents and my mom's friend was sitting on a bench just a few feet away. Suddenly a homeless man walked to the table in front of us and slammed his fist on it violently. In my head I was thinking "oh god, please don't come over here", but unfortunately he did. As he started to walk over, I stood up. As I was about to walk away, my sister told me to stay in Vietnamese. I knew that she didn't want him to perceive that we were frightened. When the homeless guy got to us, he started talking nonsense and then asked for a penny. When my mom's childhood friend told the homeless guy that we didn't have any money, he's slammed his fist on something else and walked off angrily. My heart was pounding so fast that all I wanted to do was to return to our "haunted" hotel.

On our second day in San Francisco, we toured the Alcatraz prison, walked around Pier 39, ate overpriced seafood at the Fishermen Wharf, and visited the crookedest street in S.F. a.k.a. Lombard Street. After we descended the steep slope down from the Lombard Street, we stopped at a café for some drinks. Since San Francisco is known for the cable cars, we decided to hop on one to get back to our hotel. All the seats in the cable car that arrived were full, so we had to stand up and hold onto the poles. The ride back to the hotel was definitely fun but kind of scary. It almost seemed like a rollercoaster ride going up and down the slopes. I wonder how many people fall off the cable cars each year...since there's nothing holding you in, you're basically just holding on to the pole for dear life.

While I think San Francisco is a very beautiful city, I don't think I would ever want to live there due to the homeless people situation. We were almost always surrounded by homeless people everywhere we went in San Francisco. It's definitely a problem that the city needs to resolve...

"I left my heart in San Francisco

High on a hill, it calls to me
To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars
The morning fog may chill the air, I don't care"