The zen of (re)discovering the Bay area

Some very dear friends came to visit for a few days and left yesterday. Unlike many house guests, this family wanted me to accompany them on their sight-seeing adventures. Usually, when folks come to see us, they don't actually end up seeing us for very long. Because our home is situated equidistant from points of interest north (San Francisco) and south (Santa Cruz) we are a perfect home base, allowing for day trips here and there, arriving back at the home base just in time for drinks, dinner, and maybe a movie or card playing. Although I did not accompany them everywhere, we managed to squeeze in some long neighborhood walks, a trip to the farmer's market, and my friends contributed heartily to the tourist economy in Santa Cruz and Monterey, as well as a very fun albeit long day in the City.

I've never toured San Francisco as a tourist, so Monday was a first. Based on the sheer number of "must see" things on their list, they first had to decide: drive or take the train? Driving won out. Once there, drive ourselves or hop on a tour bus? Tour bus won. Having never been on a tour bus of any type, ever, I was slightly intrigued by the idea of being hauled around (by someone else for a change) and wondered how long it would take before I needed to hop off and go my own way. My guests purposely chose the "hop on, hop off" type of tour, which would allow us the opportunity to see more of what we wanted, in depth. They decided the best course of action would be to take the entire tour once (advertised at one and a half hours), then decide what warranted further investigation.

I am now (at least slightly) a bigger fan of the tour bus approach. After completing one full round of sights atop the open-air, double-deck bus, we stopped for lunch, and walked to our in-depth destinations.

Towards the end of the late afternoon/early evening, our group decided that Chinatown was worth a second look, and we hopped back on the bus, as no one really felt like walking up those hills to then more hills in Chinatown. This particular bus was outfitted with a very poor P.A. system, had only one level, which was all open-air, and had very few riders. Perfect. We plopped ourselves in the back, taking up the entire back row of seats and settled in for a leisurely ride to Chinatown; not directly, mind you, but through the prescribed route all the buses took. This meant that we had at least 45 minutes to rest our "barking dogs" as we wound around the City once again.

So far, so good. Sounds terrific, doesn't it? Well, it was. Until we noticed a couple of helicopters hovering overhead in the distance, headed in the very same direction we were headed. "Humm", pondered the tour bus operator. "Wonder where they're going?" As we got closer and closer to our next destination, the helicopters increased in number, and curiously enough, black and white police vehicles were lining the streets. We could see police officers sitting in their vehicles. Many of them. Too many to count. "Uh, oh", the tour bus operator announces, as he speeds up. He doesn't abort the tour, doesn't take an alternate route. No, no, no. He drives directly into the area in question, gaining speed, cutting off an ambulance (in front of a bunch of police cars? Really?) talking the whole time (remember the crappy P.A. system? Still really muffled and crappy at this point).

Suddenly, the tour bus operator decides to take a quick vote to see where we are all headed. It turns out we were the only group that was planning to get off the bus in Chinatown. Everyone else was going back to the home base (near the Embarcadero). Once we realized that our jaunt through Chinatown would not include being picked up at a later time, we decided to forgo the Chinatown stop, and get some dinner at Fisherman's Wharf. With that information, the driver whips the bus around, and we are now headed for the streets of Chinatown. As we leave the congested, police-in-riot-gear area, the P.A. system magically clears up just enough to hear the driver mutter to himself "Jesus". Crystal clear sound. Every nuance of his frustration, and fear of the unknown up ahead could be heard by all in the bus. Priceless. Absolutely priceless.

As it turns out, we inadvertently drove right into a potential protest area, where officers were anticipating BART protesters to arrive and protest the cell phone turn-off incident recently on BART. Who knew? Certainly not us and obviously, not our driver. Our reward for dodging a potentially lethal situation (remember, this is an open-air bus, so we are completely vulnerable to whatever happens to fly by, including possible bullets, tear gas, etc.) was that the driver drove us all through Chinatown, off the regular route, and then we continued on our merry way, none the worse for wear.