We didn't wake up this morning till about 10:30 and Jane was not feeling well at all which probably had something to do with the Chinese bloke coughing and spluttering all over the bus the day before when we went through Chinatown but she kept on going as long as she could, we had planned on going to Lombard Street which is the most crooked street in the world apparently but to get there we had to walk down into SOMA (that's south of market) to get the bus and by god does it turn into a shit hole very quickly. Luckily we didn't have that long to wait but when we got near the stop and looked up the side streets that we would have to walk up we had a change of plan, don't think Jane would have made it up there with her bad leg and it was debatable if I'd make it so we stayed on the bus to the end of the route and to Ghirardelli Square.
In 1893, Domingo Ghirardelli purchased the entire city block in order to make it into the headquarters of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company. In the early 1960s, the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company was bought by the Golden Grain Macaroni Company which moved the headquarters off-site to San Leandro and put the square up for sale. San Franciscan William M. Roth and his mother bought the land in 1962 to prevent the square from being replaced with an apartment building. The Roth’s hired a landscape architect to convert the square and its historic brick structures to an integrated restaurant and retail complex, the first major adaptive re-use project in the United States. It opened in 1964. In 1965, Benjamin Thompson and Associates renovated the lower floor of the Clock Tower, keeping the existing architectural elements, while the lower floors of the Clock Tower are now home to Ghirardelli Square's main chocolate shop. After spending a couple of hours wandering around here and Aquatic Park Jane had had enough and was feeling even worst so it was time to jump back on a bus and head back to the hotel area. We dropped into the Walgreen’s pharmacy to get some medicine then I dropped her back off at the hotel so she could have a sleep for a bit. I think I even managed to get an hour myself as well.
I wasn't feeling that good myself so thought I would just have a potter about for the rest of the afternoon so jumped back on the number 19 bus again and climbed up the very steep street when I got off to Lombard Street. This street is world famous for being so steep, it has about ten hairpin bends in it and must drop about 300 foot in a very short distance, it is that steep it has steps down the side of it and fantastic views over the city. There are plenty of houses on this street even though the gardens are small they are all perfectly kept, the gardens for each house are in the bends of the road. After watching the cable cars go past the top of Lombard Street for a bit I walked down it towards Washington Square and picked up one of the cable cars from there back to Market Street, grabbed myself a sandwich from the shop, went in the Apple shop to play with the phones and computers then popped into the Johnny Foley's Irish pub just off Union Square for a couple of drinks, this bar was absolutely packed out but I eventually found somewhere to stand with my drink, even though it was so busy you only had to wait a couple of minutes to be served, by then I was done in so headed back to the hotel for an evening in front of the TV.
