Day 16: At the Thirsty Bear

Our first full day in San Francisco began with quite a bit of fog. Not realizing what that meant in terms of the temperature, I dressed in my usual shorts and short sleeved t-shirt. It stayed relatively overcast, windy, and pretty chilly for the rest of the day, but since I couldn't bring myself to spend money on a jacket while we were out, I just braved the weather in my inappropriate attire.

We started the day relatively late, but we made it downtown around 11am to start checking out Market Street before having lunch with our host, Lance. In the downtown area, Market Street is absolutely bustling with people at all times. People duck in and out of the dozens of shops that line the street while cars and bikes jockey for position among the many streetcars hooked into the spiderwebbed ceiling of cables that hangs above every street in the city. Geries and I walked around for a while looking at shops until lunch time when we met up with Lance and his friend Michael.

After navigating the streets considerably faster than we had without our guides, we made it to Thirsty Bear, a restaurant and organic microbrewery right in downtown San Francisco. We all ordered the beer and burger combo, which included one of the brewery's beers on tap, and a lamb and pork burger with hard boiled egg and arugula. The burger was delicious, and the beer was also very good. I tried the Valencia wheat, which was good on its own, but I probably should have asked for an orange peel to go with it.

Once we were fed, we went back to the car to try to visit an art store so Geries could get a stamp and sealing wax. Navigating Market Street by car proved to be a nightmare. At every intersection it seemed like it was impossible to turn left, making it quite an ordeal just to get to the other side of the street to go the opposite direction. We eventually found the only way to switch directions was just to go all the way to the end of the Union Square area and turn around then come all the way back.

We did find the art store, and after we got what we came for, we made it back to Lance's to rest before heading out to a birthday party for Michael, who we had lunch with earlier. The party was very low key, and we got to meet a ton of cool people who told us, among other things, all about the things we should do and see in San Francisco. Before the night was out we also got to meet Robin and Jeff, two couchsurfers from New York that had just come in that night to stay with Lance. We had a great time just hanging out and talking with Robin, Jeff, Lance, and all the others at the party. With our new list of places to go, we were ready to get to bed and rest up for our next day in San Francisco.