After arriving back from Sacramento a little after lunch, I jumped on the bus up the hill to Haight-Ashbury. I had travelled through here on Monday and was keen to head back to explore. Haight St is interesting in that some parts of it are as they were 40-odd years ago, others are made to look like they were there 40-odd years ago, and others, such as the local Ben & Jerry's ice cream store, make no attempt to fit in. For every genuine vintage or thrift store, there are five newer stores selling look-a-like items at three times the price. There is even an American Apparel store. Stores have names such as Soul Patch or Earth Song.
Back in the day, acts such as Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane lived in the area. Hunter S Thompson wrote about it. And people wrote songs about it. (San Francisco - be sure to wear flowers in your hair was written to promote a music festival in the neighbourhood). There's a mural on one of the shops featuring the Forever 27 club - or at least some members of it. Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain are pictured - they all died at 27. There is talk to do another mural to feature some more recent deaths such as Amy Winehouse.
After trolling up and down Haight St for a good while, I headed back down the hill towards Alamo Square. This is where heaps of people stand to photograph the Painted Ladies..the row of colourful Victorian houses, with the backdrop of the Financial District behind them. I'd seen them on the bus on Monday but figured it might be a nice place to visit. The walk to the area was actually more fun. San Francisco is full of old Victorian houses, and you can paint them any colour. Out the front are often huge trees and the streets are pretty quiet making for a beautiful walk.
Once I'd visited the Painted Ladies again I kept walking in the direction of one of the Cable Car routes. Three days in San Francisco and I had yet to ride one!! The Cable Cars are the only moving National Treasure, and for a few reasons I'm surprised they are still in operation - not least the fact that it would be really easy to fall off and end up in the street. Surely there are insurance concerns there. There are three routes still running. I hopped on the California St one, which runs only along this street, into downtown. The fares are $6 one way or $14 for a all-day pass. With a few hours to kill before meeting my Couchsurfing host I decided to spend the rest of the day riding the Cable Cars around town. 
Running the cars is a two-man job. One guy each at the front and back to operate the brakes. While there was, of course, heaps of tourists jumping on and off, commuters seem to use them a lot too. One guy told me he was only going a couple of blocks but it was all uphill. After going up and down quite a few hills on the Cable Cars (resisting the urge to scream "wwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" as we did), I can't say I blame him. After riding the California route into town, I caught it half-way back up and switched onto one of the other lines heading to the Fishermans Wharf. At the end of that line, which weaved through some more residential areas, I saw them turn the car around. They drive it onto a little turn-table, then physically push the car around. Again, a two-man job. Then it drives back out onto the next-door line to go back the other way. I walked a couple blocks along the wharf to reach the third line, which down this end, is a bit separate to the second line, but in a mile or so, travels along the same route. I stayed on until California St then jumped on that route again to head back downtown to meet Barclay, my host for the next two nights. By the time I met him about 8pm, I'd covered nearly every inch of the cable car route!
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