Day 23 - 21/09/2022 - Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

David Bowie was afraid of Americans and I'm afraid of San Francisco. In all seriousness, I would be lying if I said that San Francisco doesn't intimidate me a little bit. I was thinking today that I split cities I like into three categories: 1. I can see exactly what it would be like to be a part of it and I desperately want to be (Utrecht is at the absolute top of my list); 2. I can imagine what it would be like to be a part of it and I think I could fit into it; and 3. I appreciate what the place is about and I enjoy visiting it, but as a place to live it's just not for me. The last time I visited San Francisco I placed it firmly in the third category. Now, I'm not so sure, but it's much closer to a 2. There is something really unique about the city; it has style, with its unbelievably beautiful Victorian houses and its quirky hippy neighbourhoods. But as I walk around today by myself I can't help but think that navigating it requires a level of street smart that would take everything I've got to match it. I had previously decided to just get an uber to Golden Gate Park once I arrived in the city instead of having to figure out the public transport system, but once I had got there I was struck with a sudden burst of stubborness. I saw that an uber would cost me $30 one way, and I couldn't help but think that I would end up seeing very little of the city were I just to be picked up from one place and dropped at another. So I took two buses, and was lucky enough to get a bus driver who told me where I needed to go. On the bus, I got to see more of the gorgeous Victorian houses (I can't believe a week ago I imagined they were all gone!) and also some of the most obvious and grim signs of homelessness I've ever seen, which again left me feeling a little ambivalent about the city.

Golden Gate Park would have surpassed my expectations had I just spent the first 5 minutes there: as I headed towards the Conservatory of Flowers, a raven was hopping along the grass. Ravens are some of my favourite animals, and they are such a rare (read, nonexistent) sight where I live that I spent a good amount of time watching everything it did and failing to persuade it to repeat my speech (as I heard ravens can do that). The Conservatory itself was really beautiful, with honourable mentions going out to the section on chocolate (the mist was a nice touch!) and my absolute favourite, the Giant Amazon Water Lily. I thought about my now finished novel, Ëvyl, where the heroine sees some in her aunt's greenhouse. At the time of writing it, I had mentioned that they were large enough for her to be able to lie on top of one, and today I found out that it would actually have been able to hold her, as these can actually support the weight of an adult. Other fun facts I learnt include one about another favourite flower of mine, the lady slipper orchid, which my parents have in their patio. Apparently, slipper orchids are deceitful and lure and trap pollinators but don't offer them anything in return. To paraphrase an old meme, always be yourself, unless you can be a lady slipper orchid, then always be a lady slipper orchid.

My next stop was the Japanese Garden, which was absolutely beautiful. The pagoda was under construction, but there were plenty of other things that caught my eye, including a large round bridge which I saw people effortlessly climb on top of and then really struggle to climb out of. Of course I had to try, and once at the top couldn't resist asking the lovely stranger down below to take a photo of me there as evidence. She was an Australian travelling with a friend and when they heard I was travelling alone they said I was "very brave to be travelling by myself," and I couldn't help but feel a little bit of a fraud, since this is one of the few days here I haven't spent hanging out with my friends, and I have by no stretch of the imagination been alone.

The Botanical Gardens were nice, though less strikingly beautiful as the other two, and I particularly enjoyed walking around the Redwood Grove. On my way out of the Garden, I tried my luck with the San Francisco public system again with less luck. First, I struggled to locate the exact bus stop I was meant to be on. Then I found it but the bus didn't show when it was meant to. I wondered if anyone could tell how restless I looked as I kept checking Google Maps and whether this immediately revealed me to not be a local. A man sitting at the bus stop across from me kept shouting unintelligible words to me, but I didn't answer back until I realised he was asking him if I had $5 for him to go buy donuts. Sick of waiting by the bus after I saw nothing but number 5's pass me by when I was meant to catch the 44, I finally gave in and called an uber. Only to see the 44 arrive just as my uber did. The best laid plans.

But again, it says something about San Francisco, I think, that I so clearly want to be confused with someone who lives there. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that today I saw the first sign on a park bench that I didn't find deeply annoying: a certain John L. Mairs (1962-2015) wanted to be immortalised with the sentence "My City is better than yours!" I can't argue with that, John.