SF, take two.

this town seems hell bent on taking my money away. and I don't just mean because it's all overpriced, I knew that going in. it's the extras.

when I booked our hotel, I opted for the "parking package"... the room was $89 a night, parking was $24 a day. parking package just combines the two on one bill, so we're paying $113 a night. when I checked in, he tried to charge me for parking again. I corrected him.

last night at dinner, we got screwed on tea and crappy rice, as I'd already lamented over.

today, we made our way over to the nihonmachi japanese street fair. miyuki got some earrings, we saw some t-shirts that we may order online later. we went to lunch at a japanse place nearby, and they completely screwed up out order. miyuki orders chicken katsu and got something completely different, and her salad had no dressing on it. I ordered a "tuna tango" roll, which was spicy tuna, cream cheese an avocado, plus two pieces of inari. they brough out two rolls for me. I didn't realise it at the time (it was a $9 roll, I figured it may have been big), so I started eating. lunch ended up costing considerably more than I had planned, and I left three pieces of sushi on my plate (miyuki ate two herself).

we then bussed out to the japanese tea garden. the garden was beautiful, the tea was shite. I had imagined high end tea (the kind we have at home) in a serene setting... instead you have a loud, bustling common area full of tourists, who are served shitty pre-bagged teas for $3 a pop, with rice crackers. we didn't even stick around for the tea, and instead wandered around the quieter parts of the garden. I think I got several good pictures of the landscaping and bonsai, but it was really difficult to frame the shots without a bunch of people in them.

I had hoped we could hail a cab back to the hotel, but had no luck. we took the bus back instead, but ended up having to walk several blocks through what I can only assume was the 'crackton' neighbourhood. unfortunately, our hotel is right on the cusp of crackton. that's what $89 a night plus parking gets you in SF. ironically, one of the other hotels I had looked at (the miyaka) was in the middle of the street fair. it also cost twice as much and was out of our price range.

miyuki isn't overly impressed with the city, so we probably won't come back. she wondered if we just weren't in the right part of town, or if it's just a dirty city. I think it's a little bit of both. we've covered a LOT of the city... chinatown, haight-ashbury, nob hill, union square, japantown... tomorrow we'll head up to fisherman's wharf after lunch, and I think our misadventure will be complete. we may or may not take the cable car to go there.

I also found out we haven't been on the golden gate bridge. that's on the other side of town. we just crossed the bay bridge between oakland and SF. I need to figure out if there's an easy way for us to cross golden gate on oru way out of town... I don't think there is.