Coit Tower, Little Italy - San Francisco 2016

Our final day in San Francisco we took the car. We contemplated walking all of ten seconds and decided having Tom chauffeur us around sounded better than more hiking, especially since our list was pretty long. The first thing on his list was to drive down Lombard Street. This street is famous for one block where there are eight crazy, one way, sharp turns making it the crookedest street in the world. I didn't get a photo of the street looking up so you'll have to view someone else's photo here. My photo is of us going downhill.

It wasn't as bad as I thought, but the entire time I kept wondering why? Why would someone make the street this crazy? Why would people actually live in residential houses on this street? I mean, these people who lived here had to back out of their garages on to this curvy street,,,with all of the tourists driving down it! The line to drive down this block was crazy long and then there were people who walked it so trespassing was going on left and right into these people's yards and driveways. Why? I didn't get it, but we drove it and marked it off our list.

We took Lombard most of the way to our next stop at Coit Tower. We parked uphill on a side street and hiked the rest of the way to the tower which consisted of us climbing up several series of staircases. Why this city is built uphill is something I am going to have to research.

Coit tower is a historical memorial tower to a San Francisco resident, Lillian Hitchcock Coit, who left money to the city upon her death for beautification purposes. She was quite the interesting lady, wearing pants, smoking cigars, gambling, and chasing fires during the 1800's when women just did not behave like that. She was and is the patroness of the firefighters of San Francisco.

The 210 foot tall tower sits on Telegraph Hill and has the best views of all most every famous San Francisco landmark. Unfortunately, to ride the elevator to the top to see this view costs $7.00 per person (something I'm not sure Lillian would have agreed to), and so we opted to send Marilyn and Darcy up to get pictures because they got the senior and student discount for $5.00. Upon payment, their hands were stamped and Darcy, being her Grandmother Connie's daughter, immediately pressed her stamp on to Madison's hand in a nice transfer and Madison was able to sneak into the elevator too. But then she got nervous and chickened out and went instead to the bathroom. Tom and I stayed downstairs and looked at the view from there.

Inside Coit Tower are murals and various artifacts so there is more to do then just pay to see the view, and outside was a giant statue of Christopher Columbus who still is getting credit for discovering America, but we couldn't figure out what he did with Coit Tower to earn his place on the property.

Tom drove us next into Little Italy and dropped us off at the famous City Lights Bookstore while he went to find parking. The bookstore was established in 1953 and became involved in an obscenity trial after the owner published Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems. It is a quaint, little store and we split up and browsed. Darcy and I bought books and from there we met Tom and walked around Little Italy.

Little Italy smells wonderful, at least in the evening. Every place we passed I wanted to go inside and eat something. Employees and owners stood outside restaurants and welcomed us as we passed giving us a quick review of the specials for the evening. We chose an Italian place I found on Yelp and had a tasty pasta meal. Or I should say most of us did. Tom ordered squid ink pasta and it was all I could do to take a picture of it let alone watch him eat it.

We had desert and coffee at a pastry shop and continued walking the city before dark hit. The pictures below are of open books hanging from wires and the fallen words were etched on the pavement below.

It was just another cool part of a fantastic city, and a nice way to spend our last day.