Day Four: Mission and Castro

By day four my feet still hurt, so for the first time, we made use of public transport and took the bus to Mission. Unfortunately, I don't remember too much from the district on account of the pain. We did begin the day with a breakfast at some super hip place Gosia found online (we actually had to wait for a table, and stuff). The hip element was provided by a pair of young people who played cards over their meal. The surprise element was provided by tofu. Gosia ordered some complicated pile of food that starred said ingredient, and I had something containing chorizo and hash browns and generally everything fat and delicious. To my shock and horror Gosia's plate tasted better. I'm not exactly mending my wicked ways yet, but it made me reconsider tofu. For a short while.

Mission is mostly Spanish. That's all I can say about it. And Castro is mostly gay. Major bombshells, I know. It's not that big though, which was a bit surprising to me, given its fame. Rainbow flags everywhere, names with puns, but it was just several streets. Then again, I don't know what I expected.

All this time, we kept walking into every bookstore (second-hand or otherwise) we came across, because I was looking for a particular book - the second part of a SF trilogy. I bought the first part for 1 pound in Birmingham on a semi-whim, devoured it in record time, and have been looking for the next installments ever since. I finally found the book in a seemingly SF-oriented bookstore called Borderlands and learned that it had actually gone out of print in the US. And I paid 17 bucks for it. Go whims.

After Castro, I realized that there was simply no way I could take any more walking, so I bid Gosia good luck and went home by subway. Going home by subway unfortunately entailed climbing 70 more hills. I literally contemplated just sitting down in the middle of the street at some point. I was beyond caring.

But I did manage to get back to the hotel, and after my feet rested, I was even able to go out for a Thai dinner with Gosia. The food was good, though often unrecognizable (the running phrase became "Again, I don't know what I'm eating"). Then another nightcap at another bar - once again manned by a very friendly 30+ woman - and off we went to sleep.