Bex and the (Other) City

I'm feeling slightly more coherent than I was when I woke up this morning having stayed awake for 26 hours and then slept for 6. Today has only served to strengthen my like for the city, even though I was mostly just wondering, wandering and shopping.

San Francisco must have been planned by a computer geek (makes sense given the proximity to Silicon Valley): who else could have chosen to build a city on a small inlet of land, surrounded by water on three sides and with hills scattered so randomly other than someone who misspent her youth building up and razing down cities in Sim City 2000? Only a true geek - one who relished in creating the most difficult scenarios using the terrain editor - could have risen to such a challenge.

Still, I like the way the city doesn't reward those who are smugly good with maps; "ah ha," they say, "I've worked out the quickest route," only to come up against the towering pinnacle of Nob Hill. Everyone who lives here and walks at all must have a great arse and thighs, though; every cloud...
I had a bagel and cappuccino at Café Espresso near Union Square and then hiked up through North Beach and over to Union Street, the main drag of Pacific Heights, where there were plenty of cool shops, trendy cafés and restaurants and plenty of ladies who lunch. After working up a bit of an appetite in les magasins, I stopped for lunch at La Boulange, a favourite cafeé of mine on Union Street. I really love the place - particularly its baguettes, which are size-appropriate given the lemon tart nature of the majority of its patrons. Irony aside, the baguette was very nice and the free cucumber and lemon flavoured water they had was very refreshing.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through Cow Hollow and then shopping at Union Square - all in all, not too terrible a Saturday by anyone's standards.

6.15 p.m. Pacific Time, 4th August.