Trains, Planes, Buses....and a whole lot of walking

It’s Sunday and the train is full and it’s just the first stop. There are a lot of events going on in San Francisco today and all of us suburbanites have elected to ride BART rather than drive in and deal with the hassle of parking and a hundred other reasons that make a car in the city a headache. We are headed in to see the Blue Angeles as part of the Fleet Week celebration that happens every year in October. There is also a 49er game, the Italian Heritage Parade and the Annual Castro Street Fair happening today.

There where a lot of families on the train and could be attending any of these events with the exception of the Castro Street Fair. If it’s what I think it is or anything like the Folsom Street Fair I attended last weekend, I surely hope that none of the kids on the train will be attending! Yes, last week was the kinky event for me, this weekend it’s the good wholesome family event for me….the many personalities of Cecelia!

I’ll write more about the people who were on the train today in another blog, especially the adorable little blond girl on the train who makes me want to be a grandmother far sooner than I’m ready for my boys to have kids. I’ll go straight to the adventures of the city. I love being in San Francisco. I could never live there, but spending the day or the weekend playing tourist is a blast.

For the first time today I rode on a SF City Muni bus. It was no big deal, but an adventure none the less. The bus was even more crowded that the BART train. From the families heading to the Blue Angeles, there was the excitement written all over there kids' faces, to the teenage girls heading who knows where, gossiping and text messaging the whole way, to the sounds of foreign tourists finding there was through the city trying to see all the sites. And of course those that use the bus everyday as their normal daily transportation. Every seat was taken and there was no standing room left. All th0se sounds blending together giving you the sound of the city.

Needless to say the air show was awesome. The food was a bit over priced but smelled great so I couldn’t resist. It was a great day to be outside. Which was a good thing because I got more of the outside than I thought I would be. When it came to getting back on the bus to head back we had no problem boarding the bus. The problem was the bus never moved. Traffic was awful. I have no idea how many people attended this event, but I think all of them were attempting to drive up Van Ness at the same time we were on the bus.

We boarded the 49 Muni bus at Chestnut Street and it took us about 15 minutes to go 2 blocks south of Van Ness. At that stop we got off the bus and walked the rest of the way to the Civic Center BART Station. Walking we passed the #70 bus that was about 3 blocks ahead of ours and neither bus passed us. In fact when we looked back at about Eddy Street we couldn’t see either of the buses. Traffic was that bad. I don’t think they were moving at all. We probably shaved ½ an hour or more of time by walking while being able to see all the buildings that usually blur by me and go unnoticed when I’m in the car. I’m glad that the buses were stuck in traffic and that we decided to walked the city allowing my love for it to grow even more as it showed me its splendor, glory… and of course it’s chaos.