By the numbers:

Hours of sleep on Friday night: 0
Arrived at CMH: 4
Departed: 6
Arrived at hotel: 10:30
Cost of room service lunch of desperation: $68
Hours of nap: 4
Monks/Friars seen: 1
Semi-Touristy things Accomplished: 3
Maps in my pocket: 3
Chinese Restaurant Flyers in my pocket: 3

We just really couldn’t sleep Friday night. Mostly it was excitement and anxiety about early departure but it was also practical because I feel worse than bad if I only get 4 hours. So we pretty much just skipped it.

Jump ahead to arriving in San Francisco and we’re both just draggin’ ass all the way from BART to the hotel–really not seeing much of anything on our way there. So much for my wide-eyed fantasy arrival from the underground.

The Hotel has been fabulous and they even had our room ready for us to check-in early, which probably saved our day because we were nowhere near ready to deal with maps and walking at that point. After a brief discussion, which pretty much consisted of Ellen saying, “I’m not leaving this room,” and me saying, “yeah, it’s nice here,” we ordered room service from Cafe de la Presse.

Then we passed out.

Zoom ahead to 4:30 and I’m waking up and yelling, “I HAVE To go out into the sun!”

We had a great afternoon of leisurely strolling the immediate area and getting our bearings, as well as gathering up maps and ideas–your basic recognizance mission. Our walk took us down to the Ferry Building, which was really fun but we were late enough that many things were closing up for the day. We’ll definitely go back earlier tomorrow or Wednesday.

We walked up the Embarcadero and cut over to China Town from above our hotel. That walk up took us through what we’ve christened, “the Dirty District,” which was appropriately full of strip clubs and things called Pleasure Paradise.

At around 7 we realized two things: We want to have dinner but we feel funky and too tired to bother with changing clothes. Our lovely hotel dude listened to me say, “I need someplace tasty, low key, and not much more than a 10 minute walk.” His suggestion was Puccini and Pinetti, off of Union Square. Not only was the food good and the atmosphere well suited for a couple of exhausted East Coast tourists, but the walk there and back took us through all the uppity shops and bars, which was a direction we hadn’t yet walked.

All in all, it was a good first day considering our energy levels (about a notch above dead).

Tomorrow is much more ambitious and will hopefully include the Alcatraz tour.