Had an hour or two of confusion this morning, beginning with the plan to meet Max and Sarah in the hotel lobby at 8:45am – or was it 9:45? A twenty minute period of all four of us going up and down in the lifts, phoning rooms and always managing to just miss each other finally righted itself at about 9:10am and we headed off to Sugar Café for brunch. This had been recommended to us by a hotel staffer last night; Sarah had checked the address online and we found it easily – or so we thought! It wasn’t until we checked the receipt that we realised we were eating at Honey Café, one block south of Sugar Café. For me, this was reminiscent of travelling through India where one restaurant will receive a recommendation in the Lonely Planet Guide, and ten others will immediately open nearby with names “almost but not quite” the same. The food at Honey was great, however, so we weren’t disappointed – and it gives us Sugar to visit for brunch tomorrow.
We left the café and headed east towards the water, stopping briefly at a bike hire shop to ask the man in charge if we could borrow a pump for Max’s tyres. Turned out he had a compressor, which he was happy to use for us – the wheelchair now goes like a dream, with tyres pumped to the ideal pressure for San Franciscan hills! We made our way to Piers 30/32 where the teams for the Louis Vuitton Cup were based, it was fairly quiet there at that time with only a few stayers around the Luna Rossa headquarters (which was being dismantled) and most of the Team New Zealand crew either out on the water or in a briefing session. We walked around the waterfront, past where we had eaten last night, checking out possible vantage points for this afternoon’s races. At America’s Cup Park we were approached by a lady wearing a Team NZ top – she had seen us at the team base earlier, and wondered if we would like a New Zealand flag each? For the rest of the afternoon we had these draped across handbags, shoulders and the back of the wheelchair – no-one could doubt our allegiance.
We finally settled on what seemed to be a good vantage point; we had a great view of the race area even though we could see neither the start nor finish lines. We watched the first race between the heads of others, but managed to grab better spots for the second race when some people moved away. As a former ‘racing parent’, it was interesting to be revisiting race watching – many spectators, many different opinions, not many of them grounded in accuracy. One fellow (with an American accent, it must be stated) was particularly verbose and at one point loudly joked that Oracle had hit the bridge – when we turned around, he had a large can of Fosters in his hand. This nicely summarised the general picture we were all forming of him by this stage.
The racing was spectacular, and possibly a good introduction to the sport for Sarah who could see what was happening and learn a little about the rules without getting bored; one or two sea lions from nearby Pier 39 occasionally swam around us to add to the entertainment. The second yacht race was over by 3:00pm and we headed to Boudin Bakery on Fisherman’s Wharf for a late lunch of clam chowder in a sourdough cob. By this time we had spent over four hours in the sun on an unusually hot day for San Francisco, so water and juices were also purchased and enjoyed; Yvonne had a blueberry scone. Google maps showed us the quickest way back to our hotel, this route took us through Chinatown which was bustling with people purchasing from stores selling a range of exotic fruit, vegetables and seafood – including turtle. Yvonne was intrigued by the elderly Chinese ladies buying peanuts in the shell – each individual pod was inspected before being chosen for purchase.
Back at the hotel, we had a short break in our rooms before heading down to ‘Wine Hour’ for the complimentary glass or two of Californian white. By now it was unanimous that we didn’t want to walk far for dinner, so we asked for recommendations nearby and were directed to First Crush, a bustling bar/restaurant in a former wine cellar. We found our way there without any problems, shared a handful of small dishes, and were back at the hotel for an early night.