The Trek

Saturday and the sun was out. Time to work on the tan. Being half Scots my complexion is naturally pale blue – I can get undressed at a beach and dazzle people so badly they can’t find their towels. This is not a good look in California so I decided to couple a long walk in the sun with a tshirt and start to look a bit more local.

So the day had two goals, three if you include the tan. First off, walk the Golden Gate Park. Then come back into town via Little Russia to see if any Moskovskaya (finest vodka in the world) could be had.

So I liberally slapped on the Factor 15, packed a bag with water, camera and a jumper in case the fog came in, and started off.

The first part of the walk was pretty dull, up over the top of Alamo Square and then a mild uphill, cross street trip to the start of the Panhandle. This is a stretch of parkland about a block or two wide leading to the main park, just wide enough for jogging paths, basketball courts and the occasional picnic area. Unfortunately it’s bordered by two very busy roads and so doesn’t feel like a park as such, just a desperate bit of greenery.

However it leads to the park itself. Now imagine you take Hyde Park, stretch it to about three times its length and four times as wide and plonk it in the hills above San Francisco. Well you’d be wasting your time because someone’s done it already and it’s the Golden Gate Park; a piece of the countryside in the middle of the city.

New Yorkers rave about Central Park, and for a place as crammed as Manhattan it is a glorious place. But you can never really feel you’re in the countryside in Central – the traffic is still audible and you can see the skyscrapers looming over you.

Golden Gate is different. San Francisco’s never really gone big on skyscrapers and the space is so huge that you can forget you’re in a city and really relax and enjoy the greenery and the view. There are roads running through it but because they’ve been skilfully positioned and are strictly controlled you can get the peace and quiet.

So I started into the park and almost immediately you meet its founder; a dour Scottish gentleman (we crop up everywhere there’s hard work to be done) by the name of John McLaren. Apparently he hated statues and the one of him, though commissioned in the early 1900s, sat under a blanket in the horse stables and was only discovered after his death.

I proceeded west and avoided Hippy Hill, although the sounds of drums were audible, and headed to the AIDS memorial park. A lovely little grove made poignant by some of the inscriptions on rocks there. I’m currently onto book three of Tales of the City and it seems HIV went through this town like the Black Death.

Took a look at the Japanese Tea garden but didn’t fancy paying to get in; it was very crowded and while pretty, wasn’t the wilderness I was looking for.

So wandered down the road to the Shakespeare Gardens – a wonderful idea. It’s a garden devoted to plants found in the bard’s plays. I recognised some from the Scottish play and Anthony and Cleopatra but it was a lovely grove nevertheless.

Popped by the De Young museum, a magnificent structure that my camera couldn’t do justice to. Would have gone in but today was all about nature, not art. There’s a very nice art fair outside however and I saw a couple of pictures I’d like to hang. Took a call from mum, who was just about to go to sleep. Memo to self – get Skype set up asap.

Next up was the Botanical Gardens, something I’m sure R, a keen gardener, would have loved. There was the moon view park, a lovely open space with a pond full of turtles sunning themselves, plants organised by type and locale and an amazing Redwood grove. I’ve been up to see the Muir Woods redwoods and they are so impressive as a species – older than many civilisations and just as impressive.

The grove itself was very well laid out. Even thought there were only a few trees the setting was enclosed and you got a real feeling of forest – something so primeval you half expected a veloceraptor to jump out of a bunch of ferns and disembowel you for intruding.

One downside to the garden – it’s very difficult to get out of. There’s chain link fence all around the place (presumably to stop people nicking the plants) so after some fruitless wandering and sprinkler dodging I found a place where the fence was down and made an exit.

After stopping at a map to get my bearings I headed up to Strawberry Lake, an artificial construction with an island in the middle, and watched the boats you can hire do a circuit on the water - pursued by ducks and seagulls eager for sandwiches from tourists. It was a nice interlude and I stopped off for a hot dog and a bottle of water at the boathouse, part of the former of which was shared with a rather pushy squirrel.

Met up with an English family there who I’d seen earlier, tooling round the place in a noisy little three wheeler. It turns out it had satellite navigation and could be used to tour the whole city. Something to put on the things to do list.

After lunch, ablutions and a refill of the water bottle at a fountain I crossed the road and went up to see the Prayer Book Cross. This was apparently erected at the spot where that venal old pirate Sir Francis Drake held the first mass in San Francisco in the late 1500s. Call me a cynic but I doubt it – Drake was an eminently practical man and I suspect he held his act of worship on the beach of the bay rather than trekking inland a few miles.

Nearly got run down on the way up and way down from the hill that the (very impressive) cross is erected on. I was constantly being passed by cyclists on the way up and when I reached the cross found a gaggle of them drinking beer and tequila at the top. As it happens there was a cycle courier race going on today and this was a refreshment spot.

I was now at the border in the park – it’s a place of two halves. Running down the centre is Cross Over Drive, a very busy road, but this is a functioning city after all. After a bit of exploring I found a safe place to cross and headed into the second part of the park – a much less busy area that was mainly full of families enjoying the open space and city-built BBQ spots.

Found a very nice waterfall near the only memorial to the 1906 earthquake that nearly destroyed the city. Odd that such a momentous event has so little to remember it by – but I suppose the locals don’t want to tempt fate.

Then it was on to Spreckels Lake – a popular boating spot for the miniature boating crowd. I’ve always been a bit disdainful of the ‘toy boat’ scene but these were anything but toys: beautifully crafted sailing yachts exact in every detail, a true labour of love by the owners.

But what I’d really come to see in this section was the bison. We know them as buffalo, probably the most successful land mammal in North America until the arrival of humans rapid fire rifles. There’s been a breeding herd here since the 1890s, the first bison in captivity once the locals realised that, in the words of Joni Mitchell, you don’t know what you’ve lost ‘til it’s gone.

There aren’t many and they are in a very small space compared to the thousands of acres their forbears were used to but it’s nice to see a little nature preserved. While I was trying to get good shots through the fence I noticed what looked like a toad on the ground, but it turned out to be a ground squirrel; lovely little thing that almost made me like the species, which are after all merely rats with good PR.

By this time it was late afternoon and the throb of my head was telling me that I’d had too much sun and it was time to head home. But there was still the vodka to find. So I headed out of the park and went up the hill towards Little Russia, passing some truly tacky front gardens.

The walk down Geary was a long one, and took me through Little China, home to the huge local Chinese population. They don’t live in Chinatown for obvious reasons but instead come north, where property prices are sensible and tourists are few and far between.

After a score of blocks the grocery stores dropped the pictorial script and I began to see Cyrillic in the windows. Now the hunt began. But it quickly turned out that the quest for Russian spirits was going to be a tough one.

I tried place after place and started to run out of blocks to go through, as the Russian stores got fewer and I moved into the museum district, full of hipster cafes and liquor stores.

Finally I popped my head around the door of one place, scanned the shelves and started to head back once I failed to recognise the green label I was looking for. The proprietor saw me going and called me back, asking in a broad American accent if I was looking for something in particular.

I asked if he had any Moskovskaya and got a very odd look. He then uttered a string of words I’m assuming was Russian but I used one of only three words in the language I have (net) and he grinned and shook his head.

“None of that stuff over here,” he said. “They keep it for themselves, it’s too good to let go. Where did you hear about it?”

I explained that I’d got a taste for it in Moscow and had been looking for a bottle of the Crystale version ever since. Sadly there was nothing he could do, but recommended another bottle which, he promised, if properly chilled would taste nearly as good and was distilled six times – not as pure as Moskovskaya but no hangover at least. I bought a fifth, we exchanged business cards and I headed home.

By this time it was past seven and my legs were sending urgent messages that it was time for a rest, and maybe some food that wasn’t processed. I could have got a bus back – Geary is thick with them – but I’d started the adventure on foot and comes hell and high water I was going to finish it the same way.

It was a very tired and slightly sunburned chap who made his way up the stairs to the home but I was glad to be back. I had a cold shower that was so good the Catholic Church would make it a sin and then retired to bed with a cold beer, the third volume of Tales of the City and had an early night.