I'm accidentally going to San Francisco

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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So I booked tour from Costa Rica to Panama in late October (if you’re sharp witted you might already know where this is going). I had a few looks at flights, my tour starts on a Friday but the flight to San Jose looked much cheaper on the Friday (are you getting there yet?). Booked that and a return to London from Panama City.

The flight search doesn’t give you much info. I put San Jose in and it gives you an airport code. It DID seem much cheaper than last time I searched. Obviously it goes without saying even before we continue that I’m a fool. Total fool. This was the very moment of my foolhardiness. Here. Right at this very moment in the story. Right as I click the button to book the flight. A day later the e-ticket comes to my inbox. San Jose, California it said. “Um… shit”, I replied.

I break into that sort of sweat one gets as you realise the full extent of the foul up. I call the travel company. “It’ll cost £600 to change it” the smug guy tells me. Well no. That’s far more than the cost of the flight. Why would I do that you fool? It’ll be cheaper just to connect from there.

I’m a lucky fool in a way. I have three days to get to the correct San Jose. And double luck, San Jose Costa Rica is supposed to be a bit rubbishy. And triple luck, mistake San Jose is but a shortish train ride to San Francisco! I look for flights out to Costa Rica. Delta does a journey there from Oakland! Quadruple luck, those flights added to the cost of the flight to mistake San Jose wasn’t that much more than the flight to SJCR.

I have three nights in SF! I’m actually really looking forward to it now. More than the tour! Looks like a great city.

Anyway, thought I’d share.

If anybody has any tips for this lucky fool all on his own in the city in mid-October, apart from the obvious touristy ones which I can research myself, feel free to suggest!

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Obvious “Do you know the way to San Jose?” joke is obvious.

No tips, as I’ve never been to California. I have, however, been to San Jose, Costa Rica, and it really is a bit of a dump. You are not missing much, and the only way to pass three days there would be some sort of tour out of the city.

So, carry on and embrace your “accident” - it sounds like you already are.

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Maybe rent a car, then drive down to Monterrey or Santa Cruz and drive back up the coast. It’s beautiful.

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In SF:
The Asian Art Museum is top-rate, and huge.
SFMOMA is also huge, now that it has been remodeled and worth a trip.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum sometimes has something interesting going on.

If you are not adamant about keeping away from San Jose, I always have really good luck visiting the San Jose Art Museum – they sometimes have the most fascinating things, like melting sugar masks or a whole exhibit with robots.

If you want to ride the cable cars, I recommend the California line from Embarcadero to Nob Hill (it is not thronged with tourists!) When you get to Nob Hill you can have Afternoon Tea at the Ritz or cocktails at the Fairmont’s Tonga Room.

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I have nothing to add, except you should double-check your tickets to make sure they’re not going to Panama City, Florida.

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Next year book a flight to Auckland. Make sure to slur your speech just right!

SF might not be “rubbishy” in the sense of crap, but it is very rubbishy in the sense of tons of trash and debris. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature! Bring a jacket.

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Gorgeous city. Take a ferry somewhere while you’re visiting.

Also, this commercial seems relevant.

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Usually people make the opposite mistake, thinking airport SJO is San jose, CA and they end up at San Jose, Costa Rica. The airport in Silicon Valley is SJC.

Getting from SJC to San Francisco on transit isn’t quite as easy as you may be thinking. Definitely not a quick seamless door to door experience. Plan on two hours at a bare minimum to get to downtown SF via transit. If you do want door-to-door, there’s always Lyft or Uber. At the moment, the airport has different locations for different types of app-based rides. Driving will be about an hour or more, depending on traffic.

There is a free bus from the airport to the Santa Clara Caltrain station. Caltrain runs up the Peninsula to 4th & King Streets in San Francisco. Not exactly in the middle of anywhere you probably want to be, but it is San Francisco. Another option is to take that same free Airport Flyer bus to the VTA light rail station, ride two stops south to Civic Center, then get the #180 express bus to the Fremont BART station.

To help figure how to get to here and there, there’s a multi-agency transit planner at https://511.org

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Here is an old commercial that captures a tiny piece of what is like living there as opposed to being a tourist.

Will you be there for FleetWeek, or Columbus day, or the Castro Street Fair? Really, October is one of my favorite months in SF.

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I accidentally went to Milwaukee once.

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So where are you going in Panama?

I agree that San Jose, Costa Rica is nothing special. You won’t have missed anything.

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I went through the Canal a while back, and I kept thinking, “Hey, this is where that one cool Mod is from”.

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Long drive.

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Or for the slightly more adventurous, there’s the Folsom Street Fair Too bad you’ll miss it this time, it’s in September.

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No sadly looks like I’m missing them. Will be there from 13th to 16th Oct. Why is October so good? Because of events like that?

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Thanks for this.

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In Panama: Bocas del Toro, Boquete, Santa Catalina, then finally Panama City.

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And thanks for the suggestions everyone. Will have a look through all of these!
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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October is so good in San Francisco because the weather is better. It’s usually cold in the summer, but gets nice in the fall.

As said above, bring a jacket! It cools off at night.

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My wife and I ended up accidentally in San Francisco back in September of 2014!

What happened: we’d planned to go to Lake Tahoe, and then decided we’d also take in Yosemite. And then the King fire happened, and Yosemite was mostly evacuated, and there was thick choking smoke everywhere. So, we nixed the Yosemite leg of the trip and decided to cash in my wife’s credit card points for a few days in a hotel in San Francisco.

That last-minute whim led to one of the coolest trips we’ve ever been on. We signed up for a bus tour of the city, so we got to see a lot of the city very quickly, hitting stuff like the Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown, the Presidio, the Japanese Tea Garden, Fisherman’s Wharf, Haight-Ashbury, and other stuff I’m sure I’m forgetting. If you’re into that idea, go for the bus tour. Later that day we toured Alcatraz, which was the coolest audio tour I’ve ever heard. Ate crabs at Fisherman’s Wharf that evening and just sort of walked around (we never did get to ride a cable car, so I reckon we need to go back).

On the way out, we drove across the bridge and went to the Muir Woods, which was quiet and uncrowded and beautiful. Rather than just retracing our route back out, we kept following the highway, which led to the Muir Beach Overlook, which was a great way to get my first panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean. And we kept following the road, getting sort of lost, ending up driving along Highway 1, which hugs the coast and is crazy-photogenic for quite a ways.

Seriously, coolest unplanned trip I’ve had. I will say: you might want to bring a light jacket or hoodie, because the breezes over the water got a little chilly at times (like, maybe high 50s), and you’re going a month later in the year than when we went. And Alcatraz is really a must. So cool!