Morning Tour

The thoughtful tour guide considers the physical condition of the visitors when he puts together his itinerary. A walking tour of San Francisco’s hills is not advisable when sightseers have recalcitrant hips or balky knees.

The experienced tour guide knows that the visitors want to see the famous sights and not the odd architectural curiosity, much as the concert audience prefers to hear Mozart instead of the world premiere of a piece that uses power tools in the percussion section. And so it was that the first stop a week ago last Monday was Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill.

It was a bright hazy morning, warm enough to cause the Island visitors to doff their jackets and request that the air conditioning be turned on. They clambered out of the van and admired the view of the City, but none acted on my suggestion to ascend the flight of stairs to view the murals that depicted San Francisco of the 1930’s. There were not going to be feats of aerobic legerdemain today.

We followed Lombard down the hill then up the rise to the crookedest street in the world. We made a left turn on Bay and drove to the Marina District and the Palace of Fine Arts. The pond and park were fenced off due to construction, so we continued on to the Golden Gate Bridge.

You can get a decent perspective of the bridge from the San Francisco side, so one doesn’t have to cross the bridge and pay the $5 toll on the return, but the view from the Marin Headlands is the one that shows up in movies and TV. The tourists gaped, and the jaded tour guide was reassured about his decision. Who knows when they—or I--- would come this way again? © 2006 Stephen Yuen