Sunday today - as it was a beautiful day, we though it best to stay clear of obvious landmarks due to weekend crowds. Instead we decided to go to the Heart of the City Farmer's Markets.
http://www.hocfarmersmarket.org/

We caught the cable car to Market Street (Market Street cuts the city in half, more or less) and walked about five blocks through the gritty, seamy side of San Francisco known as The Tenderloin, home to much of the homeless and drug addicted or alcoholic population. It also has a number of interesting nightspots, some greasy spoon cafes, a cinema (showing porn, naturally), and a visible Police presence.

We were alert, not alarmed, and I think the early daylight hour also assisted our safe passage.

The Market is located in United Nations Square, near the magnificent Civic Center building. It is quite bizarre to walk past five blocks of grotty urban decay to suddenly find cheerful marquees, chatty stallholders, piles of beautiful organic produce, elegant statuary and the backdrop of a golden domed landmark.

We purchased some Lovely fresh bread (still can't stand the packaged supermarket stuff, too sweet, blergh), a Dutch chocolate zucchini cake, hummus and some apples.

While we were feeling brave, we continued off the beaten tourist track and went to SOMa (South of Market St, geddit?) in search of a action/adventure store (like Anaconda on steroids) Paul had visited in Denver (I am beginning to wonder about my husband's inner Action Man MacGyver personality; anyone would think we were a family who climbs mountains and wrestles alligators on the weekends!). That took us another 30 minutes of walking, so we all had a good workout.

Finally we arrived home at lunchtime, feeling like we'd explored quite a bit.