Chinatown: Hollering vendors, echoes of that strange, squawky one-stringed instrument from the sidewalk players, surly waiters at Gold Mountain Dim Sum, a bag of fresh lychees still in their prickly red skins, dark-haired children on leashes, old men exchanging words I don't understand in Portsmouth Square.
Cable Car: Down Hyde Street (though headed north) to the pier (in a most inadvertent manner), nice man took my picture for me and told me I had to get an Irish Coffee at Buena Vista, said that's where it originated. I thanked him for the tip. I never got around to that coffee.
Aquatic Park/Ghirardelli Square: Sat for a spell with my guidebook, more overwhelmed than anything, got up and ambled around in the plaza there, wandered into a place called Cellar 360 and did a little wine tasting with an able pourer named Tom, white-haired, soft-spoken, kind-eyed. we had all kinds of marvelous exchanges and story-swaps about travels and nature and books. Without going too much into how grand it was (lest I sell it short), he did say this about touring San Francisco: "Go get lost, you'll find everything that way."
There's more but I have to be proactive and peel my contacts from my eyes before crashing tonight....
