When we lived on the West Coast, we visited San Francisco pretty regularly, mostly because we hated Los Angeles so much and always wanted to escape north. However, in all the times we went, there was one truly-San Francisco thing that we had never tried: Lombard Street.
If you’re unfamiliar, allow me to explain. The hills in San Francisco are all steep. There’s not a moderate hill to be found in that city. One of the streets that runs through the city is Lombard Street, and one of the steep hills has been turned into an incredibly windy path that drives much like the Wild Mouse ride at Idlewild (only at 5 miles an hour).
Yep, that’s right, you can only go 5 miles an hour. Truthfully, any faster than that would be terrifying, as your car already feels like it could roll onto its side at any moment going down the thing.
Really, video camera would have been better to convey the fear experienced at each bend. Our little rental car held up pretty well, but there was always a feeling that we might tip over at the last moment.
Here is the view from the bottom. We parked our car a little ways over to come and take better pictures. Lombard Street was always one of those ‘oh we’ll do it before we leave!’ things, and we wound up racing off down the coast instead and had never actually done it as Californians.
Remember the scene in Labyrinth where the little worm tells Sara to go one direction, and after she leaves, says, “If she’d have gone the other way, she’d have gone straight to that castle!” (which is, of course, exactly where she wanted to go)? That was us trying to find Lombard Street. We got bad directions and were told to turn left at the fork when we should have turned right. If we’d have gone the other way, we’d have gone straight down that winding road!
Michael at the bottom wishing we could have all those minutes spent climbing and descending unnecessary San Francisco hills on our detour back. 🙂
It may have taken three years to get here, but it was worth the wait 🙂