I sat with a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll on the beach at Carmel pushing my feet into the fine white sand and watching the mist roll back from the hills which tracked the long gentle curve of the bay. The seafront at Carmel is quiet and natural, there are no beach front bars or restaurants and so it is easy to sit early in the morning with no one around you and nothing to see or hear than the sound of the waves and the squealing of the gulls. It was quite a wrench to leave.
Driving up the remainder of highway 1we passed through farmland and small towns and got a feel for the workaday life of California, admiring the piles of rich orange pumpkins which regularly appeared for sale at the side of the road, pointing out interesting features of the landscape and chatting about the merits of US life versus our own life back in England. As we approached San Francisco the traffic began to build and the one-lane highway turned into three and then five lanes and the hills around became populated and then overrun by buildings. On the outskirts of Frisco the architecture is very cubist and the colour scheme distinctly Farrow and Ball. As we made a long banking sweep into downtown, we saw the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.
Sitting in a yellow cab having dropped off the hire car we headed south west towards the Mission district and Parker Guest House (parkerguesthouse.com). Heading down 17th it was easy to spot - a bright yellow duo of town houses just a minute or two from Dolores Park and right on the edge of Frisco's famous Castro district. Parker Guest House is owned by two gay guys who this weekend were "up at their place in Napa". The decor is stylish, the soft furnishings exquisite, the garden a little oasis of tranquility in the hustle and bustle of SFO life beyond its walls. And whilst attracting mainly a GLBT crowd Parker Guest House is open to guests of any persuasion. I'd picked it because I knew that gay guys are highly sociable and inclusive and that we'd have a ready made bunch of new friends with which to go out and play. I was absolutely right.
Parker Guest house has what they call a 'wine social' between 5.30pm and 6.30pm where guests can come and mingle and chat and generally get to know each other. The wine social is held in the small sun room on the first floor which is painted a beautiful Chartreuse green and which looks out over a cluster of out door sofas and a small set of table and chairs. The spreading branches of a large tree was throwing welcome shade and coolness in the unusually hot September weather. We settled in with a glass of wine and got to know everybody. Three hours later via supper where we had sat and watched the colourful antics of a populace out to play on a Saturday evening and now approaching midnight we were standing on the balcony of the Lookout Bar in central Castro chatting with the guys and watching the world go by. Janet had just been hit on. Carmel and Castro. There can't be two places more different.