City Walks SF #7: Polk Gulch and Russian Hill

Polk Gulch is full of little, unique eateries and stores. We greatly enjoyed Cheese Plus, carting home focaccia bread, containers of reasonably priced treats, and cheese sandwiches for lunch. I highly recommend it and would love to go back one day, although it is a bit far from our neighborhood. And I wouldn't mind living in the Polk Gulch neighborhood either.

We then proceeded to the famously curvy Lombard Street, although I will not ply you with ubiquitous pictures here. I think we ran into all of the tourists in the city at the top of this hill.

We found a fabulous little park that wasn't even on the City Walks card. It would be great for a picnic - or even a small wedding. (Or as Matt suggested, competing weddings, one in each of the gazebos.)


The San Francisco Art Institute featured a Diego Rivera mural and some great architecture.



And finally, Macondry Lane, apparently the setting for Barbary Lane in the Armistead Maupin book I reviewed earlier.



The description does it justice:

"The house was on Barbary Lane, a narrow, wooded walk-way off Leavenworth between Union and Filbert. It was a well-weather, three-story structure made of brown shingles. It made Mary Ann think of an old bear with bits of foliage caught in its fur. She liked it instantly."

I would love to live on Macondry Lane amongst the greens and shrubs.

In fact, somewhere on Russian Hill I remarked to Matt that one could live in San Francisco for years, and if you got bored of it, just move to a different neighborhood.