San Francisco Unveiled: A Complete Travel Guide to the City by the Bay 2023 (Part 1)

Hello Bloggineers, we are at the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel and we're going to show you the fun things you can do in San Francisco. First we're going to take a look at this historic hotel. By the lobby is the Museum at the Mark. This museum shows artifacts of the hotel from the past. The hotel opened in 1926, so that means it's almost the 100 year anniversary of the hotel. And the Mark Hopkins Hotel is named after Mark Hopkins, who came to California during the gold rush. In 1939, the 19th floor, which used to be a penthouse suite, got transformed into a cocktail lounge called Top of the Mark. And during World War II, they started a tradition where one person would buy a drink and leave it to the bartender to give the next person a free drink, and whoever took the last sip would buy the next bottle for the next person. In this vending machine, there are souvenirs such as postcards. This is a seven times advanced purification water machine. You activate it by stepping your foot on the pedal. Now we're going on a tour of the hotel. This is one of the ballrooms that they recently redid, so now the ceiling is full of gold color and there's these fancy chandeliers. That's an abstract painting of San Francisco, but the only structure I recognize here is the Golden Gate Bridge. We're going to take a look at one of the classic rooms. So this is a typical king classic. That's the Golden Gate Bridge over there. Where? There. Where? See it? We're now in a junior suite, which has not only the king size bed, but also a living room area. The view is quite good. Of course it is. This is the one bedroom suite. What do you like about the bathroom, brother? It's all like gold color. Here's the bedroom. It has a very homey feel and the artwork is unique to SF. This is the sunroom. Best view. You can see the ocean. That's Alcatraz. That tiny little island over there with the sad looking building. This is a king corner because we're at the corner. See? Two windows. That is a... Is that a streetcar line? Oh, that's a cable car line on California Street. This is the Nob Hill Suite, which includes a kitchen. This suite is the most like an apartment and it's for longer staying guests. We're entering the Mark Hopkins Suite, which is one of six specialty suites. This suite is popular for weddings and you can see the Golden Gate Bridge straight on. That's one of my favorite parts about these rooms. A marbled bathroom. This is the sunroom and we're now on the balcony. Weather's amazing. This is a penthouse on floor 18. We're in a connecting corridor, so this entrance to one suite, another suite, a bathroom, and another suite. Each suite is so unique and has a different feel. We went to one that felt like an apartment and then the penthouse was like all wooden. This one's nice and yellow. It has a happy vibe. In May, June, and July, ISF always has fog somewhere and his name is Carl. That's Carl the Fog. We've reached the top of the Mark, which is their famous lounge. We're ready to explore the city. The San Francisco hills are so steep. That's why for most of the day, we're not going to be using our car. We'll be using public transport and walking so that we don't have to drive these hills, but this is crazy. Now we are at the Cable Car Museum. This is the machinery that powers the cable cars and before coming to San Francisco, I thought cable cars were those ones with overhead lines, but no, it's actually the track towing the cable car. So the cable car itself doesn't have any gas or energy moving it. It just relies on the track. The first cable car line was built in 1873 and the Gold Rush was like around 1850, right? So that's a little after. And there ended up being eight cable car companies. Here's a map of all the cable car lines in the 1890s and now San Francisco only has three lines left. One of them that still exists is this white one on California Street. And then we'll be riding a few of them later on. In 1947, after World War II, the city wanted to get rid of cable cars and replace it with buses. So then the voters wanted some cable car lines back and that's what happened. We're now underground and we can see the actual machinery that's being used to power the cable cars up there on the street level. So I think this is a map from a while ago because now what the cable cars do is they start here and then they come here and then go down. So it's like a continuous run. And I don't think they have this one anymore. And that is the San Francisco Cable Car Museum. My favorite part was seeing the machinery that operated underneath this cable car. And my favorite part was seeing how it worked just like brother said. It was super cool and you get to see it underground too. There's another cable car running through a few seconds later. This is a great intersection to see them. We're going to try to get around the city by taking public transit. So first we'll be taking the T line which is a brand new subway they opened a few months ago. Two stops to an art museum. This is the deepest station in San Francisco, it's like 100 feet deep. Now we are at SFMOMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts. This museum has seven floors. In this piece the artist got a bunch of people to sit down and then he painted the skin tones of each person. Oh that one, it's that one. Yep. Brother's trying to match his skin color to one of these. This one's closer than that one. Why is my skin red? See this is so much lighter than that. This one's kind of close but I don't think there's one that matches mine exactly. I wish the corn at the market was more diverse like this, especially this one, it's red and purple. It looks almost like glass art. This is actually clay with a glaze. We're going to go up to the seventh floor and work our way down. Now we're on the sixth floor for conversation pieces. Oh this is a cool gallery, it's just a bunch of furniture. Would you like to sit in this? This actually looks like a torture device, like an electric chair or something. This is probably the most ordinary chairs here. I like this one, it seems like he has a magic teacup over there and a magic wand. It kind of reminds me of Dumbledore from Harry Potter. The music here is great. I wonder if this was put together during COVID times because it seems like everyone in their own houses is playing something and when it's put together it makes beautiful music. My favorite is the guy in the tub. So in this room they have one that's a bunch of scribbles and one that's a bunch of scribbles but on chalkboard. It must have felt liberating for the artist to just scribble all he wants on all he wants And that is the SF MoMA. I really like the section where they each film their own clips and they put it all together to create one good music piece. Yeah as Brother said, the Visitors was probably the most unique art exhibit here. It does cost $5 extra but it's worth it because I've never seen something like that in an art museum before. And also it's 64 minutes. It's already cool if they were to just play the videos simultaneously normally but they also put it in a dark room with huge screens so it was a very immersive experience. Back at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, we're going to give you a tour of our hotel room on the 15th floor. We have two queen size beds perfect for a four people family, a flat screen TV, here's a desk, and a view of the city. This is an in-room bar which has refreshments and snacks. Here's coffee and a coffee maker. I thought you were in the bathroom. In the closet there's a safe, an iron, ironing board, and robes. Wow. It's all golden. Over here's the sink, shower, and then tissues and a toy. Yeah, a toy. I need a tissue. It's time to check out the California Academy of Sciences. This is Claude, an alligator with albinism, which means that he cannot produce melanin to have color in his eyes, which is why it's red. You can just see right through to the blood vessels. And his skin is white. He's 27 years old. Now we're checking out the Rainforest Exhibit. The Mighty Rainforest. Okay, we're checking out the Mighty Rainforest Exhibit. Look at how big his belly is. There's an interesting species down there in a tube called humans. We're gonna go down there later. So the way these poison frogs get their toxin is from what they eat, the ants, and they just store the chemicals. Oh, it's up there. That's one of the greenest geckos I've ever seen. Let's go. I just hope that blue butterfly doesn't fly. Or else I'll just... These are called four-eyed fish. For the one, you see it under, and you see it below. It's still flying. Oh my. I want to be a seahorse now. Here's Claude the alligator. We saw him from up there. Now we see him from down here. Now we're going in the fog room. Carl's coming to us. Carl the fog. We're going to experience an earthquake. Let's go back in time. October 17th, 1989. At 5 o'clock PM, live coverage had begun when the earthquake struck. The shaking lasted 15 seconds. Let's imagine San Francisco more than 100 years ago. April 18th, 1906. 5.12 AM. The city begins to wake. Whoa. I never knew how severe the 1906 quake was. That 28,000 buildings burned. The goal of this game is to do a dance that the birds would do in real life. I'm trying to predict the moves, but I'm not doing too well. Oh, oops. Congratulations, you're an animal. And that is the California Academy of Sciences. My favorite part was the aquarium because there are a lot of different sea creatures everywhere. I liked the fog and the earthquake. The ones that you got to actually experience things that happen to daily San Francisco people. And I thought that the underwater portion was pretty cool as well. And the seahorses. The seahorses are now one of my favorite animals. Now we're at San Francisco Botanical Garden. So we saw a few of these back there, but this is the largest one. I can stand here and I'm pretty much at the base of it. And then it goes all up. This looks like a really big kale. I should just... Okay, guys. If we see this plant in Australia, remember. Okay? Okay? Good. It's called a spear lily. We're going in the Australian plant section, which is where we'll be going in the winter. Here's the California Native Garden. So, of course, at the front there's poppies. Look, there's a black and white panda over here in the bamboo forest. This is a spice agaric, so it's like asparagus. We're entering the Redwood Grove. This gives me memories of one year ago when we went further north in California. And saw these trees. We're now entering the Succulent Garden. And lastly, the Children's Garden. Everything in this garden was planted by special people, including school groups, volunteers, and interns. That's cool. They're growing stuff here. Brother's legs got tired, so that's why he's not here anymore. So, after Brother got tired and started walking back to the entrance, we were trying to sneak up on them. And we just saw him turn into this redwood forest. So, we're not far behind. Actually, I don't even want to sneak up on him anymore because now I'm just scared. So, we're just waiting for him to turn the corner. Oh, good. Good thing we didn't go because they turned around. Let's go now. And that is the San Francisco Botanical Garden. I like how big this botanical garden is. And you can get memberships here and you can go here daily. I like how there's many different plants to see and different terrains. Like the bamboo forest or the redwood grove. And I just wish that we... What we should have done is taken a faster route and try to get here before Brother. But since we were too dumb to do that, all we did was spy on them from their back. Oh, my. It was quite obvious that you guys would do that. But you didn't turn around. That's because I didn't want to. We returned back to Mark Hopkins. We bought this postcard from Alcatraz Island and we're going to mail it to ourselves back home. And to get it delivered, we're going to do it the old-fashioned way, which is dropping it through this chute. We went to one of the highest floors, the 18th floor. And it's going to go down all the way below the lobby to level C, which is the California street level. So it's going to go hundreds of feet down. Brother's going to drop it from up here and I'm going to be at the bottom watching it reach its destination. And we're going to time it to see how long it takes. Bye, Brother. All right, we're here right now. We're going to go to 17, 16, 15, 14, 12, all the way here. Three, two, one, drop! That took around 13 or 14 seconds. That's more than one second per floor. So the speed it was dropping is incredible. Here at Mark Hopkins Hotel, pets can stay in rooms free of charge. And this wall shows Mark's MVP, Most Valuable Pet. We're going to try to see if we can get Cameron Hobbity to become a pet on the Most Valuable Pets wall. They hung up our picture of Calmu and Javi.