San Francisco was all about the Mexican food, but I’ll get to that in a minute. We stayed at the Stanford Court Hotel on California Street, and there were two downsides to this – firstly (and most importantly) I naïvely thought walking our bags from the Powell Street BART Station was a good idea. Wrong! The gradient on Powell past Union Square is insane, and we were half dead by the time we arrived.

Secondly they were in mid-renovation, which I wasn’t aware of. That meant a long wait to check in and after that we went to our decidedly unrenovated room on an unrenovated floor.

It was like something out of the seventies, but at least they were fixing it and the service was very friendly and efficient. More importantly though the bed was literally to die for and was worth every hurdle in getting to it! By this point I had no energy whatsoever (despite our first class flight), but we still got ready to go out and join our friend Orkan in the city’s Mission district.

We met up at Puerto Alegre, which we’d been to the previous summer with Orkan and our other friend Craig, and on arrival we weren’t disappointed by their chips, salsa and guacamole I can tell you! Creamy guac, fresh salsa and what felt like bottomless chips (I may be mistaken, their margaritas are so strong my memory gets patchy very soon after we arrived) – all with the best of company in a city that’s starting to feel like home. Despite the developing jet lag it felt like we were in our element.

 

Their food and drink was sensational. Not only were the margaritas kick-ass but their chimichangas and quesadillas were particularly lovely (and plentiful). We followed them up with a second platter of chimichangas, a great move considering just how much we all drank that night. It was the third time in a month we’d seen Orkan, first him criss-crossing the Atlantic and now us, and I couldn’t have been happier for it.

The restaurant is located at the edge of the city’s Castro district, but seeing the rainbow flag draped proudly inside still made me feel particularly welcome, and very aware of what city I was in, even though San Francisco is shedding far too much of its gay past and identity. It wasn’t to be the only time during our honeymoon adventure in North America that we felt more at home than we do in London, and this despite the legislative protections we enjoy in the UK.

After we left (thoroughly inebriated) we walked over to the Mission Dolores Park for a view of the city at night time. The fog gave it an eerie quality, and seeing the new towers was a surprise. 

We all wanted to continue into the Castro but G and I were so tired we had no choice but to return to our hotel to try to get ready for more travel the next day. Portland, Oregon beckoned – my home town which I hadn’t visited for twelve years. It was pretty late so we ordered an Uber and in minutes a Hispanic twink with a gay teddy bear on the back seat came to pick us up. It was about as San Francisco as it gets.