Sunday, July 11, 2010

Go Cars

If you were to tell me that I’d enjoy something that involved putting on someone else’s used helmet and driving around in a three wheeled electric contraption, I would have said, you, my friend are insane. I’ll do that driving thing but I’m not about to wear a used helmet. I was a preschool teacher for two years and we had lice.

An epidemic of lice.

Moving on.  That little contraption was on the spend-y side of sightseeing operations in San Francisco, but totally worth doing once. I’m not so sure it’s worth doing when all visitors come into town. (I got away scott-free of the lice once, I’m not so sure I’d like to take my chances again.)

Let me get past my fear of head bugs and tell you about this fun Sunday afternoon activity we enjoyed with Dan & Megan. You can rent the go cars for 1, 2, or 3 hour tours (or any increment of time there after – they charge in 15 minute increments, but I warn you, if you are in this car for 3+ hours, your legs might not work anymore – the leg room is THAT spacious. Anywho, the amount of time you choose dictates the routes you go on. However, if you know your way around town (or can read a map better than me) you can ditch the GPS guided tour and take your own tour.

We did a little bit of both. The first hour was dedicated to the tour: China town, North Beach (little Italy), Union Square, Embarcadero and back to the Go Car store to drop off the car at the end of Fisherman’s Wharf. We did that, except we didn't drop the car off, we carried on for another hour. It was fun; however, the GPS wasn’t quite on its “A” game that day - telling us where to turn just after we went passed the proper street. (By the way, these yellow contraptions are street legal and drive with scooter like handle bars.)  And people will stare at you. It’s like you are a one car parade, or in our case, a two car parade. I’ll be honest, I waved. I like parades.

Back to our tour… so the first part was fun, the GPS lady gives some fun facts while you are driving past different significant places. The other benefit of doing the go cars is that Mike and I felt like we were able to see so many new things because you don’t have the roof of the car in the way and you can’t drive too fast so many places that we’ve driven past many times, seemed new and interesting.

In the 2nd hour of our tour (suddenly I’m signing the Gilligan’s Island theme song, and yes, I realize that was a 3 hour tour, but we already went over the fact we weren’t going to sit in the Go Cars for 3 hours.

I digress.

In the second hour of the tour we high-tailed it past China town, North Beach and Union Square to make it over to Alamo Square and the Pink Ladies (of Full House fame) and on the way we were able to check out Japan town and on the way back we sailed past City Hall (I love City Hall).

Word to the wise: between Union Square and Alamo Square there are a lot of hills. A lot. And, my oh my, they are steep! These little cars aren’t meant to scale some streets; as a matter of fact, I jumped out of the car once and ran up a hill to make sure that Mike would be able to get the car up the hill. The little engine that could chant was being said a lot.

[view of the transamerica building from north beach]

All in all, the Go Cars really are an interesting way to take in the city. We were able to see a lot of sights in just 2 short hours. The Go Cars can be picked up at 3 locations in the city: 2 different store on Fisherman’s Wharf and one spot on Union Square. You can also ride these Go Cars in San Diego, Miami, Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon. Check out their website for more info: http://www.gocartours.com/.


























[city hall]

1 comment:

Megan said...

Oh the GO-Cars! What a fun day! I love your detailed enthusiasm about the adventure...and I LOVE that you you consciously left out the part about Dan getting into an argument with a regular sized car while we were driving down a hill in our Go-Car!Imgaine how ridiculous he must have looked?!