The cable car system in San Francisco is the oldest functioning system in the county and it's fantastic. It's not just functional bringing from one side of the city to the other, its fun. The operators are personalities that know the neighborhood and they make it worth the price (which is very affordable).
I picked up my cable car from the top of Lombard after a painful walk up 8 vertical blocks (I did it for the photographs). As I walked up the hill (seemingly into the sky) I wondered why the buildings and the trees weren't screaming about the injustice of being stuck in such an uncomfortable environment but I guess nature adapts and doesn't question it. With one foot on the cable car (in-between a German family that looked liked they could be relatives) the cable car let loose down the mountain at insane speeds.
It was really an old school rollercoaster ride and it dropped me off right in Union Square where I was staying at one of the most historic hotels in the city, the Weston St. Francis. The St. Francis was built in the early 1900's and just managed to survive the great fire with its basic structure intact.
It was the hotel where Chaplin and Hemingway stayed when they were in town and Fatty Arbuckle was arrested (wrongfully) for murder later to be persecuted by his friend William Randolph Hearst in the newspapers (sorry I've been teaching Citizen Kane for 10 years). Al Jolsen died here and quite a few presidents made career moves here so it was a pleasure to have a room in the San Francisco history book hotel. They even had an Ansel Adams photography exhibit of photos he took in the bar when it opened.
