We had all of two days to spend in San Francisco with my parents-in-law, and for some reason, I was stuck on seeing this two-story gingerbread house — made of real gingerbread, of course — at the Fairmont Hotel. So everyone decided to indulge me. (This isn’t so surprising, by the way.)

To capture the essence of San Francisco, our mission — and we all chose to accept it — was to abandon our car and navigate the hills and curves of the city by the bay completely on foot. Surprisingly, we more than managed (despite the stroller!) and we didn’t get lost. Not even once.

It turns out that getting to the aforementioned gingerbread house, though, was quite a hike. We started out from our hotel — the lovely Tuscan Inn, which hosts an evening wine reception and offers freshly brewed a.m. coffee — at the Fisherman’s Wharf, and headed west. Which turned out to be straight upward for more than a mile. Great exercise, yes, but not super-fun when you’re pushing a ten-month-old in a rickety stroller.

In any case, the trek itself was fun. Along the way, we stopped in North Beach for croissants and cappuccinos on Columbus Avenue. Then we paused for a break — which we certainly needed by then — at the Cable Car Museum (free!). The museum itself was fascinating — it showed the working gears of all three cable car lines, along with restored cars from the 19th century. There was a short documentary film, and photographs of the city before and after the great earthquake and fire of 1906.

The museum, it turned out, was only a few blocks from the Fairmont, but we didn’t realize that because of the giant hill in front of us. We huffed and puffed our way to the stately old building, which has been standing between California and Sacramento streets since 1907 — a year after the fire.

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