Last week we made a weekend trip to San Francisco. It was sort of a bust.

That’s unexpected, as SF has traditionally been my most favorite city to visit in the United States. But it’ll probably be the last time we plan such a trip.

That’s not due to San Francisco being a some sort of hellscape—we didn’t notice anything different than what you can find in any large US city. We didn’t witness any crime whatsoever (well, except perhaps for the prices at some Pier 39 shops).

San Francisco has always fascinated me. That’s probably because my mom loved living there, and my dad loved it there too. They met in SF, living there for much of the 70s, so I heard all about their heydays together in the city. Its cosmopolitan vibe was so different than my life in Arizona, especially the edge of rural Tucson where I spent my early childhood. It was urban in a way I hadn’t experienced before, and everywhere you looked, there were cool things like cable cars(!) and crazy ass hills(!) and Lombard Street(!) and sea lions(!) and Alcatraz(!) and Golden Gate Park(!) and Ghirardelli Chocolate(!), and of course, the Golden Gate Bridge(!!). Everything about it seemed cool, countercultural, and just foreign enough to be uniquely interesting. Oh, and it was home to my favorite team, the 49ers—so it also meant seeing lots of fellow fans, and picking up a shirt or hat that was not available anywhere in Arizona.

We had family in the Bay Area, our closest in both geography and relationship, and so it was a common destination for family trips. In fact, it was among the few places we ever traveled to.

So you’d imagine that I’d have really enjoyed the weekend there. It’s been ages since I’ve seriously visited the city—we’re talking at least a decade and a half, perhaps even two, by this point. What magical little spots might we find in the neighborhood we were staying? What interesting museums could we peruse? What lost history could we uncover? What street scenes would conjure up those romantic notions of urban culture? We arrived without a set plan, hoping to find our way through a place that was familiar yet still quite foreign.

I’ll admit that this was a much different trip than our normal travel weekends. It was actually the first time that we flew into the city, sans car, and stayed in the city as a couple.

I usually stay in Palo Alto with other family, opting to jet around the metro area, usually avoiding the high traffic and lack of affordable/easy parking options in the city itself—which is why I hadn’t been to any of the touristy spots in so long. We were primarily there to visit Jen’s good travel friend, visit my uncle and aunt, and check out the urban core of the city. We had also hoped to visit the immigration museum on Angel Island (the “Ellis Island of the West”), the GLBT Historical Society Museum, the Counterculture Museum, and check out the local beer scene. Oh, and we’d stop by a game watching party for the ASU football game. And of course, we’d see whatever else there was to see along the way.

Well, that plan did not work too well. We quickly rediscovered why we dislike urban life so much.

Walkability is great when you’re mostly staying in your own neighborhood. Otherwise, it can be incredibly inconvenient. We walked quite a bit during the weekend, which I’m sure my cardiologist appreciates. But half of the time we needed to get a ride to our destination—and boy, do those add up. We spent more than $250 on rides during the weekend, never at any sort of special rush hour, and that doesn’t include getting to or from the airport (though it was fun to finally take a self-driving Waymo, especially since one of its major training areas was right down the street from our Phoenix home). But a rental car, of course, would have been much cheaper—though entirely impossible to park.

Nothing speaks to that more than the street sweeping tango we witnessed, whereby local residents had to take time out of their day to stage themselves in their vehicles during a particular window of time, waiting to briefly dance their vehicles out of the way as the street sweepers passed by, reclaiming a space generally convenient to their abode before anyone else could. Our friend’s landlord, who lives in the floor above her, keeps his car at a completely different house across town, just so he doesn’t have to move it three times a week for street sweepers. That…that seems crazy to me. He has to uber from his home to where he keeps his car to then use said car. What?

But beyond the annoyance of the whole parking situation, it was also apparent that I’m just not especially interested in urban landscapes. I’m just not inspired by trendy restaurants, hip nightlife, or avant garde art scenes. Sure, I enjoyed wandering around to a number of street art hotspots, but it’s not something I’d opt to do regularly. I don’t need to see that colorful alley more than once. We enjoyed people watching, especially around the Castro, which seemed extra “lively,” but it’s not something I’d travel for.

And I think that’s really the crux of the issue for me. I’ve never been a big city guy, and as I visit more and more places, the intrigue of any particular city declines. By and large, cities in the US are mostly the same; there’s very few that fundamentally feel different, at least to me. And so each of them is less and less interesting or appealing the more I visit.

But perhaps we would have felt differently about the weekend had more of it worked out better. We didn’t get as much with Jen’s friend as expected, my aunt had a fall and required surgery which canceled our visit, and the museums were overpriced and underwhelming. And due to logistical challenges, we didn’t make it to the immigration museum either. We found some good beer, but it was a struggle. The timing couldn’t quite work for getting to the Niners game, who happened to beat the Cardinals that Sunday. We saw some interesting things, of course, and enjoyed not being at home. But the overall ROI for the weekend was well below what we had expected. Like plenty of the places we visit, we gave it shot and are happy we don’t need to go back.

Let me rephrase. We’ll be back to San Francisco, but I doubt we’ll do a San Francisco trip again—it’ll be a Bay Area trip instead. We’ll have wheels, and perhaps we’ll spend a day in the city to see something or someone in particular, but it won’t be the basis of the weekend. We’ll pop on out to Muir Woods, or check out a new brewery in the East Bay, or pay an ungodly sum to park and tailgate at Levi Stadium.

And that’s just fine. I’m much more intrigued by a campsite in the mountains than the burrito place with the line out the door anyway.