Monday, September 3, 2007 – The last day of vacation. As usual, it’s somewhat bittersweet. We’ve had a great time, but it’s also time to be heading back to the house, refreshed and with new ideas or approaches on who we are and what we want to do next. Eddie’s picked up a concept that we’re trying to employ – people don’t do great things, they just do a bunch of little things that add up to something great. Accordingly, we don’t need to be doing magnanimous ventures, we just have to figure out what the next step is.
For me, the next step is to get off the court appointed list. On Wednesday, when we return. First thing. That ought to free up some time to work on some other ventures we want to start, and it’s not turning enough money to justify the time expenditure anyhow. Not to mention the fact that it is absolutely soul-sucking and unsatisfying.
Julian (the lawyer from SF) picked us up for breakfast and, after figuring out that some places were closed for the holiday, we ended up going across the Golden Gate Bridge to Salisilito. Now, it’s an unusual set of events, but somehow we’ve ended up eating three different meals, on three different days, at the same little diner there. Not quite sure what the message is there, but it’s definitely an odd coincidence.
After puttering around with Julian for a bit and bonding with him more and more – you can’t help but enjoy his infectious smile and good-natured sense of humor, we went back and met up with Paul to tour “the Lower Haight and Valencia Street”. You may remember that Haight – Ashbury (which is an intersection there) was the birth of the “hippie movement” with all of its attendant issues.
Some of those issues still exist, but what you see now is a neighborhood that is on the cusp of gentrification. All over San Francisco there are incredible public facilities – women’s centers, parks, clinics, etc. – in the “lower Haight” they happen to have fantastic murals on them. They also have streets and alleys where murals are done by young artists (through a municipal program) on the side of the buildings. You see some pretty amazing things there.
The Haight is also known for its quirky shops. Although some were closed either because it was Monday or due to the holiday, the other thing you note is that they work on their own timetable – most didn’t open until noon. We spent the morning wandering in and out of them buying shiny things and other gew-gaws that we couldn’t live without. One herbal store had some really neat stuff – soaps, lotions, etc., and of course no trip would be complete without a stop at “Good Vibrations”, which originally started as a vibrator store geared to women. They didn’t have much that you couldn’t buy elsewhere, but they did have a very interesting display of vibrators that have been marketed since 1900. Only in San Francisco!
After we got back to the Castro, about 3 in the afternoon, Paul left us for the last time. He really is a nice guy, and we missed having him with us. Eddie’s parting gift to him was a book titled “How to Massage Your Cat.” This came after much good natured ribbing between Eddie and Paul about one love for and the other’s dislike of cats.
We went back through the Castro one more time, buying those things we’d seen that we couldn’t do without and collecting up other treasures that would barely fit in our already overstuffed bags.
For our last dinner, we decided to go back where we started, to Firewood. A sudden chill in the air sent us running for our jackets as we walked back up the street to our hotel to finish packing. The cab to the airport was coming at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday so that we’d be able to catch our 7:30 flight.
New Things We Learned On This Trip
a. San Francisco is a place where diversity is more than “tolerated”…it’s celebrated.
b. People in San Francisco aren’t interested in where you’re from or who your family is -- they’re interested in what you are now, and what you’ll be in the future.
c. Things that “get on our nerves”……”drive us crazy” don’t mean a thing to others..and when disclosed become quite humorous, i.e., undiscarded rubber bands from a newspaper (Eddie’s); double parked trucks (Paul’s); pigeons and Chinese drivers (Roberts); drivers talking on a cell phone (Larry’s).
d. When you’re around entrepreneurs, you tend to be more entrepreneurial in your thinking. The collective energy of the thought seems to lead you down different paths.
San Francisco is a great place, and I’m sure we’ll be back. Next time there’ll be things that we don’t have to do (i.e. actually step in the ocean to realize just how cold it is), and others we didn’t get to do that we’ll want to do (like actually go inside of some of the museum, rather than just looking at the outsides of them.) But for now, vacation’s over and it’s time to get back to work and start planning the next one.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Sunday, September 2 2007 - Hairrison Street Fair
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Especially on vacations, Sundays are intended to move a little slower. We were meeting up with Paul again, who had to be dragged out for brunch at a very nice place called 2223. I guess naming your restaurant after the address is something people in big cities do, mostly to suck in the tourist trade. Thus, we did brunch at 2223 Market Street, which was just around the corner from the hotel.
Eddie and I were early, so we wandered up and down the street a bit before we were to meet. Paul appeared freshly ironed and, as he put it, “dressed up pretty well for poor white trash.” We made plans for the day over breakfast and then separated to change clothes and make our way to the Hairrison (yes, they spelled it that way) Street Fair for the afternoon.
Hairrison Street Fair is like the better behaved younger brother of the Folsom Street Fair. They block off a section of the street and have various stages and bands, although some of the vendors are not what you’re used to seeing. I found it interesting that there were several vendors promoting STD testing, how to avoid or get off of Crystal Meth, and a housing project for drag queens with HIV / AIDS. Of course, there were all the usual beer sellers, etc. as well.
While there, we met Bruce and Greg again, our friends from St. Louis that we got to know on the first tour around the City. We whiled away the afternoon there people-watching. Ever notice how the first ones to whip off their shirts at something like that are usually the ones that OUGHT to stay fully clothed? Or that some people, older men especially, need the adult version of Gr-Animals to help them match clothing before they leave their house?
We left the fair at 5ish and met Julian, a SF lawyer who has escaped from the litigative life to pursue other endeavors, and went to dinner down on the Embarcadaro with him. Unlike lots of places with tourist food, there are really nice restaurants there and we ate at a great sidewalk café that had the advantage of letting you eat and people watch at the same time.
Julian then gave us his version of the tour around San Francisco, or at least some of the neighborhoods that we’d missed earlier. We stopped by his house for a drink and got to see what the inside of one of those beautiful restored places looks like. His building has four units and – something of a rarity in SF – a parking area underneath that covers goes under the entire building. Julian dropped us back at our B&B after we made plans to go to breakfast the next morning.
Especially on vacations, Sundays are intended to move a little slower. We were meeting up with Paul again, who had to be dragged out for brunch at a very nice place called 2223. I guess naming your restaurant after the address is something people in big cities do, mostly to suck in the tourist trade. Thus, we did brunch at 2223 Market Street, which was just around the corner from the hotel.
Eddie and I were early, so we wandered up and down the street a bit before we were to meet. Paul appeared freshly ironed and, as he put it, “dressed up pretty well for poor white trash.” We made plans for the day over breakfast and then separated to change clothes and make our way to the Hairrison (yes, they spelled it that way) Street Fair for the afternoon.
Hairrison Street Fair is like the better behaved younger brother of the Folsom Street Fair. They block off a section of the street and have various stages and bands, although some of the vendors are not what you’re used to seeing. I found it interesting that there were several vendors promoting STD testing, how to avoid or get off of Crystal Meth, and a housing project for drag queens with HIV / AIDS. Of course, there were all the usual beer sellers, etc. as well.
While there, we met Bruce and Greg again, our friends from St. Louis that we got to know on the first tour around the City. We whiled away the afternoon there people-watching. Ever notice how the first ones to whip off their shirts at something like that are usually the ones that OUGHT to stay fully clothed? Or that some people, older men especially, need the adult version of Gr-Animals to help them match clothing before they leave their house?
We left the fair at 5ish and met Julian, a SF lawyer who has escaped from the litigative life to pursue other endeavors, and went to dinner down on the Embarcadaro with him. Unlike lots of places with tourist food, there are really nice restaurants there and we ate at a great sidewalk café that had the advantage of letting you eat and people watch at the same time.
Julian then gave us his version of the tour around San Francisco, or at least some of the neighborhoods that we’d missed earlier. We stopped by his house for a drink and got to see what the inside of one of those beautiful restored places looks like. His building has four units and – something of a rarity in SF – a parking area underneath that covers goes under the entire building. Julian dropped us back at our B&B after we made plans to go to breakfast the next morning.
Saturday, September 1, 2007 - Touring the Castro
Saturday, September 1, 2007 -- This morning started at a slower pace again, which is what vacation is all about. Turns out we couldn’t have picked a better location to stay than the B&B we’re in. We are about as far away from Fisherman’s Wharf and the tourist areas as one can possibly get, which is fine. This is really more like a NY neighborhood in that the residential and commercial stuff is mixed, you can walk most anywhere and it’s all very convenient. What you can’t walk is accessible by public transportation.
We are less than 50 yards from the intersection of Market and Castro streets, which is “ground zero” for this part of SF. We walked a bit past that to a great little diner for breakfast and had something typically Californian – organic yogurt over fresh fruit with homemade granola. Being southern boys, of course, we also had bacon and eggs, too – no whomp biscuits this time!
The morning was spent doing a walking tour of the Castro called Cruisin’ the Castro. We were the only two on the tour, so got lots of individualized attention. Kathy, the owner of the business and guide, was a wealth of information on the neighborhood.
Turns out that the Castro has only been the center of gay and lesbian activity in San Francisco since 1967 – the “Summer of Love” (another event that occurred here, although in a different neighborhood), although there has always been a natural draw and respect for diversity. She attributes this all the way back to the gold rush, when so many young men (and some women) were traveling here in search of gold, free from the restrictions of family, government and church.
Much of the organization of the Castro is due to the work of one man – Harvey Milk – who was elected Supervisor of the City. Supervisors are like Aldermen – there are 7 or 9 and they are the liaisons between the neighborhoods and City Hall.
Harvey owned a camera shop in an adjacent neighborhood. At the time, the Castro was named after the local Catholic church and known as the “Most Holy Redeemer Parish”. It was also significantly empty, had cheap buildings and was ripe for renovation. He moved his camera shop over the hill to this neighborhood and within a couple of years 20,000 other gay businesses had moved in.
Harvey was apparently very charismatic. He was also a good businessman from New York – when they wouldn’t let him join the local business guild because he was gay, he started his own and called it the Castro Street Merchants, foreshadowing the name change for the neighborhood. Then he got a permit for a street fair, which made more money for the local businesses than any other fair ever had. The next morning, the other merchants were knocking on Harvey’s door wanting to join HIS guild and the Castro neighborhood was born.
Harvey was sadly assassinated along with Mayor Marconi by another Superintendent, who was a disgruntled cop named Dan White. The cop, incidentally, was convicted of manslaughter, served 5 years in jail and when he got out he found out that he had no friends and no one would hire him because Harvey and the Mayor were so well liked. He eventually committed suicide.
To get an idea of how important the Castro is to not just California, but to the entire United States, you have to recognize that it is only 44 square blocks with a permanent population of about 24,000 persons, of which roughly 80% are Gay, Lesbian, bisexual or transgendered.
San Francisco gay pride is the largest money maker in terms of street festivals in the United States. In California, incidentally second is the Rose Parade and Third is the Folsom Street Leather Fair another gay event that has a much more adult reputation.
OK, that’s enough history – there was lots more (it was a 2 hour tour), but I won’t bore you with the rest of it.
We met Greg, a professional friend of Eddie’s, for lunch at Catch, a seafood restaurant right around the corner. It’s great to be able to sit and eat outdoors here. Catch, incidentally, is located in the building where the AIDS quilt was started. Panels for the AIDS quilt are 3 ft. by 6 ft – the same size as a casket – Only one square is allowed for each individual who has died of this disease. When it was envisioned, the guy that started it had sewing machines available in the building for anyone who wanted to use them.
After lunch we went back for a nap, which was much appreciated, and ventured out for some shopping after that. Eddie found a great new watch.
While we were out, we stopped at a place called “Magnet”. This is a storefront business that is decorated much like a spa or hair salon. It’s a lot like going into the common room in a dormitory – there’s internet access, things to read, televisions, etc. One wall is all galvanized metal panels with magnetic letters like little kids learn to spell with. People put up messages – kind of like temporary graffiti.
The most important thing this facility does, though, is to distribute information regarding HIV / AIDS and other STD’s. You can get tested for HIV, Syphilis, gonorrhea and a number of other conditions there. If you have any of these conditions, they provide counseling and referrals to appropriate assistance locations. We got some great ideas to bring back to ALFA.
The rest of the evening was spent soaking up the atmosphere of Castro. It’s very much like a small village – complete with idiots, of course – but like the neighborhoods of New York and other cities is very self-contained. If you worked there, it’s easy to see how you wouldn’t necessarily have to leave the neighborhood for anything.
After dinner (and neither of us can remember where we ate) we decided to leave the neighborhood for a while so we went over to the Lone Star Bar on Harrison Street. We’d heard that this was (a) quieter than many of the dance bars in the Castro and (b) catered to a crowd more in our demographics. It was exactly that – a nice neighborhood pub, with some loud music inside, a nice heated patio out back, and the music at a volume that was tolerable to those who don’t have any desire to do further damage to their hearing. Of course….we were back to the hotel not much after midnight.
We are less than 50 yards from the intersection of Market and Castro streets, which is “ground zero” for this part of SF. We walked a bit past that to a great little diner for breakfast and had something typically Californian – organic yogurt over fresh fruit with homemade granola. Being southern boys, of course, we also had bacon and eggs, too – no whomp biscuits this time!
The morning was spent doing a walking tour of the Castro called Cruisin’ the Castro. We were the only two on the tour, so got lots of individualized attention. Kathy, the owner of the business and guide, was a wealth of information on the neighborhood.
Turns out that the Castro has only been the center of gay and lesbian activity in San Francisco since 1967 – the “Summer of Love” (another event that occurred here, although in a different neighborhood), although there has always been a natural draw and respect for diversity. She attributes this all the way back to the gold rush, when so many young men (and some women) were traveling here in search of gold, free from the restrictions of family, government and church.
Much of the organization of the Castro is due to the work of one man – Harvey Milk – who was elected Supervisor of the City. Supervisors are like Aldermen – there are 7 or 9 and they are the liaisons between the neighborhoods and City Hall.
Harvey owned a camera shop in an adjacent neighborhood. At the time, the Castro was named after the local Catholic church and known as the “Most Holy Redeemer Parish”. It was also significantly empty, had cheap buildings and was ripe for renovation. He moved his camera shop over the hill to this neighborhood and within a couple of years 20,000 other gay businesses had moved in.
Harvey was apparently very charismatic. He was also a good businessman from New York – when they wouldn’t let him join the local business guild because he was gay, he started his own and called it the Castro Street Merchants, foreshadowing the name change for the neighborhood. Then he got a permit for a street fair, which made more money for the local businesses than any other fair ever had. The next morning, the other merchants were knocking on Harvey’s door wanting to join HIS guild and the Castro neighborhood was born.
Harvey was sadly assassinated along with Mayor Marconi by another Superintendent, who was a disgruntled cop named Dan White. The cop, incidentally, was convicted of manslaughter, served 5 years in jail and when he got out he found out that he had no friends and no one would hire him because Harvey and the Mayor were so well liked. He eventually committed suicide.
To get an idea of how important the Castro is to not just California, but to the entire United States, you have to recognize that it is only 44 square blocks with a permanent population of about 24,000 persons, of which roughly 80% are Gay, Lesbian, bisexual or transgendered.
San Francisco gay pride is the largest money maker in terms of street festivals in the United States. In California, incidentally second is the Rose Parade and Third is the Folsom Street Leather Fair another gay event that has a much more adult reputation.
OK, that’s enough history – there was lots more (it was a 2 hour tour), but I won’t bore you with the rest of it.
We met Greg, a professional friend of Eddie’s, for lunch at Catch, a seafood restaurant right around the corner. It’s great to be able to sit and eat outdoors here. Catch, incidentally, is located in the building where the AIDS quilt was started. Panels for the AIDS quilt are 3 ft. by 6 ft – the same size as a casket – Only one square is allowed for each individual who has died of this disease. When it was envisioned, the guy that started it had sewing machines available in the building for anyone who wanted to use them.
After lunch we went back for a nap, which was much appreciated, and ventured out for some shopping after that. Eddie found a great new watch.
While we were out, we stopped at a place called “Magnet”. This is a storefront business that is decorated much like a spa or hair salon. It’s a lot like going into the common room in a dormitory – there’s internet access, things to read, televisions, etc. One wall is all galvanized metal panels with magnetic letters like little kids learn to spell with. People put up messages – kind of like temporary graffiti.
The most important thing this facility does, though, is to distribute information regarding HIV / AIDS and other STD’s. You can get tested for HIV, Syphilis, gonorrhea and a number of other conditions there. If you have any of these conditions, they provide counseling and referrals to appropriate assistance locations. We got some great ideas to bring back to ALFA.
The rest of the evening was spent soaking up the atmosphere of Castro. It’s very much like a small village – complete with idiots, of course – but like the neighborhoods of New York and other cities is very self-contained. If you worked there, it’s easy to see how you wouldn’t necessarily have to leave the neighborhood for anything.
After dinner (and neither of us can remember where we ate) we decided to leave the neighborhood for a while so we went over to the Lone Star Bar on Harrison Street. We’d heard that this was (a) quieter than many of the dance bars in the Castro and (b) catered to a crowd more in our demographics. It was exactly that – a nice neighborhood pub, with some loud music inside, a nice heated patio out back, and the music at a volume that was tolerable to those who don’t have any desire to do further damage to their hearing. Of course….we were back to the hotel not much after midnight.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Friday, August 31, 2007 - Food and exploration
Friday, August 31, 2007 – OK boys and girls, you get a reprieve from the tidbits of information and pleathora of factoids that I’ve subjected you to for the last few days, because that wasn’t the big excitement today.
Today started off a bit slower. First, we realized that being in the center of the “nightlife” isn’t always what it is cracked up to be, because, well, it goes on so darned late! Last night we were both tuckered out; the “touring” had gotten to be over the top, so we decided to exercise the maturity factor and stay in, regardless of the incentives that tried to lure us out into that nightlife.
Eddie dropped right off to sleep. I watched television for a bit and then tried to go to sleep, only to be kept awake for a while by the noise from a nearby bar. Remember, no AC and the windows are open. I’d just about drop off and then someone would laugh or talk loud out there (about a block away, as best I can tell), and then I’d be woke up again. Fortunately, about 2:00 this morning (local time) I realized that I had earplugs in my shaving kit and suddenly the rest of the night was much quieter.
This morning we had breakfast in our B&B for the first time. It was pretty good, nothing to write home about – certainly not the caliber of food we had at Aerie House in P-Town. Still it was enough to send us on our way.
We walked up the street and met Paul again, who belongs to Carshare here in San Francisco. This is a pretty incredible system – once you join, you can use a car for $5.00 an hour plus $.44 a mile. That includes gas, insurance, etc. – if only the rest of us could operate our vehicles so cheaply!! We had one of those square boxy import things, but it was great to get around the city. He navigated while Eddie drove and it worked out well. Like I said earlier, he’s a wealth of information and really ought to be doing tours for a living instead of just doing them for free. Add to that the fact that he’s a nice guy, and we had a great time.
Of course, the big news was that when we stopped for lunch in a restaurant at the end of Golden Gate Park, we saw Niecey Nash, of “Clean Sweep” and “Reno911” fame. We absolutely love her television show, where she convinces people to throw out the stuff they have in their house in exchange for a makeover. She was there having lunch and just getting ready to leave when she saw us looking at her. She walked by, and when we made eye contact I told her that we were big fans of hers from North Carolina. She was very gracious and consented to pictures. The quote we got from her we liked the best? “Wait, let me get my boobs worked around right for the picture.” She is just as much a delight in person as she is on her television show. It absolutely made the day for us.
We got back to the hotel about 6ish, checked e-mail (the web still isn’t working here, but I’ve finally learned all the hoops to jump through to get it going for me again. It’s OK if you can tolerate 20 minutes to log on and frequent disconnects), clean up and go to dinner.
Dinner tonight was at a French restaurant called “Cote Sur”. Again, not far from us and had good reviews in some of the magazines. It was a little surprising that the guys here hadn’t recommended it, although after we ate there we recognized why.
First, it’s hot in there. We recognize that there’s no air conditioning in many of the buildings. Like Europe, that’s part of the charm. There are ceiling fans, however, although nobody seems to know where the switch is to turn them on. We had a less than desireable table right in the lane of traffic, directly under a non-operating ceiling fan.
They, too, offered a prix fix menu, so we decided to take advantage of that. We should have been a little suspicious about the fact that it was entirely in French without subtitles. The second clue was when the waiter told us that the fish of the day was a red snapper flown in from Texas.
Now, we’re in what many would consider the seafood capital of the world. “Fisherman’s Wharf” is a destination for thousands of people each year – I am not going there to eat ANY kind of fish from Texas!
As an appetizer, I had some little pastry thing that had salmon, caviar, sour cream and something else about it. It was actually pretty good. If I’d realized it was going to be the highlight of the meal, I would have savored it a bit more. Eddie had what turned out to be little tomato quiches about the size of a silver dollar sitting on a salad of lawn clippings.
As a main course, I had pork medallions. It’s kind of hard to go wrong with that, right? The walnut sauce sounded kind of intriguing as well. Reality, however, was another story. It was about the consistency of cardboard, with similar taste. It resided on a bed of some unidentifiable vegetable, which I think was something cabbage. In any event, I quickly lost my appetite after a few bites.
Eddie’s hunk o’ duck seemed a little better. We had a brief discussion about some sidepiece and whether it was edible or merely ornamentation. The discussion continued after he took a bite of it and wasn’t resolved at that point, other than the fact that while it might be edible for some people, it wasn’t for him. His hunk o’ duck resided on a whomp biscuit that he maintained was the best part of the meal.
Now, for those who aren’t good southern boys, a “whomp biscuit” is one that comes in a tube at the grocery store. To open the tube, you ignore the directions that say “press here with spoon” and “whomp” ‘em on the edge of the counter, causing the cardboard tube to break open.
You can roll ‘em out, sprinkle cornmeal on ‘em, or do about anything else, but when you’ve been raised on whomp biscuits, you recognize them immediately. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, either.
Desert had to be better, though, right? After all, this was a French restaurant – they’re known for their pastries and deserts. The desert menus were presented with no small amount of excitement on our part.
There were several choices. We saw some of them go by as we were deciding – terrine de Crepes – while this sounds fancy, in reality it’s pancakes with fruit. We got that at iHop in Hickory, don’t need to be eating it in San Francisco.
There was some concern when we saw there was a $3.00 “cakage” fee per person. Have no idea what that was, but it gave the impression that we were gonna get screwed on the price of desert.
We both finally settled on the Molleaux du Chocolate, which the waiter advised us was a chocolate cake with a molten center. If we’d not been so hot already, we probably would have realized what this was gonna be – a “Little Debbie” that’s been nuked in the microwave and put on a fancy plate.
Just like the whomp biscuits, we been there before and know what it is. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but by the same token, each having lost 25 pounds recently it’s also nothing to waste calories on.
During our meal, where I was sitting there was a big poster on the wall (in French) about “Sud”, which seems to be a sparkling water or something. All I could think of was dishwashing soap, and it made me glad that I didn’t order the soup. Now we know why the hotel doesn’t plug that particular restaurant, despite the numerous awards that it’s gotten in the past.
Oh, well, tomorrow is another day and there are LOTS more restaurants around. We have a tour of the Castro booked in the morning for a couple of hours, then lunch with a friend of Eddies and a free afternoon.
Today started off a bit slower. First, we realized that being in the center of the “nightlife” isn’t always what it is cracked up to be, because, well, it goes on so darned late! Last night we were both tuckered out; the “touring” had gotten to be over the top, so we decided to exercise the maturity factor and stay in, regardless of the incentives that tried to lure us out into that nightlife.
Eddie dropped right off to sleep. I watched television for a bit and then tried to go to sleep, only to be kept awake for a while by the noise from a nearby bar. Remember, no AC and the windows are open. I’d just about drop off and then someone would laugh or talk loud out there (about a block away, as best I can tell), and then I’d be woke up again. Fortunately, about 2:00 this morning (local time) I realized that I had earplugs in my shaving kit and suddenly the rest of the night was much quieter.
This morning we had breakfast in our B&B for the first time. It was pretty good, nothing to write home about – certainly not the caliber of food we had at Aerie House in P-Town. Still it was enough to send us on our way.
We walked up the street and met Paul again, who belongs to Carshare here in San Francisco. This is a pretty incredible system – once you join, you can use a car for $5.00 an hour plus $.44 a mile. That includes gas, insurance, etc. – if only the rest of us could operate our vehicles so cheaply!! We had one of those square boxy import things, but it was great to get around the city. He navigated while Eddie drove and it worked out well. Like I said earlier, he’s a wealth of information and really ought to be doing tours for a living instead of just doing them for free. Add to that the fact that he’s a nice guy, and we had a great time.
Of course, the big news was that when we stopped for lunch in a restaurant at the end of Golden Gate Park, we saw Niecey Nash, of “Clean Sweep” and “Reno911” fame. We absolutely love her television show, where she convinces people to throw out the stuff they have in their house in exchange for a makeover. She was there having lunch and just getting ready to leave when she saw us looking at her. She walked by, and when we made eye contact I told her that we were big fans of hers from North Carolina. She was very gracious and consented to pictures. The quote we got from her we liked the best? “Wait, let me get my boobs worked around right for the picture.” She is just as much a delight in person as she is on her television show. It absolutely made the day for us.
We got back to the hotel about 6ish, checked e-mail (the web still isn’t working here, but I’ve finally learned all the hoops to jump through to get it going for me again. It’s OK if you can tolerate 20 minutes to log on and frequent disconnects), clean up and go to dinner.
Dinner tonight was at a French restaurant called “Cote Sur”. Again, not far from us and had good reviews in some of the magazines. It was a little surprising that the guys here hadn’t recommended it, although after we ate there we recognized why.
First, it’s hot in there. We recognize that there’s no air conditioning in many of the buildings. Like Europe, that’s part of the charm. There are ceiling fans, however, although nobody seems to know where the switch is to turn them on. We had a less than desireable table right in the lane of traffic, directly under a non-operating ceiling fan.
They, too, offered a prix fix menu, so we decided to take advantage of that. We should have been a little suspicious about the fact that it was entirely in French without subtitles. The second clue was when the waiter told us that the fish of the day was a red snapper flown in from Texas.
Now, we’re in what many would consider the seafood capital of the world. “Fisherman’s Wharf” is a destination for thousands of people each year – I am not going there to eat ANY kind of fish from Texas!
As an appetizer, I had some little pastry thing that had salmon, caviar, sour cream and something else about it. It was actually pretty good. If I’d realized it was going to be the highlight of the meal, I would have savored it a bit more. Eddie had what turned out to be little tomato quiches about the size of a silver dollar sitting on a salad of lawn clippings.
As a main course, I had pork medallions. It’s kind of hard to go wrong with that, right? The walnut sauce sounded kind of intriguing as well. Reality, however, was another story. It was about the consistency of cardboard, with similar taste. It resided on a bed of some unidentifiable vegetable, which I think was something cabbage. In any event, I quickly lost my appetite after a few bites.
Eddie’s hunk o’ duck seemed a little better. We had a brief discussion about some sidepiece and whether it was edible or merely ornamentation. The discussion continued after he took a bite of it and wasn’t resolved at that point, other than the fact that while it might be edible for some people, it wasn’t for him. His hunk o’ duck resided on a whomp biscuit that he maintained was the best part of the meal.
Now, for those who aren’t good southern boys, a “whomp biscuit” is one that comes in a tube at the grocery store. To open the tube, you ignore the directions that say “press here with spoon” and “whomp” ‘em on the edge of the counter, causing the cardboard tube to break open.
You can roll ‘em out, sprinkle cornmeal on ‘em, or do about anything else, but when you’ve been raised on whomp biscuits, you recognize them immediately. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, either.
Desert had to be better, though, right? After all, this was a French restaurant – they’re known for their pastries and deserts. The desert menus were presented with no small amount of excitement on our part.
There were several choices. We saw some of them go by as we were deciding – terrine de Crepes – while this sounds fancy, in reality it’s pancakes with fruit. We got that at iHop in Hickory, don’t need to be eating it in San Francisco.
There was some concern when we saw there was a $3.00 “cakage” fee per person. Have no idea what that was, but it gave the impression that we were gonna get screwed on the price of desert.
We both finally settled on the Molleaux du Chocolate, which the waiter advised us was a chocolate cake with a molten center. If we’d not been so hot already, we probably would have realized what this was gonna be – a “Little Debbie” that’s been nuked in the microwave and put on a fancy plate.
Just like the whomp biscuits, we been there before and know what it is. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but by the same token, each having lost 25 pounds recently it’s also nothing to waste calories on.
During our meal, where I was sitting there was a big poster on the wall (in French) about “Sud”, which seems to be a sparkling water or something. All I could think of was dishwashing soap, and it made me glad that I didn’t order the soup. Now we know why the hotel doesn’t plug that particular restaurant, despite the numerous awards that it’s gotten in the past.
Oh, well, tomorrow is another day and there are LOTS more restaurants around. We have a tour of the Castro booked in the morning for a couple of hours, then lunch with a friend of Eddies and a free afternoon.
Thursday, August 30, 2007 - The "organized" tour
August 30, 2007 – Whew! It’s been a day of “touring”, and we’re back and tuckered out. Although it’s still daylight here, the clock on the computer (which hasn’t been reset) shows that it’s 10:30 p.m., which everyone knows is well past our normal bedtime.
Today started off early – we took the subway to Embarcadaro, to the Ferry Building – a beautifully renovated public space that was almost lost to a freeway but found new life when the most recent earthquake caused the freeway to collapse. Ta-da – instant public –
space!
Our tour this morning was an overview of the City, lead by Tatiana, who had WAAAYYY too much energy for so early in the morning. We warmed up to her later, though, and decided she actually gave a pretty decent tour.
While at the Ferry Building, we learned that anyplace flat in San Francisco is probably old landfill. This includes the Ferry Building location. Apparently, much of the landfill came from the 1850’s, during the gold rush. People made the trip around the horn and came in by sea to go to the gold fields, which are about 200 miles east of here. The rush to get there was so strong that they apparently just abandoned the boats in the harbor. Aside from the traffic jam this created, it provided some wonderful fill material, although it wasn’t clear if they just put dirt in around the boats or just crunched them down and used them as the fill. In either event, the shoreline grew west from where it was and provided more prime real estate.
San Francisco remained a busy commercial port until the 1960’s, when containerization created ships that were too big to fit in the piers. The buildings and property have now been reallocated to shopping and commercial areas.
There were lots of other tidbits offered as we rode along in that big charter bus.
1. Telegraph hill has nothing to do with Samuel Morse. It was used to allow semaphore signals to be relayed into town so the residents would know when ships came in.
2. The sea lions at Pier 39 moved in about 10 to 15 years ago. Nobody knows why they stayed, but like Canadian Geese on a golf course, they’re smelly and a nuisance. Unfortunately, they’re also protected and can’t be annoyed.
3. Alcatraz started out as a military prison in the 1850’s, and was where persons accused of treason were held during the Civil War. It was also the first lighthouse on the west coast. There’s no natural water or native plant life on the island.
4. Giradelli Square, of chocolate fame, was originally a woolen factory during the civil war. Now it’s not even chocolate, it’s all shopping.
After we’d gotten these and lots of other factoids, we were at Lombard Street, the world’s crookedest street. Traffic is really limited (to primarily 4 passenger vehicles), and the French hydrangeas were originally imported and planted by a resident. The street was originally a 2 –way up and down street, but was too steep for cars in the 20’s to make the grade, so the switchbacks were installed.
While waiting to take pictures at Lombard Street, we met Bruce and Greg, 2 friends who were traveling on vacation from St. Louis. Nice guys, we chatted throughout the day.
We then went to Northbeach, which is adjacent to Chinatown. This was originally an Italian neighborhood, and you can still tell you’re there by the green / white / red stripes on the streetlights and signposts. Northbeach is a very old neighborhood that hosts St. Peter and Paul church, which is where Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe took their wedding pictures. Having previously been married, they weren’t able to actually enter into a holy union there, but they were allowed to have some nice photos done.
Northbeach is also the original home to the “beat” generation, which originated in the City Lights bookstore. It was there that the book Howl was penned and sold, and the book was ultimately deemed obscene by someone, charges were filed and a very famous court case coming up with the difference between obscene and literature was decided by the courts.
Of course, all good literature also requires good libations, and next door to City Lights is Vesuvios, which is an equally well known drinking hole for authors. In the alley between the two, which connects Northbeach and China Town, there are granite blocks with quotes from famous authors. My favorite was “Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes”, by Ella Willcox.
Chinatown was next. It smelled much like Chinatowns everywhere, and we don’t need to go back for anything we saw there. It was, interestingly enough, one of the oldest communities as well and was one of the first to recognize the value of tourism. As a result, they rebuilt quickly after the 1906 earthquake and fire, enhancing the “asian” architecture. There are still very strong cultural roots there.
One really cool building was the United Commercial Bank building, which was originally the Chinese telephone exchange. Operators there, all unmarried females, had to know five different Chinese dialects in addition to English. Because their phone book was done in Chinese calligraphy, they also had the only hand painted phone books. San Francisco’s is the oldest Chinatown outside of asia.
From Chinatown we went to Nob Hill, which is now all hotels. It came into existence because of the invention of the cable car, since it was too steep to occupy and travel to before that. Most of the mansions burned in 1906. One guy, Mr. Crocker, donated his building site to the Episcopal Church afterwards and they built Grace Cathedral which has as it’s main entrance the Ghioverti Doors – the same doors that we saw in Florence, Italy, on the Duomo (although there was no tower to climb here!). These were cast form the original molds, which have since been destroyed.
Speaking of cable cars – they were invented in 1873 and travel at 9.5 miles per hour. SF has the only manually operated cable cars in the world.
The morning was finished off going through several different neighborhoods and seeing the different architecture. It’s amazing how much was just ignored until someone decided it was important again and should be saved. By the time they decided this with the Victorian houses, however, they’d already bulldozed about half of them.
Our last stop before lunch was at golden Gate Park, which occupies 1500 acres in the middle of town. 3 miles long by ½ mile wide, when you think about it that’s a sizeable chunk out of a city that’s only 49 square miles to begin with. (For those interested enough to figure it out, there are 640 acres in a square mile, thus this is about 2 ½ square miles of property locked up in a park).
We spent our 20 minutes there going through the Japanese Tea Garden, which is just amazing. It also looks like a lot of work and inspires me to cut back on the landscaping next spring.
We rode around from the tea garden past the Palace of Fine Arts – another impressive building, this one remaining from the Panama Pacific Expo in 1915, held to commemorate the opening of the Panama Canal. It now houses a museum and the first interactive museum (like Discovery Place in Charlotte), which was founded by Frank Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Talk about a juxtaposition.
Incidentally, houses facing the Palace run between $2 and $5 million dollars.
By now, we’d been historied out – much as you’ve probably been if you’ve read this far, so I’ll skim some of the rest of what we learned.
Lots of military space around San Francisco has been decommissioned and is being very nicely renovated into other things. It’s great to see the space being used to better the community instead of sit idle. Some of this lies on each end of the Golden Gate Bridge, which I already talked about yesterday as we rode across it.
Factoids that we didn’t know yesterday, though, were that the bridge was completed in May, 1937 by Joseph Strauss. He cut the loss of life during construction by 2/3 by using safety nets for the first time, and invented hard hats and showed how much they helped. The bridge is 1.7 miles long, and at the apex it’s 220 ft. to the water. There are signs there about help for suicide prevention.
We made the trek around into Salsalito again for a lunch break. Nothing spectacular or unusual there – in fact, we ate at the same place as yesterday since we knew it would be fast and we didn’t have much time.
After lunch, we left Tatiana when the tour split. Some went back to San Francisco, while others (including us) went on to the Muir woods to see the giant redwoods. Our tour guide for this was Don, who was just as somber as Tatiana had been energetic. A nice guy, but after a while he sounded like Charlie Brown’s mom. WAH-Wah-wah-wah-wah.
This part of the tour was thankfully shorter – not only because of Don’s lack of dynamics, but because our brains were full by then. They don’t allow guided tours in the Muir Woods, so he had to give us all the skinny on the bus on the way in.
Giant Redwoods have been around at least 160 million years. Once they covered most of North America but by the time people showed up to start chopping them into lawn furniture 10 to 12 thousand years ago, they were limited to just a strip along the coast. They’ve got pretty discriminating tastes on where they’ll grow, so they stay to this region. My thought is that they like the public services available and the tax-free status that they enjoy.
They are the tallest things on earth, growing to 385 ft or 40 stories. Some have trunks over 20 ft in diameter at the base, and the bark is over a foot thick. There’s another variety that don’t get quite as big and their bark is thicker. We never could figure out which was which.
Redwoods reproduce both sexually and a-sexually. Although the sexual reproduction sounds more interesting, in reality it’s just plain old vanilla plant sex. The a-sexual reproduction, though, is kinda snazzy – if a tree is damaged by fire or lightning or some such thing, there will be a “family ring” that grows around it. These new trees are genetic clones of the original tree and pop up in the place where the original tree fell down. There are burls at the base of the tree and on the roots that contain this genetic material and from which the new trees grow. Of course, you could also buy burls in the gift shop should you decide to repopulate your own giant redwood forest.
Big honkin tall trees. No bugs, though – apparently there’s not enough sunlight for them to survive. No significant undergrowth, either, other than some ferns that grew along the creek bank. We took the short version of the hiking trail and went back to the gift shop to have a cold drink along with Bruce and Greg.
From the Muir Woods we went to the Muir Woods Overlook, which is this little path that goes WAAAYYYY out on the rocks over the ocean several stories up. People were doing it anyhow, so the government finally decided a few years ago to improve the path and put up a handrail, which meant that those of us with common sense and maturity could also go out and enjoy the view. Otherwise, there was no way on earth you were gonna get me out there on the tip of that rock.
Great view, even with the fog rolling in. Apparently we weren’t the first ones to notice this, since there were 4 concrete bunkers there that were used to look for Japanese planes and submarines during the war.
Mind you, 350 days of the year the fog is so thick you can’t see to spit much less to shoot a large weapon at a piece of machinery. Musta been a Halliburton job, you think?
After a few minutes for pics there, we passed the Green Gulch Farm, which is a beautiful operating farm ran by buddist monks without the aid of either chemicals or machinery. We saw it from a ¼ mile up the hill, but it looked beautiful.
It also looked like a hell of a lot of work. Give me that Roundup and some fertilizer any day.
The road, which was INCREDIBLY windy and curvy, led us into Tubano, where the tour ended. We were left off in a parking lot near the docks (much like Disney World, it seemed like many places we stopped had shopping opportunities available) to wait for the ferry back. Like yesterday, all the people with bicycles were packed in there. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to ride another few miles into Turbano. Some of them really showed it, too!
A drink on the ferry and we were dumped us off where we started the day so we caught the 5:30 subway back and decided to stay in tonight. We ate leftover mac and cheese from last night and didn’t go out, other than a short walk down the street to get some sunburn cream and visit the cookie store we saw just up the block.
Last night's dinner -- we ate at a great restaurant called Sumi's, which offered a prix fix menu for $25.00. The guy at the hotel said it was great and very popular with the locals, and he was exactly right. We had a salad, "mac and cheese", and a chocolate pate.
Now, I know that you may be thinking "the blue box" when I say "mac and cheese". Trust me, this had nothing to do with that. Penne pasta with grueuy, chicken and other stuff. it was incredible, but so rich that we couldn't eat more than half. This left us with the other half for dinner tonight.
Tomorrow we have no agenda, and thus anticipate a slower start. Although breakfast is supposed to be included here, we’ve always been out the door before they started serving and were on our own.
Today started off early – we took the subway to Embarcadaro, to the Ferry Building – a beautifully renovated public space that was almost lost to a freeway but found new life when the most recent earthquake caused the freeway to collapse. Ta-da – instant public –
space!
Our tour this morning was an overview of the City, lead by Tatiana, who had WAAAYYY too much energy for so early in the morning. We warmed up to her later, though, and decided she actually gave a pretty decent tour.
While at the Ferry Building, we learned that anyplace flat in San Francisco is probably old landfill. This includes the Ferry Building location. Apparently, much of the landfill came from the 1850’s, during the gold rush. People made the trip around the horn and came in by sea to go to the gold fields, which are about 200 miles east of here. The rush to get there was so strong that they apparently just abandoned the boats in the harbor. Aside from the traffic jam this created, it provided some wonderful fill material, although it wasn’t clear if they just put dirt in around the boats or just crunched them down and used them as the fill. In either event, the shoreline grew west from where it was and provided more prime real estate.
San Francisco remained a busy commercial port until the 1960’s, when containerization created ships that were too big to fit in the piers. The buildings and property have now been reallocated to shopping and commercial areas.
There were lots of other tidbits offered as we rode along in that big charter bus.
1. Telegraph hill has nothing to do with Samuel Morse. It was used to allow semaphore signals to be relayed into town so the residents would know when ships came in.
2. The sea lions at Pier 39 moved in about 10 to 15 years ago. Nobody knows why they stayed, but like Canadian Geese on a golf course, they’re smelly and a nuisance. Unfortunately, they’re also protected and can’t be annoyed.
3. Alcatraz started out as a military prison in the 1850’s, and was where persons accused of treason were held during the Civil War. It was also the first lighthouse on the west coast. There’s no natural water or native plant life on the island.
4. Giradelli Square, of chocolate fame, was originally a woolen factory during the civil war. Now it’s not even chocolate, it’s all shopping.
After we’d gotten these and lots of other factoids, we were at Lombard Street, the world’s crookedest street. Traffic is really limited (to primarily 4 passenger vehicles), and the French hydrangeas were originally imported and planted by a resident. The street was originally a 2 –way up and down street, but was too steep for cars in the 20’s to make the grade, so the switchbacks were installed.
While waiting to take pictures at Lombard Street, we met Bruce and Greg, 2 friends who were traveling on vacation from St. Louis. Nice guys, we chatted throughout the day.
We then went to Northbeach, which is adjacent to Chinatown. This was originally an Italian neighborhood, and you can still tell you’re there by the green / white / red stripes on the streetlights and signposts. Northbeach is a very old neighborhood that hosts St. Peter and Paul church, which is where Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe took their wedding pictures. Having previously been married, they weren’t able to actually enter into a holy union there, but they were allowed to have some nice photos done.
Northbeach is also the original home to the “beat” generation, which originated in the City Lights bookstore. It was there that the book Howl was penned and sold, and the book was ultimately deemed obscene by someone, charges were filed and a very famous court case coming up with the difference between obscene and literature was decided by the courts.
Of course, all good literature also requires good libations, and next door to City Lights is Vesuvios, which is an equally well known drinking hole for authors. In the alley between the two, which connects Northbeach and China Town, there are granite blocks with quotes from famous authors. My favorite was “Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes”, by Ella Willcox.
Chinatown was next. It smelled much like Chinatowns everywhere, and we don’t need to go back for anything we saw there. It was, interestingly enough, one of the oldest communities as well and was one of the first to recognize the value of tourism. As a result, they rebuilt quickly after the 1906 earthquake and fire, enhancing the “asian” architecture. There are still very strong cultural roots there.
One really cool building was the United Commercial Bank building, which was originally the Chinese telephone exchange. Operators there, all unmarried females, had to know five different Chinese dialects in addition to English. Because their phone book was done in Chinese calligraphy, they also had the only hand painted phone books. San Francisco’s is the oldest Chinatown outside of asia.
From Chinatown we went to Nob Hill, which is now all hotels. It came into existence because of the invention of the cable car, since it was too steep to occupy and travel to before that. Most of the mansions burned in 1906. One guy, Mr. Crocker, donated his building site to the Episcopal Church afterwards and they built Grace Cathedral which has as it’s main entrance the Ghioverti Doors – the same doors that we saw in Florence, Italy, on the Duomo (although there was no tower to climb here!). These were cast form the original molds, which have since been destroyed.
Speaking of cable cars – they were invented in 1873 and travel at 9.5 miles per hour. SF has the only manually operated cable cars in the world.
The morning was finished off going through several different neighborhoods and seeing the different architecture. It’s amazing how much was just ignored until someone decided it was important again and should be saved. By the time they decided this with the Victorian houses, however, they’d already bulldozed about half of them.
Our last stop before lunch was at golden Gate Park, which occupies 1500 acres in the middle of town. 3 miles long by ½ mile wide, when you think about it that’s a sizeable chunk out of a city that’s only 49 square miles to begin with. (For those interested enough to figure it out, there are 640 acres in a square mile, thus this is about 2 ½ square miles of property locked up in a park).
We spent our 20 minutes there going through the Japanese Tea Garden, which is just amazing. It also looks like a lot of work and inspires me to cut back on the landscaping next spring.
We rode around from the tea garden past the Palace of Fine Arts – another impressive building, this one remaining from the Panama Pacific Expo in 1915, held to commemorate the opening of the Panama Canal. It now houses a museum and the first interactive museum (like Discovery Place in Charlotte), which was founded by Frank Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Talk about a juxtaposition.
Incidentally, houses facing the Palace run between $2 and $5 million dollars.
By now, we’d been historied out – much as you’ve probably been if you’ve read this far, so I’ll skim some of the rest of what we learned.
Lots of military space around San Francisco has been decommissioned and is being very nicely renovated into other things. It’s great to see the space being used to better the community instead of sit idle. Some of this lies on each end of the Golden Gate Bridge, which I already talked about yesterday as we rode across it.
Factoids that we didn’t know yesterday, though, were that the bridge was completed in May, 1937 by Joseph Strauss. He cut the loss of life during construction by 2/3 by using safety nets for the first time, and invented hard hats and showed how much they helped. The bridge is 1.7 miles long, and at the apex it’s 220 ft. to the water. There are signs there about help for suicide prevention.
We made the trek around into Salsalito again for a lunch break. Nothing spectacular or unusual there – in fact, we ate at the same place as yesterday since we knew it would be fast and we didn’t have much time.
After lunch, we left Tatiana when the tour split. Some went back to San Francisco, while others (including us) went on to the Muir woods to see the giant redwoods. Our tour guide for this was Don, who was just as somber as Tatiana had been energetic. A nice guy, but after a while he sounded like Charlie Brown’s mom. WAH-Wah-wah-wah-wah.
This part of the tour was thankfully shorter – not only because of Don’s lack of dynamics, but because our brains were full by then. They don’t allow guided tours in the Muir Woods, so he had to give us all the skinny on the bus on the way in.
Giant Redwoods have been around at least 160 million years. Once they covered most of North America but by the time people showed up to start chopping them into lawn furniture 10 to 12 thousand years ago, they were limited to just a strip along the coast. They’ve got pretty discriminating tastes on where they’ll grow, so they stay to this region. My thought is that they like the public services available and the tax-free status that they enjoy.
They are the tallest things on earth, growing to 385 ft or 40 stories. Some have trunks over 20 ft in diameter at the base, and the bark is over a foot thick. There’s another variety that don’t get quite as big and their bark is thicker. We never could figure out which was which.
Redwoods reproduce both sexually and a-sexually. Although the sexual reproduction sounds more interesting, in reality it’s just plain old vanilla plant sex. The a-sexual reproduction, though, is kinda snazzy – if a tree is damaged by fire or lightning or some such thing, there will be a “family ring” that grows around it. These new trees are genetic clones of the original tree and pop up in the place where the original tree fell down. There are burls at the base of the tree and on the roots that contain this genetic material and from which the new trees grow. Of course, you could also buy burls in the gift shop should you decide to repopulate your own giant redwood forest.
Big honkin tall trees. No bugs, though – apparently there’s not enough sunlight for them to survive. No significant undergrowth, either, other than some ferns that grew along the creek bank. We took the short version of the hiking trail and went back to the gift shop to have a cold drink along with Bruce and Greg.
From the Muir Woods we went to the Muir Woods Overlook, which is this little path that goes WAAAYYYY out on the rocks over the ocean several stories up. People were doing it anyhow, so the government finally decided a few years ago to improve the path and put up a handrail, which meant that those of us with common sense and maturity could also go out and enjoy the view. Otherwise, there was no way on earth you were gonna get me out there on the tip of that rock.
Great view, even with the fog rolling in. Apparently we weren’t the first ones to notice this, since there were 4 concrete bunkers there that were used to look for Japanese planes and submarines during the war.
Mind you, 350 days of the year the fog is so thick you can’t see to spit much less to shoot a large weapon at a piece of machinery. Musta been a Halliburton job, you think?
After a few minutes for pics there, we passed the Green Gulch Farm, which is a beautiful operating farm ran by buddist monks without the aid of either chemicals or machinery. We saw it from a ¼ mile up the hill, but it looked beautiful.
It also looked like a hell of a lot of work. Give me that Roundup and some fertilizer any day.
The road, which was INCREDIBLY windy and curvy, led us into Tubano, where the tour ended. We were left off in a parking lot near the docks (much like Disney World, it seemed like many places we stopped had shopping opportunities available) to wait for the ferry back. Like yesterday, all the people with bicycles were packed in there. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to ride another few miles into Turbano. Some of them really showed it, too!
A drink on the ferry and we were dumped us off where we started the day so we caught the 5:30 subway back and decided to stay in tonight. We ate leftover mac and cheese from last night and didn’t go out, other than a short walk down the street to get some sunburn cream and visit the cookie store we saw just up the block.
Last night's dinner -- we ate at a great restaurant called Sumi's, which offered a prix fix menu for $25.00. The guy at the hotel said it was great and very popular with the locals, and he was exactly right. We had a salad, "mac and cheese", and a chocolate pate.
Now, I know that you may be thinking "the blue box" when I say "mac and cheese". Trust me, this had nothing to do with that. Penne pasta with grueuy, chicken and other stuff. it was incredible, but so rich that we couldn't eat more than half. This left us with the other half for dinner tonight.
Tomorrow we have no agenda, and thus anticipate a slower start. Although breakfast is supposed to be included here, we’ve always been out the door before they started serving and were on our own.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007 - Alcatraz and the Bridge
Wednesday, August 29, 2007 -- Slept in much better than you’d expect. I guess staying up 21 hours will do that to a person. We both woke for a bit about 2:30 local time (about 6:30 NC time, which is still sleeping in for us) and went back to sleep until about 6 local time. Had to get up because we’d already booked tickets for today’s events.
We caught the Muni subway to go to Embarcadaro Street, which is the one that fronts the water and goes along the piers. We were going to tour Alcatraz on the 9:30 ferry. After we got dumped off the Muni, though, we still had a ½ mile trek to the right pier and weren’t able to figure out the busses sufficiently that we felt comfortable climbing on one. That was going to need more study, lest we find ourselves half-way across the county in the wrong direction.
Once we got there, we found there was a coffee shop, so all was right with the world. Fresh bagels and coffee on board, we were ready to see “the Rock,” so named because of the absence of native soil, vegetation or fresh water.
The Ferry over there holds 499 people, although the count for our trip was only 373. There are also all kinds of warnings about this being a national park, uneven pavement, etc. – and, to our amazement, a surprising number of people were wearing FLIP FLOPS. This is topped only by the woman in Rome that was on the same tour of the Coliseum as us who was wearing stiletto heeled boots. Absolutely insane.
Alcatraz was great. They have a wonderful audio tour to go through that explains a lot and gives you a real perspective on the place. Not somewhere that I’d care to live for an extended period of time. Interestingly enough, the longest resident was also the only Canadian to serve time there, 25 years 1 month, and was the ONLY person actually arrested by J. Edgar Hoover. What are the chances of all those stars lining up?
Alcatraz was interesting, but in reality, about an hour and a half was all you need to see everything significant and listen to the tour. We caught the ferry back (fighting off these little seaweed flies that want to climb on you and bite while we waited) and were in SF by 11:30. On the way back, we decided to take the advise of one of the guys that owns the B&B and rent bicycles to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge into Salsalito.
Overall, it wasn’t a bad ride. With insurance and the ferry ticket back and everything it was $88.00 for both of us, and it took up the entire rest of the day. They have great bike trails, as you would imagine, although if a person hadn’t been doing some type of workout I don’t know that they could have made it up those hills to get to the start of the bridge. About an hour and a half was all it took to do the entire trip.
Here’s another little comment on human nature. Why is it that some people just mosey on down the middle of the sidewalk / bike path / street like nobody else needs to use them? On the Golden Gate Bridge, especially, there are fences on each side. You’ve got about 10 ft. total for traffic in both directions, with cars whizzing by on your right hand side at a much higher rate of speed, and then here’s someone casually wandering down the dead center path.
It’s also interesting to me that these people tend to be women – 40ish to 60ish – who are shall we say “full figured”. Like some enormous cruise ship of flesh that moves only slowly and deliberately, they weave from side to side creating a wake of havoc behind them, apparently oblivious to the problems they create. The gender and age thing isn’t universal, of course – couples that insist on walking side by side, or pushing the jumbo-sized SUV baby stroller fall in the same category, as do those people who thought it was a bright idea to step around the corner of the tower, where the path circles around and leaves a sort of a blind spot, to decide to have someone take their picture. The venturi tube principal doesn’t work on flesh; we don't go faster through the narrow spot -- instead, it just creates a pile-up on the pathway.
A light lunch in Salsalito followed by a quick jaunt down the main drag put us back in line for the ferry across the bay by about 2:30. Then you had to wait in line until the ferry actually left at 3:20. In the sun. Which isn’t supposed to shine here, but which hasn’t left for even a moment since we got here. Incidentally, those jackets everyone warned about needing have been somewhat useless, too -- they've had record breaking heat every day thus far.
While you’re waiting, of course you have your bicycle. In fact, lots of people have them because they all rented them from one of the 3 bike places that exist for this. When the boat came, they put the people with bikes on first, packing them in like so many sardines, handlebars alternating from left to right, on the lowest level of the ship. Mind you, they all look alike. There are no license tags. They’re all the same colors. And there were about 100 of them in a 15 x 25 area.
The reason they put the bikes on first is because when you finish the 30 minute ride across the bay, they put the pedestrians off LAST. We were curious as to how smoothly the disembarkation was going to go, but amazingly enough when people paid attention it went surprisingly well. Most everyone who came in last knew to be there first to move their bikes and get on out the door.
Of course, there were a few slackers in the bunch. They were undoubtedly the ones that stopped for pictures on the bridge, too, or rode 3-abreast in a one-lane bike path. There were about 6 bikes ahead of ours that weren’t moving, so we just leaned them together in a pile and got ours out and the process kept right on moving.
We’d also thought ahead and went straight back to the rental place, which was about 100 yards from the ferry dock. Those 100 bikes, probably 70 of which were from our place, all had to be checked in and we could see a considerable delay there. We were lucky, though, got straight in and were out in 15 minutes. Time then to grab a cab back to the hotel (since the public transportation would have been another hour and a half and we were starting to fade already) in time for a nap before cleanup and dinner.
We caught the Muni subway to go to Embarcadaro Street, which is the one that fronts the water and goes along the piers. We were going to tour Alcatraz on the 9:30 ferry. After we got dumped off the Muni, though, we still had a ½ mile trek to the right pier and weren’t able to figure out the busses sufficiently that we felt comfortable climbing on one. That was going to need more study, lest we find ourselves half-way across the county in the wrong direction.
Once we got there, we found there was a coffee shop, so all was right with the world. Fresh bagels and coffee on board, we were ready to see “the Rock,” so named because of the absence of native soil, vegetation or fresh water.
The Ferry over there holds 499 people, although the count for our trip was only 373. There are also all kinds of warnings about this being a national park, uneven pavement, etc. – and, to our amazement, a surprising number of people were wearing FLIP FLOPS. This is topped only by the woman in Rome that was on the same tour of the Coliseum as us who was wearing stiletto heeled boots. Absolutely insane.
Alcatraz was great. They have a wonderful audio tour to go through that explains a lot and gives you a real perspective on the place. Not somewhere that I’d care to live for an extended period of time. Interestingly enough, the longest resident was also the only Canadian to serve time there, 25 years 1 month, and was the ONLY person actually arrested by J. Edgar Hoover. What are the chances of all those stars lining up?
Alcatraz was interesting, but in reality, about an hour and a half was all you need to see everything significant and listen to the tour. We caught the ferry back (fighting off these little seaweed flies that want to climb on you and bite while we waited) and were in SF by 11:30. On the way back, we decided to take the advise of one of the guys that owns the B&B and rent bicycles to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge into Salsalito.
Overall, it wasn’t a bad ride. With insurance and the ferry ticket back and everything it was $88.00 for both of us, and it took up the entire rest of the day. They have great bike trails, as you would imagine, although if a person hadn’t been doing some type of workout I don’t know that they could have made it up those hills to get to the start of the bridge. About an hour and a half was all it took to do the entire trip.
Here’s another little comment on human nature. Why is it that some people just mosey on down the middle of the sidewalk / bike path / street like nobody else needs to use them? On the Golden Gate Bridge, especially, there are fences on each side. You’ve got about 10 ft. total for traffic in both directions, with cars whizzing by on your right hand side at a much higher rate of speed, and then here’s someone casually wandering down the dead center path.
It’s also interesting to me that these people tend to be women – 40ish to 60ish – who are shall we say “full figured”. Like some enormous cruise ship of flesh that moves only slowly and deliberately, they weave from side to side creating a wake of havoc behind them, apparently oblivious to the problems they create. The gender and age thing isn’t universal, of course – couples that insist on walking side by side, or pushing the jumbo-sized SUV baby stroller fall in the same category, as do those people who thought it was a bright idea to step around the corner of the tower, where the path circles around and leaves a sort of a blind spot, to decide to have someone take their picture. The venturi tube principal doesn’t work on flesh; we don't go faster through the narrow spot -- instead, it just creates a pile-up on the pathway.
A light lunch in Salsalito followed by a quick jaunt down the main drag put us back in line for the ferry across the bay by about 2:30. Then you had to wait in line until the ferry actually left at 3:20. In the sun. Which isn’t supposed to shine here, but which hasn’t left for even a moment since we got here. Incidentally, those jackets everyone warned about needing have been somewhat useless, too -- they've had record breaking heat every day thus far.
While you’re waiting, of course you have your bicycle. In fact, lots of people have them because they all rented them from one of the 3 bike places that exist for this. When the boat came, they put the people with bikes on first, packing them in like so many sardines, handlebars alternating from left to right, on the lowest level of the ship. Mind you, they all look alike. There are no license tags. They’re all the same colors. And there were about 100 of them in a 15 x 25 area.
The reason they put the bikes on first is because when you finish the 30 minute ride across the bay, they put the pedestrians off LAST. We were curious as to how smoothly the disembarkation was going to go, but amazingly enough when people paid attention it went surprisingly well. Most everyone who came in last knew to be there first to move their bikes and get on out the door.
Of course, there were a few slackers in the bunch. They were undoubtedly the ones that stopped for pictures on the bridge, too, or rode 3-abreast in a one-lane bike path. There were about 6 bikes ahead of ours that weren’t moving, so we just leaned them together in a pile and got ours out and the process kept right on moving.
We’d also thought ahead and went straight back to the rental place, which was about 100 yards from the ferry dock. Those 100 bikes, probably 70 of which were from our place, all had to be checked in and we could see a considerable delay there. We were lucky, though, got straight in and were out in 15 minutes. Time then to grab a cab back to the hotel (since the public transportation would have been another hour and a half and we were starting to fade already) in time for a nap before cleanup and dinner.
August 28, 2007 - Travel and the first day
August 28, 2007 – Up at 4:00 – yes, in the morning – to go to the airport. Why, you may ask, do we have to get up that early? Because we work on the theory that “earlier is gooder”, and the first flight from Charlotte to San Francisco left at 7:30, so by the time we factor in driving, parking, shuttling, checking, security and the like – well, we have to be up and out of the house by 5 or so in order to stay within the comfort zone.
We’ve trimmed the packing down further, and have enough for a week in one carry-on each, plus one computer bag (a little smaller than the carry ons) for “technology” – computers, cell phone chargers, plus assorted magazines and stuff to read. The rule is what goes on vacation stays on vacation when it comes to reading material; all those magazines and newspaper articles that we’re gonna read “someday” get read and the magazines are discarded on the trip, along with the raggy underwear and old T-shirts. The only reason to check a bag is to get around the liquid limitations. It’s a dream going through the airport, though, with just a small backpack each and the computer bags.
We used miles to upgrade to 1st class, always a treat. On a 5 hour flight across the country, that’s especially nice for guys our size. This flight was so lightly populated, though, that they were moving people around to balance the plane. We probably would have gotten upgraded without spending the miles, but that’s the price of the guarantee.
The plane was not one of the nice new ones like we’ve taken to Europe, with individual television screens, etc. The movie screens came down from above, there were no choices (one movie; so dull I don’t know what it was even), and the seats leaned back but not with the “barcalounger footrests” that the big over the ocean ones have. Napping was therefore a bit more difficult. I had things to read, though, and the latest Harry Potter on my iPod, so I was happy. Eddie listened to his iPod and dozed.
The trip to California was uneventful, luggage arrived with us and we grabbed a cab to our B&B. That ride was the most exciting part of the trip to this point – I didn’t know that those things (american cabs) would go 90 miles an hour, or that they could stop and start quite so quickly. Than heavens for good brakes. Incidentally a cab ride from the airport to the Castro is about $40.00.
We got to our B&B very early – about 11:00 their time, although it was 3ish our time. Our room is on the lowest level which isn’t the basement, but which also isn’t the first floor. It’s what used to be the garage level and was used to hold up the rest of the house. It’s a great room, though, with windows that open out onto a private patio, a small but adequate bathroom, great closet space, a sitting area with loveseat, fridge, microwave, coffee pot, etc. Although it’s fairly old (the owner said they’ve been there over 30 years, and the house undoubtedly predates 1900), it’s very nice and right at the intersection of Market and Castro.
There’s really only been one thing wrong with this place, and, although it might seem minor, it’s enough that I probably wouldn’t come back. The internet connectivity sucks -- to the point that we frequently can’t connect. Anyone who knows us realizes this is a substantial issue, and the owner’s suggestion that I come up to the dining room because you can always connect there is NOT an acceptable solution in my mind. The place is advertised with wireless internet connectivity. Aside from the convenience of needing to check on a business, there’s also the desire to look up restaurants, points of interest, etc. It is about as substantial an issue as if they’d said, “Oh, the bathroom in your room is out of business, but you can run upstairs where we have another.”
Not an acceptable solution, and one that I am getting angrier about each time I try to log on. Fortunately, it seems to be getting a bit better and we've been able to have some connections the last day or two.
We unpacked and got settled, after which Paul, a friend from the internet, called to say he was in the neighborhood already and did we want a tour. Paul’s a very nice guy, retired from Schaub Financial, origionally from NY and Boston, but he’s been here 13 years. He’s also an absolute wealth of information about San Francisco.
We started off with lunch at a restaurant that used to be owned by Harvey Milk. You may remember him as the SF alderman who was assassinated in a hate crime years ago. The restaurant is called "Harveys" (DUH!) and is right on a corner with great windows that looked out on the intersection of Market and Castro. Burgers, fries & onion rings all around.
We then explored a bit under Paul’s tutelage. We rode the historic trolly first.
Now, you have to recognize that there are several modes of transportation in SF. First, there are “cable cars”. We rode those later in the afternoon. These are powered by a cable that is over a mile long and circles under the ground, powered by the same kind of motor that runs a ski lift. The brakes are largely manual, worked by pulling hard on a lever. One of the drivers told us that they are wooden (the cable cars being restored to their original specifications), and only last 7 days. They also only stop you on the level parts, not on the downhill slopes (of which there are plenty). This is what you see on the Rice-a-roni commercials and what is traditionally thought of as SF transportation. We were hanging on the sides looking every bit the tourist for that trip. Without a Muni, a ride costs you $5.00.
The next mode of transportation is a Trolly, which is powered by overhead electric wires that run the motors. Many of these have been collected from around the world and restored to their original condition as well, meaning that they are not standard colors and that directions are sometimes in Italian, French, etc. Between getting on and off we rode on a couple of different ones. They’re fun, but INCREDIBLY SLOW. The locals refer to it as a “milk run”, meaning that it stops on every single corner like a milkman used to do. As a result, you don’t travel it fast. A ride on this is $1.50.
The final mode of transportation is called the Muni, which is a combination of underground subway and busses. It seems to be the fastest mode of transportation, other than taking a cab. The other thing good about these is that you buy a 7 day pass, which also gets you into a number of museums and attractions for $54.00. Flash your pass and you’re good to go, no other funds necessary.
We hit the Basilica of San Francisco – yep, there’s actually a church there by that name which dates back to 1776. It’s gone through earthquakes, fires, etc., so some of it has been rebuilt, replaced, etc., but it’s a beautiful building, complete with cemetery and gift shop, just like all those churches in Europe. The difference is they have someone standing there to make sure that you actually "donate" the $5.00 if you want to go in.
After exploring for the afternoon, we separated from Paul for a while, cleaned up and rested a bit and then met again to go to dinner. Dinner was not far away – at a restaurant called Firewood. Eddie had the vegetarian tortellini in alfredo sauce and I had rock shrimp tortellini in pink sauce, both of which were accompanied by a glass of very nice cabernet and were excellent.
After 21 hours without sleep, though, we were both getting a bit punchy. The walk home from the restaurant was delayed only by a stop at a grocery to get some caffeine free diet cokes and coffee creamer, then we crashed for the night.
We’ve trimmed the packing down further, and have enough for a week in one carry-on each, plus one computer bag (a little smaller than the carry ons) for “technology” – computers, cell phone chargers, plus assorted magazines and stuff to read. The rule is what goes on vacation stays on vacation when it comes to reading material; all those magazines and newspaper articles that we’re gonna read “someday” get read and the magazines are discarded on the trip, along with the raggy underwear and old T-shirts. The only reason to check a bag is to get around the liquid limitations. It’s a dream going through the airport, though, with just a small backpack each and the computer bags.
We used miles to upgrade to 1st class, always a treat. On a 5 hour flight across the country, that’s especially nice for guys our size. This flight was so lightly populated, though, that they were moving people around to balance the plane. We probably would have gotten upgraded without spending the miles, but that’s the price of the guarantee.
The plane was not one of the nice new ones like we’ve taken to Europe, with individual television screens, etc. The movie screens came down from above, there were no choices (one movie; so dull I don’t know what it was even), and the seats leaned back but not with the “barcalounger footrests” that the big over the ocean ones have. Napping was therefore a bit more difficult. I had things to read, though, and the latest Harry Potter on my iPod, so I was happy. Eddie listened to his iPod and dozed.
The trip to California was uneventful, luggage arrived with us and we grabbed a cab to our B&B. That ride was the most exciting part of the trip to this point – I didn’t know that those things (american cabs) would go 90 miles an hour, or that they could stop and start quite so quickly. Than heavens for good brakes. Incidentally a cab ride from the airport to the Castro is about $40.00.
We got to our B&B very early – about 11:00 their time, although it was 3ish our time. Our room is on the lowest level which isn’t the basement, but which also isn’t the first floor. It’s what used to be the garage level and was used to hold up the rest of the house. It’s a great room, though, with windows that open out onto a private patio, a small but adequate bathroom, great closet space, a sitting area with loveseat, fridge, microwave, coffee pot, etc. Although it’s fairly old (the owner said they’ve been there over 30 years, and the house undoubtedly predates 1900), it’s very nice and right at the intersection of Market and Castro.
There’s really only been one thing wrong with this place, and, although it might seem minor, it’s enough that I probably wouldn’t come back. The internet connectivity sucks -- to the point that we frequently can’t connect. Anyone who knows us realizes this is a substantial issue, and the owner’s suggestion that I come up to the dining room because you can always connect there is NOT an acceptable solution in my mind. The place is advertised with wireless internet connectivity. Aside from the convenience of needing to check on a business, there’s also the desire to look up restaurants, points of interest, etc. It is about as substantial an issue as if they’d said, “Oh, the bathroom in your room is out of business, but you can run upstairs where we have another.”
Not an acceptable solution, and one that I am getting angrier about each time I try to log on. Fortunately, it seems to be getting a bit better and we've been able to have some connections the last day or two.
We unpacked and got settled, after which Paul, a friend from the internet, called to say he was in the neighborhood already and did we want a tour. Paul’s a very nice guy, retired from Schaub Financial, origionally from NY and Boston, but he’s been here 13 years. He’s also an absolute wealth of information about San Francisco.
We started off with lunch at a restaurant that used to be owned by Harvey Milk. You may remember him as the SF alderman who was assassinated in a hate crime years ago. The restaurant is called "Harveys" (DUH!) and is right on a corner with great windows that looked out on the intersection of Market and Castro. Burgers, fries & onion rings all around.
We then explored a bit under Paul’s tutelage. We rode the historic trolly first.
Now, you have to recognize that there are several modes of transportation in SF. First, there are “cable cars”. We rode those later in the afternoon. These are powered by a cable that is over a mile long and circles under the ground, powered by the same kind of motor that runs a ski lift. The brakes are largely manual, worked by pulling hard on a lever. One of the drivers told us that they are wooden (the cable cars being restored to their original specifications), and only last 7 days. They also only stop you on the level parts, not on the downhill slopes (of which there are plenty). This is what you see on the Rice-a-roni commercials and what is traditionally thought of as SF transportation. We were hanging on the sides looking every bit the tourist for that trip. Without a Muni, a ride costs you $5.00.
The next mode of transportation is a Trolly, which is powered by overhead electric wires that run the motors. Many of these have been collected from around the world and restored to their original condition as well, meaning that they are not standard colors and that directions are sometimes in Italian, French, etc. Between getting on and off we rode on a couple of different ones. They’re fun, but INCREDIBLY SLOW. The locals refer to it as a “milk run”, meaning that it stops on every single corner like a milkman used to do. As a result, you don’t travel it fast. A ride on this is $1.50.
The final mode of transportation is called the Muni, which is a combination of underground subway and busses. It seems to be the fastest mode of transportation, other than taking a cab. The other thing good about these is that you buy a 7 day pass, which also gets you into a number of museums and attractions for $54.00. Flash your pass and you’re good to go, no other funds necessary.
We hit the Basilica of San Francisco – yep, there’s actually a church there by that name which dates back to 1776. It’s gone through earthquakes, fires, etc., so some of it has been rebuilt, replaced, etc., but it’s a beautiful building, complete with cemetery and gift shop, just like all those churches in Europe. The difference is they have someone standing there to make sure that you actually "donate" the $5.00 if you want to go in.
After exploring for the afternoon, we separated from Paul for a while, cleaned up and rested a bit and then met again to go to dinner. Dinner was not far away – at a restaurant called Firewood. Eddie had the vegetarian tortellini in alfredo sauce and I had rock shrimp tortellini in pink sauce, both of which were accompanied by a glass of very nice cabernet and were excellent.
After 21 hours without sleep, though, we were both getting a bit punchy. The walk home from the restaurant was delayed only by a stop at a grocery to get some caffeine free diet cokes and coffee creamer, then we crashed for the night.
August 27, 2007 - Prelude
This journey has to begin before the beginning. That is to say, there is a prelude that leads up to the adventure that is necessary to fully understand what has been happening.
Wednesday, the 29th, is Caleb’s birthday. Birthdays are a relatively big deal in this family, especially the last one before becoming a teenager (he’ll be 12). Since we were going to be gone on the 29th, we had a birthday dinner prior to leaving.
Generally the Honoree gets to choose where they want to have dinner for their birthday. Caleb, in what I’m sure was a pre-teen show of defiance, decided that he wanted to go to Hooters. There’s one in town, we hadn’t been there, and I’m sure that he thought it was going to make everyone else (i.e. the adults in the group) somewhat uncomfortable, not to mention that it gives some pretty significant bragging rights of a 12 year old who gets to go to Hooters to celebrate his birthday.
We were genially greeted by a bevy of young ladies who were obviously qualified to work there. What Caleb didn’t count on, though, was that (a) the adults in the group had been there before – between his nurse parents and the rest of us (Eliseo was along for the ride), those boobies in tight shirts were irrelevant. On the other hand, they showed him a GREAT deal of attention. What we all realized was that although he’s interested in what they were sellin’ in the abstract, when confronted with the reality of the situation, his credit card has not yet been validated.
They treated him well, though, made him put on pointy papercup like a beak and use menus like wings while they sang a little song and paraded him around the restaurant.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, the food was absolutely inedible. If it were not for the girls with the big tatas and the sale of beer, that place would undoubtedly go out of business. Needless to say, that choice is now off the list of acceptable restaurants based upon food quality alone.
Overall, though, it was a pretty good birthday celebration. Thus our vacation began.
Wednesday, the 29th, is Caleb’s birthday. Birthdays are a relatively big deal in this family, especially the last one before becoming a teenager (he’ll be 12). Since we were going to be gone on the 29th, we had a birthday dinner prior to leaving.
Generally the Honoree gets to choose where they want to have dinner for their birthday. Caleb, in what I’m sure was a pre-teen show of defiance, decided that he wanted to go to Hooters. There’s one in town, we hadn’t been there, and I’m sure that he thought it was going to make everyone else (i.e. the adults in the group) somewhat uncomfortable, not to mention that it gives some pretty significant bragging rights of a 12 year old who gets to go to Hooters to celebrate his birthday.
We were genially greeted by a bevy of young ladies who were obviously qualified to work there. What Caleb didn’t count on, though, was that (a) the adults in the group had been there before – between his nurse parents and the rest of us (Eliseo was along for the ride), those boobies in tight shirts were irrelevant. On the other hand, they showed him a GREAT deal of attention. What we all realized was that although he’s interested in what they were sellin’ in the abstract, when confronted with the reality of the situation, his credit card has not yet been validated.
They treated him well, though, made him put on pointy papercup like a beak and use menus like wings while they sang a little song and paraded him around the restaurant.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, the food was absolutely inedible. If it were not for the girls with the big tatas and the sale of beer, that place would undoubtedly go out of business. Needless to say, that choice is now off the list of acceptable restaurants based upon food quality alone.
Overall, though, it was a pretty good birthday celebration. Thus our vacation began.
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