Holiday in San Francisco

December 25, 2004 on 6:57 pm | In California, Travel | No Comments

We had a jam packed holiday vacation beginning Friday around noon-we left as soon as I got out of work. I drove the whole way-it was a 13 hour drive from Phoenix, and having been up since 5 A.M. I felt it too. The last stretch was through a very dense fog. It was a relief to finally make it to our hotel, The Adante, around 1 AM. I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer and fell asleep pretty much the moment my head hit the pillow. Chris, however, party animal that he is, went out on his own for a couple hours. I woke him up at 5 A.M. with me to drink our Dr. Natura Colonix Cleanse together and hear about his night out.

He had a couple drinks at one bar, then hung out at another til 2 A.M. when he was surprised to learn the bartender was going around collecting everyone’s beer bottles, so people were drinking in a hurry, which he thought was bizarre. He called his friend, Eric, in Michigan to vent about this injustice. He left the bar and wandered around for a while. A homeless guy approached him for money. Chris asked what he wanted to do with the money, and so they walked around discussing life for a while, and he eventually gave him 3 bucks. Chris realized he was lost and had to ask directions back to Geary Street.

After drinking our fiber sludge and hearing his adventures, we went back to sleep for a couple more hours, until we were fully awake at 8 on Christmas morning.

We walked around, took a crap load of pictures, explored Chinatown, browsed through shops-we each bought 10 postcards for $1 in one, and some nice smelling fruit soap in another for 49 cents. We were lured into a Chinese restaurant where new dishes were brought before us in hopes of tempting us to buy even more than we had ordered. Our egg rolls, sweet buns with meat inside, and meat puffs came to over $14 so it’s a good thing we had some restraint, but it was all good.

We walked down a pier-sat down and just enjoyed being together for a few minutes, and watched the water. We took a trolley for $1.25/person to Pier 39 and browsed through shops and saws lots of interesting things going on. We saw a bunch of wild sea lions lounging on wooden piers, and making quite a bit of raucous. That was really something-we had never seen them in the wild like that before.

It was on the cold side and we were a bit under dressed, so in Chinatown, we each bought a souvenir sweatshirt for $11.95. It came in handy. There were some neat novelty items and gag gifts. A realistic looking squishy donut would have made a good one for the cop in the family.

We sat down while I nibbled on a crab cake, and watched a street performer juggle and do other tricks to entertain the audience. For his last act he said he needed 4 skinny guys and pulled Chris up on stage to sit in one of the 4 chairs-while leaning against the other 3 guys. Slowly, all 4 chairs were pulled out from under them and they maintained their positions. It was fun to watch and Chris came back with rosy cheeks and a big ol’ smile. Meanwhile, after Chris went up, an older lady sat next to me and asked where I was from. She couldn’t believe I wasn’t a foreigner. I wonder why? Now I’m perplexed…hmm…

For $20 the two of us went on a cruise under the Golden Gate bridge and by Alcatraz. Cold, but neat. Chris raced around the ship taking picture after picture. We probably have around 400 pictures from just one day.

We took another trolley back the way we came and walked up a steep hill-stopped by Walgreen’s to buy a couple gallons of water. Went back to our room for a bit, then went out again to find somewhere that was still open for Christmas dinner.

We waited in line at an under-staffed cafe, but the wait was worth it. My lemon butter chicken with mushrooms was excellent and Chris enjoyed his steak. We shared a calamari appetizer. Afterward. we stopped at Swiggy’s, a blues jazz club, but turned in early, with a long drive ahead of us.

We got up at 4 and quickly set out on our long drive back to Phoenix. It was still dark and took a long time for the sun to come up. Once it was light I stopped several places to take more pictures. We spent a little extra time at a beach with sea lions laying down nearby and took some closeups.

Drove drove drove drove drove drove drove…….then we drove some more only stopping for gas, food, and occasional picture breaks…

We got stuck in traffic outside LA and in half an hour found we had moved less than half a mile. It took 2 or more hours to get back up to highway speeds. How do people mentally survive having to do that everyday?! I would go crazy. Finally after our long day of driving, we made it home at 1AM which was 7 hours longer than we expected the drive to take. I didn’t have much opportunity for sleep or reflection because I had to work in the morning.



San Francisco – December 25th, 2004