A day in the big city...

Well, this morning Dan is off to his conference and Livi is still sleeping in her room (ie. the bathroom...pack-n-plays were made for hotel bathrooms). And so she should after yesterday... lots of fresh air, a ride on the trolley, a view of the windiest (in the curvy sense) street in the world, many climbs up very steep streets and the search for the perfect restaurant that ended in a very late night.

Lydia, Livia and I enjoyed a good morning of walking around San Fran. If you are up for a workout for your calves, San Francisco is the place to go! The streets are crazily steep to walk, quite scary to drive, and even scarier to park on (as we found out later that night). But we will get to that later...

Our first destination was China town - apparently the biggest China town outside of China itself. Unfortunately, most of the stores didn't open till about 11 and we arrived at 9:30 :( We did however see lots of "very fresh" very dead chicken and duck parts... mmm... chicken feet...


After visiting a local coffee shop, we headed off to take in more of the sights - huge cathedrals, views of Alcatraz, little Italy, and the windiest street in the world. I was filled with sadness going into the cathedrals - one in particular. There was a little room off to the side of the entrance where peoples names have been engraved on little plaques on the wall. Hundreds of names. Not sure how much it would have cost them to have their name there. The sign on the wall says "please pray for the soul of Reverend so-in-so as well as for the souls of those engraved on this wall." How sad. How hopeless. I'm glad my soul doesn't depend on money or people praying for me after I pass...Jesus paid it all.

Well, we couldn't be in San Fran without jumping on the cable car, so we waited at Hyde street to catch the acclaimed ride.


As we got on, we asked the driver how much it cost. "Five dollars" he said, "but I'm the driver, just sit down and he'll come git your money" pointing to the other guy at the back of the trolley. So, down we sat and enjoyed a ride up and down the hilly streets of San Fran. We tried hanging off the sides (taking turns sitting with Livi of course) to get a good picture until Lydia spotted the Cable Car Museum. "Anyone want off?" said the driver. We jumped at the chance and before we knew it we were off the cable car, being wished a good day, unintentionally $5 richer.



On our way back to the hotel in search of somewhere to eat, we spotted Dan and Matt on break from their conference. Perfect timing. After charging them and pretending to pick-pocket, we re-acquainted ourselves and found a highly recommended burger joint to eat at. It was very tasty, but I am not at all used to pink in the middle of my burger.

The afternoon was a relaxing one - Livi napped for almost 3 hours and I read. When the boys came home, we headed out to see the Palace of Fine Art. Unfortunately it was under construction and surrounded by fences, but we got a good view of it across the pond.



From there we headed out to the lovely highly-reviewed italian restaurant planned for the night - but alas, it was a 1.5 hour wait...a little too long with hungry bellies and baby. We were directed towards a new "italian" restaurant a few blocks away by one of the waiting patrons. "Italian" would be a stretch. "Shi shi foo foo" on the other hand would not be such a stretch. We had to get the waitress to translate the menu, but even then it wasn't entirely clear. Then came the strong "mint-like-but-not" smell that almost burned our nostrils. We thought it might be the weird things on little divided plates that we had been served before we were to order. As we picked up the "things" to smell them, the waitress laughed at us and assured us that it wasn't them - but that someone had gone a little crazy with a cleaning solution. It was a good out, so we left.

Restaurant Take 3! All this time Livi is entertaining us by singing a very loud and repetitive"tinkle tinkle ittle star" and "rainbow rainbow something something" to the tune of twinkle twinkle. We drove back to little Italy, parked the car on the steepest hill we have ever parked on, and walked to a nice Italian restaurant with very Italian servers. I think Livi was past the window of opportunity for eating. She should have a good breakfast this morning!


And so, a day in San Francisco. What adventures will today bring...

PS - sorry for the length of this one!