A Vacation without a Monkey

Daddy and I recently took a vacation to San Francisco, California. This was the first real vacation we have taken for just the two of us since before you were born!

Our family is lucky enough to have a Grampa (Mommy's dad) and Grammaw (Daddy's mom) who supported us financially and by taking care of you while we were gone.

Here is a little bit about what we did while we were in San Francisco. We had such a good time, and we really packed a lot into the few days we were there.

On Friday, we walked around China Town. There are paper lanterns hanging across the street and tons of shops to buy all kinds of knick-knacks. I think it would have been cool to eat somewhere in that area, but daddy wasn't so interested in that. We did walk into one of the grocery markets to see how different it was from the groceries we're used to.

I took a quick hop over to a yarn shop that day to get a souvenir for myself. I have a scarf project picked out for that yarn, so once I make it, I'll have a lovely reminder of this trip. :)

We met my friend Joe for dinner that night. He and I have worked together on and off for a dozen years or so. It was awesome to see him and chat for a while. He shared some insights about San Francisco with us.

On Saturday, we went over to Oakland for the Dragon Boat Festival. It wasn't huge, but there were food trucks, so I got some boba tea. :) In addition to boat races, they had some cultural performances like a Chinese acrobat, ribbon dancers, and some students from Cal who did the traditional lion dance with drumming by some elementary school kids.

The festival site was next to a large community garden that also had a special area for bonsai. I thought they were always (or at least usually) juniper trees, but they had so many different kinds of bonsai!

Then we went over to the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. We were able to do one of the planetarium shows, saw one of the penguin feedings, and spent a good while in the aquarium, but would have enjoyed more time to check out more exhibits. I liked the rainbow arrangement of mineral specimens. It's a shame that the rain forest area was closed for maintenance.

On our way out, we happened upon a peace and love fest (I can't remember what it was actually called) in the park. So, we walked around there for just a few minutes. We saw a lot of tie-dye and smelled some botanicals. -- Ask us when you're older what I mean by that ;)

We went to one of the piers for Oktoberfest that night. I thought they might have more vendors there, but the food was tasty and the beer was flowing along with the live German music and dancing. (Not that we were dancing...)

The highlight was Muir Woods. We went Sunday morning and hiked for about 3.5 hours. We really enjoyed being in the trees and feeling so far from the rest of the world. Daddy said he'd like to go back and do longer trails next time. I took a few pictures, but none of them quite capture the feeling of being in the woods among the enormous trees.

Later that day we walked across Golden Gate Bridge and then went down to Fort Point. The fort is under one end of the bridge. It was built to help defend the area around the city.

On Monday we did a tour of Alcatraz. Alcatraz island was also used to help defend the area, but then it later became a prison. Now it is a sort of museum that people can visit to learn about its history. When we went on the tour, we had headphones so we could listen to people tell us all about the prison and the people who were there.  I don't think the visit would have been as good without the audio tour. We found out that the prisoners did not wear stereotypical black and white uniforms, but later when we visited gift shops, we saw a lot of stuff that had the black and white stripes.

After Alcatraz, we spent some time around Fisherman's Wharf where we saw sea lions. There are also a lot of restaurants and shops around there. You had asked us to bring you back some toys, but I threatened that I would only bring you socks. You were NOT happy with that idea. We picked up several things for you on our trip, but I decided to buy you some socks, too. I picked out Mario brothers socks for you, and I'm pretty sure you actually like them.

We did a fairly quick walk through the Ferry Building and had a bit of down time/packing time back at the hotel before going to a very nice dinner at Morton's Steakhouse.

On Tuesday morning, we peeled ourselves out of bed and headed back to the airport. Unfortunately, we ended up with a 2.5 hour delay due to some computer issues with the plane we were supposed to fly on. But once we were on the second plane, it was an uneventful flight home. 

Grandpa picked you up from day care one last time since we were later than we had planned to be. It sounds like you had a great time with Grandpa and with Grammaw while we were on our trip, but we were so happy to make it back home and to see you.