San Francisco Trip

This weekend Doug and I went up and spent a night in San Francisco.  Rapunzel, the structural engineer that did all the math and logisitics behind Doug's fantabulous concept design on their giant sequoia tree at McDermont--and, yes, that is her real name--asked Doug if he'd like to do some judging at the Future Cities competition.  More on that in a minute.  So Friday morning we dropped the older two kids with auntie Amanda (they stayed with Grandma that night) and headed up the road.  Since we seem to take longcuts to everywhere, we drove up and around the bay so that we could come down into San Francisco across the Golden Gate bridge. 

It was raining of course, but it was cool to drive across, and it wasn't so foggy we couldn't see the ocean.  Plus, since we had Kylie in the car with us, technically we could count ourselves as a carpool and didn't have to pay the toll coming into town:)  The drive up around the upper bay was fun, because there just isn't a whole lot up there--should you ever have the time and inclination, I suggest giving it a try (if you like to wander as much as we do, anyway).  We drove through quite a bit of marsh land, and it was foggy while we were going through, so I remarked to Doug that it would make an excellent location for the Dead Marshes in the LOTR.

We found our hotel pretty easily considering it was a new city on a rainy night.  We had one brief detour due to what we thought was an unexpected one way street (after circling we realized we could've turned down it after all).  We stayed at the Hotel Abri, which was a decent little place.  It was just a block or two north of Market street, so we were right down town.  So we spent Friday evening just exploring that area.  We made a few stops, including the Ferrari store (how could we not, really?) and a Ritz Camera, where Doug once again tried to get me to buy a digital SLR that I would love but cannot afford:)  When we got back we were all tuckered out and Kylie enjoyed the big, soft king-sized bed:
The last time I really spent much time in cities, it was LA and NYC, which are both pretty flat, so it took a while to absorb just how hill-y SF is.  It was fun.
Ok, so Saturday morning we went to the Future Cities competition.  Apparently every year the national engineer's association (or some similar acronym) sponsors a competition for 7th and 8th graders where the design and model a city for the future.  They can have an engineer mentor help them.  It was really cool--I was very impressed with what some of them came up.  These guys were my favorite.  Their city may not have been the prettiest or most impressive model, but one of their city's features was a huge city greenhouse, and directly next door, a city juice plant--how cool is that?

After Doug was done judging, we headed off to explore again.  We drove down Lombard street, which is very impressive--switchbacks for your car, in case it gets tired of all those flat straightaways.  We drove up to the viewing area for Golden Gate Bridge.  We actually took a short trail along the sea cliffs so that we could walk under the bridge.  That's a little disconcerting, actually--standing underneath the bridge listening to all the noise from the cars whizzing by above your head.  

All along the cliffs there are these very cool old embattlements that are "hidden" in the hills facing the ocean.  As you can see, they're kind of rotting out.  I think we ought to get them fixed--I bet they'll come in handy again before too long!

The Golden Gate Bridge was the big thing for me--I find large bridges fascinating and impressive.  Forget computers and satellites;  it still amazes me that bridges stay up and planes fly!  The Brooklyn Bridge was one of my favorite thing about our trip to NY.  Because of weather and time complaints I didn't get to walk across that one either, but I'd like to walk across them both.
After some peripatetic exploration in that area, we got back in the car and did some exploration via automobile.  I like to just drive around randomly in cities I've never been to before, so I can see a slightly larger snapshot of the place.  San Francisco is a very attractive city:  between the beautiful, old buildings, the windy streets and great hills, its a photographer's dream.  It made me wish I had a better camera, a few more lenses and a week to just wander and photograph (well, and some better photography skills would be helpful, so long as I'm dreaming).  Gorgeous place.

We made one last stop at Ghirardelli Square.  We had some sundaes, and Kylie REALLY enjoyed her first little taste of real whipped cream.  The Square itself was pretty cool and the store/soda fountain was awesome.  I'd been to the one in Monterey, but this being the original it was much bigger and more chocolate-drenched (as if we need any more chocolate!)

Those are giant vats of chocolate behind me--how cool is that?!

We made it home very late Saturday night and picked up the kids yesterday, who both look much better than they did when we left, having received haircuts while we were gone.  Dylan slept in his shoes last night and has refused to take them off today--not sure what that's all about.  Keilana missed her sister--she's been holding her most of the morning:).