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Where did I leave off last time?
One thing that I really wanted to do on this trip was visit Mission Dolores, which is the oldest building (the first building, really) in San Francisco. It was built in 1791. After getting us some breakfast from a bakery and bringing it up to the room (what a sweetie), Jorn humored me and went along. After Saturday, we were feeling pretty confident about using the bus system, so we figured out how to get there and took the bus and arrived at the Mission shortly after it opened for tours. Turns out it was only a few blocks from where we had been the night before for Mexican food--oh well. I paid the "donation" to view the mission (only a few dollars each) and we checked it out. I thought it was really cool. There's the original old mission building, which now is just a museum, and the new (since the 1880s, I think) cathedral, where they hold services, as well as the graveyard. Sunday mass was going on in the cathedral when we arrived, so we just saw the inside of the mission and the museum and then the graveyard, which was one of the prettiest graveyards I've seen. Then I got some stuff in the gift shop (postcards, a birthday present for Lauren, etc), and when we finally left I noticed that the mass was over, so I goaded Jorn into looking inside the cathedral with me. I didn't take long, just wanted to look around, so it was okay. I remember I was really annoyed that if you wanted to light a candle you had to buy one separately in the gift shop--most churches I know are on the honor system, but I guess that doesn't work with such a big tourist attraction. So I did not light a candle. I took some pictures outside and across the street, and then we caught the bus up to the Haight area.
I should say that Sunday was the day, weather-wise, that we'd thought Saturday would be: sunny and beautiful and warm. It would have been really nice to sit on the beach in that weather, but it was also perfect for walking around the Haight-Ashbury area in a t-shirt, which is what we ended up doing. By the time we got to Haight Street it was lunchtime, so we went to another Jantine-recommended restaurant, Asqew. This majority of the food at this place is grilled on skewers. It was awesome. We split a large plate of cilantro-lime chicken, which was served on a bed of garlic mashers, and we got garlic bread (also grilled but not on a stick) and had floats to drink (root beer for Jorn and berry for me). It was a totally awesome lunch. Yum.
Next stop was Amoeba Records, rumored to be the CD Promised Land. This is the part where I got to humor Jorn. This store was so incredibly huge. I can't even begin to imagine how many cds were there. I got overwhelmed after only a few minutes, so after taking Jorn's picture (even he looked a little overwhelmed, and you know how he is about cds) I told him to take his time and call me when he was done. Then I went shopping. I got a manicure from a little Asian woman (I chose purple polish), and then bought a bunch of stuff. There are excellent stores on Haight Street. I got The Bestest Hugest Sunglasses Evar, which make me look ridiculous like a bug but which I adore because they are so, so awesome. I also bought two pairs of earrings (I *never* buy jewelry) and a pair of purple glitter fishnets that I haven't yet had an opportunity to wear. I didn't get any clothes, but that was okay. When I got bored shopping, I walked back to Amoeba, sat down in the sunshine across the street, and read my book until Jorn finished shopping. It was very nice to sit in the sun and read.
When Jorn finally decided on and bought his cds, he came outside and we showed each other our purchases. Then he wanted to take a walk up Haight Street and see everything, and that was fun even though I'd already walked up that way. We decided we were hungry (it had been at least several hours since we'd last eaten!!) so we stopped at a cafe that served crepes. We got (surprise, surprise) a strawberry and nutella crepe and some lemonades to drink. The crepe was absolutely delicious. So very good. (I miss Mr. Crepe.) While we were there, I needed to use the bathroom, but another girl was in there. When she came out, I went in, and I found her wallet on the shelf under the mirror. When I left the bathroom I took it with me, intending to give it to the store manager, but when I came out of the bathroom the girl and the manager were both standing there, the girl looking frantic, and she starts asking me "Did you see...?" Before she could finish the sentence I handed her the wallet, and she just got the best look of relief on her face. It was pretty funny.
After the crepe we walked up to yet another little park and walked around there a bit. SF has plenty of nature for a city. Then we took the bus back to our hotel. We were still pretty tired from all the walking we'd been doing, so we decided to just hang out for a while. Later on that night we decided we were hungry again and went walking around the neighborhood, looking for someplace to get quick cheap food, and it took us a while but we finally found a decent little pizza place. Most of the restaurants around there were capital-R Restaurants, like for rich tourists, but we just wanted someplace greasy where we could get some quick food for pretty cheap. It was good pizza.
Monday morning we had an agenda. It was our last day in SF, so we had to check out of the hotel by 11am, pack in as much stuff as possible during the afternoon, and still get back to the hotel by around 6pm to pick up our bags and head for the airport. No problem. We got our stuff together (had some issues cramming all our new cds and books into our bags, which we continued dealing with later that day), checked out around 9am, and checked our main bags to be held at the hotel's front desk until we came back for them later. Then we walked up to a little place called the Sunflower Cafe that we had scouted out the day before to get breakfast, and then upa big hill to the Cable Car Museum, where we arrived about 15 minutes before they opened at 10am. Perfect timing! The Cable Car Museum was both free and really fun. I liked it a lot.
After the Cable Car Museum, we walked into Chinatown to find Jantine-recommended restaurant #3, her favorite Chinese place EVAR. On the way we passed a huge mural of some pokemon, and I had to take Jorn's picture. The Chinese place was indeed excellent. Then on the way to the bus stop, we passed City Lights Bookstore! I had to stop there. It was awesome. They had a whole poetry room!! We didn't have a lot of time because there was still more stuff we wanted to see, but it was okay because at least I got to see it and have my picture taken in front of it. I was so excited.
Then we caught the bus out to the Exploratorium and the Palace of Fine Arts. The Palace of Fine Arts was built to look like ancient Greek ruins or something, and it was really pretty, with a little pond and everything. We took a bunch of pictures there before heading to the Exploratorium. The Exploratorium is supposedly a really neat science museum, but we wouldn't know because they're not open on Mondays! So pissed off. We had gone all the way out there just to visit the Exploratorium, really, and now we had to revise our entire day plan. We were happy to have seen the Palace of Fine Arts, because we wouldn'tve gone out there just for that, but overall we were disappointed.
We caught the bus back over to the Fisherman's Wharf area, thinking that we would check out the Aquarium. As we walked through the Fisherman's Wharf area, though, we passed the Musee Mechanique, which Jantine had recommended as being really cool, and it was free, so we stopped there instead. Turns out it's a museum of old electronic games and midway games, machines that dated back to the 1880s that all still worked! So we got our palms read and had our fortunes told by Madame So&So, and put in a nickel to watch the can can girls dance. That was the thing about this place--it was a free museum, but all the machines still worked and each cost a nickel or a dime or a quarter! But it was so cool we didn't mind at all. They had old pinball machines there, too, and lots of other stuff--a huge warehouse full of these old games. We ended up spending maybe $3-5 each, which was totally fine. We had a great time there.
By this point it was midafternoon, so we didn't have a ton of time left before we had to go get our stuff and head for the airport. So we walked up to Pier 39, a big mall-like boardwalk area with overpriced stores, and just walked around. There was an excellent view of Alcatraz from there, and also they had a huge sea lion pen where you could watch them (except they were just sort of laying in the sun when we went by there). We also went in a hat store and Jorn tried on a robot hat and acted like a robot and I took his picture. We stopped in a little crepe place and got (another) strawberry and nutella crepe and ate it at a little table outside. Very yum. While we were there, the guy who worked there started having a seizure. He fell down on the ground and was twitching and everything (in spite of having known Pandora for over a year, I've never seen someone have a seizure). Several other people whipped out their cell phones to call 911 before I could, and we were just about done our food anyway, so we just left. But I felt really bad for the guy because he was just trying to do his job and instead he was getting hauled away to the hospital.
Anyway, around 5:00ish we started heading for the nearest cable car turnaround, so that we could catch a cable car back down to our hotel. We had to wait a while, but it was totally worth it because the cable car ride was so fun!! We'd ridden the cable car on Friday night but it had been dark and we had been too tired to really enjoy it, so this was like our first ride. We rode on the outside of the car and hung onto the poles, and I took a bunch of pictures, and it was awesome. I don't know why every city everywhere doesn't have cable cars.
Our trip to the airport was pretty uneventful, except that we first took the train the wrong way and that was a pain in the neck, with all the rush hour traffic. Annoyzor. But we got to the airport and found our gate in plenty of time. I threw up on the plane but that happens to me a lot and I promptly fell asleep afterwards. Jorn didn't get a lot of sleep because he had the window seat, and as soon as I and the woman next to me passed out he of course had to pee, and it was bad enough he couldn't sleep through it. Poor baby. We landed in cold, cold Boston (which actually wasn't that cold that morning except by comparison) around 7am and headed for home and sleep.
One thing that I really wanted to do on this trip was visit Mission Dolores, which is the oldest building (the first building, really) in San Francisco. It was built in 1791. After getting us some breakfast from a bakery and bringing it up to the room (what a sweetie), Jorn humored me and went along. After Saturday, we were feeling pretty confident about using the bus system, so we figured out how to get there and took the bus and arrived at the Mission shortly after it opened for tours. Turns out it was only a few blocks from where we had been the night before for Mexican food--oh well. I paid the "donation" to view the mission (only a few dollars each) and we checked it out. I thought it was really cool. There's the original old mission building, which now is just a museum, and the new (since the 1880s, I think) cathedral, where they hold services, as well as the graveyard. Sunday mass was going on in the cathedral when we arrived, so we just saw the inside of the mission and the museum and then the graveyard, which was one of the prettiest graveyards I've seen. Then I got some stuff in the gift shop (postcards, a birthday present for Lauren, etc), and when we finally left I noticed that the mass was over, so I goaded Jorn into looking inside the cathedral with me. I didn't take long, just wanted to look around, so it was okay. I remember I was really annoyed that if you wanted to light a candle you had to buy one separately in the gift shop--most churches I know are on the honor system, but I guess that doesn't work with such a big tourist attraction. So I did not light a candle. I took some pictures outside and across the street, and then we caught the bus up to the Haight area.
I should say that Sunday was the day, weather-wise, that we'd thought Saturday would be: sunny and beautiful and warm. It would have been really nice to sit on the beach in that weather, but it was also perfect for walking around the Haight-Ashbury area in a t-shirt, which is what we ended up doing. By the time we got to Haight Street it was lunchtime, so we went to another Jantine-recommended restaurant, Asqew. This majority of the food at this place is grilled on skewers. It was awesome. We split a large plate of cilantro-lime chicken, which was served on a bed of garlic mashers, and we got garlic bread (also grilled but not on a stick) and had floats to drink (root beer for Jorn and berry for me). It was a totally awesome lunch. Yum.
Next stop was Amoeba Records, rumored to be the CD Promised Land. This is the part where I got to humor Jorn. This store was so incredibly huge. I can't even begin to imagine how many cds were there. I got overwhelmed after only a few minutes, so after taking Jorn's picture (even he looked a little overwhelmed, and you know how he is about cds) I told him to take his time and call me when he was done. Then I went shopping. I got a manicure from a little Asian woman (I chose purple polish), and then bought a bunch of stuff. There are excellent stores on Haight Street. I got The Bestest Hugest Sunglasses Evar, which make me look ridiculous like a bug but which I adore because they are so, so awesome. I also bought two pairs of earrings (I *never* buy jewelry) and a pair of purple glitter fishnets that I haven't yet had an opportunity to wear. I didn't get any clothes, but that was okay. When I got bored shopping, I walked back to Amoeba, sat down in the sunshine across the street, and read my book until Jorn finished shopping. It was very nice to sit in the sun and read.
When Jorn finally decided on and bought his cds, he came outside and we showed each other our purchases. Then he wanted to take a walk up Haight Street and see everything, and that was fun even though I'd already walked up that way. We decided we were hungry (it had been at least several hours since we'd last eaten!!) so we stopped at a cafe that served crepes. We got (surprise, surprise) a strawberry and nutella crepe and some lemonades to drink. The crepe was absolutely delicious. So very good. (I miss Mr. Crepe.) While we were there, I needed to use the bathroom, but another girl was in there. When she came out, I went in, and I found her wallet on the shelf under the mirror. When I left the bathroom I took it with me, intending to give it to the store manager, but when I came out of the bathroom the girl and the manager were both standing there, the girl looking frantic, and she starts asking me "Did you see...?" Before she could finish the sentence I handed her the wallet, and she just got the best look of relief on her face. It was pretty funny.
After the crepe we walked up to yet another little park and walked around there a bit. SF has plenty of nature for a city. Then we took the bus back to our hotel. We were still pretty tired from all the walking we'd been doing, so we decided to just hang out for a while. Later on that night we decided we were hungry again and went walking around the neighborhood, looking for someplace to get quick cheap food, and it took us a while but we finally found a decent little pizza place. Most of the restaurants around there were capital-R Restaurants, like for rich tourists, but we just wanted someplace greasy where we could get some quick food for pretty cheap. It was good pizza.
Monday morning we had an agenda. It was our last day in SF, so we had to check out of the hotel by 11am, pack in as much stuff as possible during the afternoon, and still get back to the hotel by around 6pm to pick up our bags and head for the airport. No problem. We got our stuff together (had some issues cramming all our new cds and books into our bags, which we continued dealing with later that day), checked out around 9am, and checked our main bags to be held at the hotel's front desk until we came back for them later. Then we walked up to a little place called the Sunflower Cafe that we had scouted out the day before to get breakfast, and then up
After the Cable Car Museum, we walked into Chinatown to find Jantine-recommended restaurant #3, her favorite Chinese place EVAR. On the way we passed a huge mural of some pokemon, and I had to take Jorn's picture. The Chinese place was indeed excellent. Then on the way to the bus stop, we passed City Lights Bookstore! I had to stop there. It was awesome. They had a whole poetry room!! We didn't have a lot of time because there was still more stuff we wanted to see, but it was okay because at least I got to see it and have my picture taken in front of it. I was so excited.
Then we caught the bus out to the Exploratorium and the Palace of Fine Arts. The Palace of Fine Arts was built to look like ancient Greek ruins or something, and it was really pretty, with a little pond and everything. We took a bunch of pictures there before heading to the Exploratorium. The Exploratorium is supposedly a really neat science museum, but we wouldn't know because they're not open on Mondays! So pissed off. We had gone all the way out there just to visit the Exploratorium, really, and now we had to revise our entire day plan. We were happy to have seen the Palace of Fine Arts, because we wouldn'tve gone out there just for that, but overall we were disappointed.
We caught the bus back over to the Fisherman's Wharf area, thinking that we would check out the Aquarium. As we walked through the Fisherman's Wharf area, though, we passed the Musee Mechanique, which Jantine had recommended as being really cool, and it was free, so we stopped there instead. Turns out it's a museum of old electronic games and midway games, machines that dated back to the 1880s that all still worked! So we got our palms read and had our fortunes told by Madame So&So, and put in a nickel to watch the can can girls dance. That was the thing about this place--it was a free museum, but all the machines still worked and each cost a nickel or a dime or a quarter! But it was so cool we didn't mind at all. They had old pinball machines there, too, and lots of other stuff--a huge warehouse full of these old games. We ended up spending maybe $3-5 each, which was totally fine. We had a great time there.
By this point it was midafternoon, so we didn't have a ton of time left before we had to go get our stuff and head for the airport. So we walked up to Pier 39, a big mall-like boardwalk area with overpriced stores, and just walked around. There was an excellent view of Alcatraz from there, and also they had a huge sea lion pen where you could watch them (except they were just sort of laying in the sun when we went by there). We also went in a hat store and Jorn tried on a robot hat and acted like a robot and I took his picture. We stopped in a little crepe place and got (another) strawberry and nutella crepe and ate it at a little table outside. Very yum. While we were there, the guy who worked there started having a seizure. He fell down on the ground and was twitching and everything (in spite of having known Pandora for over a year, I've never seen someone have a seizure). Several other people whipped out their cell phones to call 911 before I could, and we were just about done our food anyway, so we just left. But I felt really bad for the guy because he was just trying to do his job and instead he was getting hauled away to the hospital.
Anyway, around 5:00ish we started heading for the nearest cable car turnaround, so that we could catch a cable car back down to our hotel. We had to wait a while, but it was totally worth it because the cable car ride was so fun!! We'd ridden the cable car on Friday night but it had been dark and we had been too tired to really enjoy it, so this was like our first ride. We rode on the outside of the car and hung onto the poles, and I took a bunch of pictures, and it was awesome. I don't know why every city everywhere doesn't have cable cars.
Our trip to the airport was pretty uneventful, except that we first took the train the wrong way and that was a pain in the neck, with all the rush hour traffic. Annoyzor. But we got to the airport and found our gate in plenty of time. I threw up on the plane but that happens to me a lot and I promptly fell asleep afterwards. Jorn didn't get a lot of sleep because he had the window seat, and as soon as I and the woman next to me passed out he of course had to pee, and it was bad enough he couldn't sleep through it. Poor baby. We landed in cold, cold Boston (which actually wasn't that cold that morning except by comparison) around 7am and headed for home and sleep.
