End of Days (in San Fran)

Clearly I cannot keep these blog entries short. But just think, they're so long, it's almost like you were actually there with us!
And now, on to THE LAST DAY.

We woke up, (as we often do) and we were a tad hungover, (as we often are) and I do believe I went swimmming, and Jacquie watched awful chick flicks in bed. Don't worry, I won't go into detail. We packed, showered, and Jacquie stuffed her hoodies, rain jackets, books, make-up and a variety of other things into my daypack for me to lug around all day, and we were off!

I had heard about a restaurant called 'HOME' in the Castro district - it had make-your-own bloody mary's - and for some reason this really excited me. Jacquie was all like, 'If I'm paying good money, I want to be servced damn it' but I'm a sucker for marketing ploys, and the thought of a waitress bringing me a shot of vodka, and then I get to go up to the bar and pour my OWN tomato juice was just too thrilling to miss. (cue Jacquie rolling her eyes)

So we jump on a street car going in the opposite direction of the ferry building, and 10 blocks later boom - there's the restaurant! Seriously, our hotel is either in the THE most convenient place, or... no, there is no 'either' - it is THE most convenient hotel. Ever.

So we wander up to the restaurant, and Jacquie reads the menu - and I'm all like, 'we don't have to go if it doesn't look good' and meanwhile as Jacquie is reading there are 59 dudes in tight jeans with bulging biceps who are undressing me with their eyes. (Flattering sure, but quite uncomfortable)

And then jacquie notices the bar menu - ALL YOU CAN DRINK Mimosas - $8.

Needless to say, we decided this would be our restaurant of choice (for the rest of our lives) Here's the menu:

OH NO!! I wrote a ton of other stuff, and it all didn't save! Blarg. well, I'll have to write it again, just not right now. damn.

San Fran DAY II (that's two... not eleven)

Howdy.

Wow, you're back? Day One read like War & Peace... I'll try to keep day two shorter, but it was a full vacation considering it was only a couple of days!

So... we woke up, sore as hell, and so I went for a fantastic swim to wake up, while Jax lazed in bed and I think watched some Sandra Bullock movie. (Jax reminds me upon reading that it was not Sandra Bullock, but some horrible made in Canada chick flick on the women's network featuring McDreamy. Not to get off track, but listen to this... so this average looking chick meets McDreamy (he works at a bagel shop) and she's a lawyer, but not happy in her work. He asks her to go away for the weekend with him and pretend to be his girlfriend. His best friend is getting married and he can't bear to be a the wedding without a 'date' and being McDreamy, of course he can't find a hot girl to really date, so he has to beg this average chick. Follow me so far? So the girl decides to slum it, and pretend to date the bagel guy. So they take this idyllic ferry ride out to some beautiful island, and all his friends are perfect and filthy rich, and they go kayaking and play croquet and McDreamy basically just sits there and listens to this girl drone on and on.. he's cute AND a GREAT listener. So dreamy... anyways, she finds out that McDreamy is actually filthy rich himself, he used to work on Wall Street but he decided to get back to nature and he OWNS the bagel shop!! He's a great listener, he's dreamy, AND he's rich!!


He's so dreamy.

They start to fall in love (of course) and they do it after the wedding -but, and here's the even worse, ridiculously contrived part of the script, it turns out that this girl's mother died when she was a kid. (this we learned during one of her rambling at the mouth scenes where McDreamy sat nicely and listened) Before her mother died she told her that the 7th man she falls in love with will be her soulmate. Here's the kicker, McDreamy is only #6! What to do?! A rich, successful, soulful, hot guy is in love with her, but she's carrying around an old piece of paper that her dead mom wrote that clearly states he is NOT the guy for her!!

So of course she leaves him. And then some smarmy realtor says he loves her, and so of course she should be with him she figures. Poor McDreamy! Gawd.

But don't worry, in the end... wait for it... everything turns out alright! She quits her job, joins McDreamy in the bagel shop, and they all live happily ever after. Whew! Close one!

Anyways, back to the trip... and oh! In all my Chick Flick ranting I almost forgot - the Inter Continental provided a basket of goggles for swimmers! So nice. The gym was big, and had a ton of cardio equipment, but after our triathlon on Day One, we figured we didn't need any fake cardio. Today we were scheduled to take a boat cruise and maybe hit a museum, take it a bit easy... and as Jacquie continued to remind me, go SHOPPING!!
yay.


Jax's dream day.


Jim's dream day.

We left the hotel and walked to the centre of town, still a huge line-up at the cable car, so we hopped on the street car going towards the ferry terminal, and finally used our San Fran day pass booklet I was so excited to get from Air Miles. (500 Air Miles per book - Thanks Mom for shopping on the 1st of every month at Safeway so we could get enough Air Miles for free San Fran transport!)



Jax on a streetcar

The street car was easy to use, and as soon as we got off we ended up in market at the ferry terminal. We didn't spend much time there, because our street car to the Fisherman's Wharf showed up. From what we saw though, the market looked like we could've spent a lot of time there.


little hippy gear

There's something about Palm Trees that says 'Vacation!'

And soon we were back at Fisherman's Wharf, and kicking ourselves at how easy it would've been to take the street cars yesterday and save ourselves the extra 2 hour walk on the way home!!

We used our San Fran city passes to get tickets on the cruise of the Bay, which was just an hour out on the water to go under the Golden Gate Bridge, zoom around Alcatraz, and snap some pictures of the skyline. While waiting for the boat we ate breakfast at some overpriced faux surfer's restaurant. Breakfast was notable because I ordered bacon and gave it to jacquie, but then almost threw up cause bacon grease was all over my eggs. blech. It's been a long time since I ate pig juice. We also got to see some of the Tampa Bay vs Pittsburgh round one of the playoffs game - Tampa won 8-2. (for those who are interested) By the way, since we're recording this for prosperity, Vancouver was playing Chicago and were up 3-0 in the series, but by the time we returned from our trip it was 3-3 and the city was in a panic!! But back to San Fran...


View of Telegraph Hill from our boat.


Golden Gate Bridge from the boat

The boat ride was nice, mostly because we didn't have to walk or ride bikes this time! We could just kick back and watch the beautiful scenery go by. They also played one of those cheesy touristy tapes, that spouts useless facts like, 'the amount of wiring that went into the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge - if laid end to end - can circle the Earth 3 times.' and some interesting facts like, 'alcatraz island was named after the Spanish word for Pelicans' and 'only 5 inmates ever escaped from Alcatraz, but they were never found, and presume drowned' - see, I did learn some stuff!


coolio


The notorious Alcatraz penitentiary.

We just drove around the island - we didn't get to stop and see the cells or anything. I'd done that on my last trip to San Fran, and Jacquie was worried that because she sometimes sees ghosts (and grey-haired images of her future husband-to-be) that she would pick up bad spiritual vibes and bring ghosts back with her (or something like that) Anyways, the island gave her the heebie-jeebies and so we didn't opt for the actual tour, plus we heard from a very disappointed little girl on our boat that the Alcatraz boats were sold out for the entire weekend and she was stuck on this stupid boat that didn't do anything. She was quite chatty, until her little sister told on her for speaking to strangers and her mom yanked her away.

Then, as I snapped 147 shots of seagulls behind the boat, jacquie went downstairs to order a beer, because she was so excited about American liquor laws. Plus she LOVES to come back from places she goes alone to tell me that so-and-so hit on her. In this instance, she came back with a Corona and informed me the bartender promised her a free beer if she came back. He also said she looked 25.
But, she whispered, he's Mexican-American, or latino of some kind. (according to Jax only black men and foreign men try to pick her up - me being a boring white dude is interesting to her then, apparently?) I don't know... anyways, I spent the rest of the boat cruise trying to get her to go downstairs to get the free beer, but she was flustered, and didn't go. (and if she DID go, I'd have been jealous, so she did well to ignore me!)


The way to my wife's heart: booze and compliments about her young skin.


there it is!! THE perfect seagull/alcatraz shot!

The boat ride over, we then headed to the aquarium - which was thrilling for me, but not so much for Jax! I didn't realize she was scared of the water being OVER us. There was a large tunnel that you walk through, and the fish and sharks swim over and around you. I thought it was beautiful! So cool to see a ray swim over you!


Sardines? I dunno...but wow eh? Don't they look amazing?!


Jim and a shark.


Look at those nervous fingers!!


Jim and a ray.

Jax preferred the frogs and hedgehogs. But hey, the tickets were part of the City Pass, so we could go for a quick 30-minute run through the place, and not feel like we were obligated to stay longer than we felt like! Plus we bought really dorky $30 pictures of ourselves standing in front of a green screen of sharks/jellyfish and the Golden Gate Bridge. Funnily enough, on our very first date together we went to the Vancouver Aquarium, and they take pictures of everyone entering in front of a green screen. Anyways, we take such dorky pictures usually, but this one was BRILLIANT! Alas, it was our first date, and neither of us wanted to shell out $30 for some cheesy touristy aquarium picture, so we didn't buy it. We still regret it, and the picture has taken on near mythical proportions in our minds... it is THE single-most beautiful picture of the both of us EVER taken. And we don't have it.

Anyways, after the aquarium we, what'd we do... OH! We walked up near Little Italy again, and then headed for Lombard Hill - the crookedest (most crooked?) street in the world! walking was very slow going today as the hills seemed WAY steeper now that our legs were tired. But we did mange to struggle thru, walk the hill, and then what did we find at the top of the hill?! Our very first cable car, with room to spare!!


yet more hills...



Lombard Street. Crooked eh?

So we hopped onto the cable car and boy, what an experience!! It's like a roller coaster, up and down the steepest hills imaginable, everyone hanging on for dear life, the conductors berating the tourists for getting in the way, not knowing what to do... it was tiring actually. Not as tiring as actually climbing the hills on your own, but it definitely isn't relaxing. They're working museums really, not built for comfort, no padding or anything... they're just like they were 100 years ago.

 View of Alcatraz from the back of the cable car.


cable car going the other way

God... I'm getting tired even WRITING this blog. We were busy,eh? Because after riding the cable car a good 30 minutes, we ended up back downtown. Did we go back to the hotel for lunch? nope. We jumped in a cab (after I had THE best slice of pizza in the world. really. it was that good) and headed for haight/ashbury, site of the 60's flower power, hippy dippy movement of the 60's. I'm sure Jacquie's dad hung out here at the time.

But now? Meh... now it's gentrified, and feels like a high class Commercial Drive. It's WAY more picturesque than Commercial or Main, and there are lots of pot smoking hipster hippy dudes and dudettes, but the stores are pricey, the clothes are hi-end, and open air tour buses are lined up by the dozen. It's cool to see, and while the murals and graffiti and piercing/tattoo shops etc were interesting, it didn't seem really authentic. Kinda like Hollywood Blvd for me. It was once something real, and now it's a reasonable facsimile created for tourists. We wandered, shopped for various items of clothing (okay, truth be told I was a little sulky and I moped on various man benches in little boutiques while jacquie shopped - but really, I was the only guy in MANY shops) And then we went for some WICKED Thai food. really awesome. But by 5pm or so we were ready to call it a day - and besides, jacquie promised to take me for dinner tonight, and we had to go back, go for a swim (I wanted to anyways!! Can't let a perfectly good pool go to waste!) and then head out for dinner. woohoo!








So we bussed back to the hotel, amazed at how easy it is to find our way around the city. Buses, streetcars, cable cars, they all seemed to travel in fairly straight lines and all of them shot us back in the general direction of our hotel. We lucked out on the hotel location big time - considering it was my first HotWire purchase as well! ($150 a night for 4.5 stars - seems like a decent deal, eh?)

I swam, Jacquie I think found another Sandra Bullock chick flick, and then it was time to go out! Oh wait, you know what, I missed something - we shopped!! How could I forget?? I was DYING to stop walking, but I followed jacquie into Old Navy to buy a shirt, and then to Burlington Coat Factory for underwear and socks, and I'm pretty sure there was some big shoe warehouse, and a make-up store... I can't believe I blocked all this out! Huh. And this was all before we returned to the hotel before dinner. I'm tired just thinking about it.


yes baby, those are SUPER cute. Can we go now?

Soooo... after our lovely shop and laze at the hotel, we walked back to downtown, and jumped on a cable car because we were old hands by this time, and went all the way down to the Fisherman's Wharf again. We weren't sure if we should go for seafood there or to Little Italy... but luckily we decided against the tourist traps and instead headed to Little Italy, for... wait for it.... quite possibly THE best Italian food I've ever had.

now... it might have been the company, the magical surroundings, the weekend in San Fran, or the fact we'd bike/hiked/swam/walked 3000 kilometres over the last two days, but when we finally decided on a restaurant.. everything was perfect!! we chose Volare, a Sicilian restaurant... wait, I'll see if I can find a picture online.. found one!


Found a review online, and so this blog isn't boring with just my musings, here is some random guy waxing poetic about his meal at Volare:

There was a spinache gnocci dish with gorgonzola sauce, and a regular gnocchi dish with basil pesto sauce.  At my suggestion, my wife asked them to give us the spinache gnocchi with basil pesto sauce (combining the best aspect of both dishes), and they had no issue with that.  OMG, it was THE BEST gnocchi ever, hands down.  Just ridiculously good. And the sauce was not all cream to cut the cost. It was true olive oil based pesto, loaded with pesto ingredients. They didn't cut a single corner. WOW.

Here's another one, more succinct, but possibly even more powerful:

Great authentic Italian/Sicilian pizza! Loved the place...and I was born and raised in Sicily, so I would know.. A+++++ 

See?!! It really was a fantastic place. We ate so slowly and savoured everything we ended up shutting the place down. The wait staff was all changed, the chairs up, and still we sat and raved to each other about the delicious foods! We ate: (and excuse my spelling)
Fresh bruschetta
Crunchy bread
Amazing olives
crisp, refreshing, salads
Homemade spinach ravioli in gorgonzola creme sauce
and the biggest, bestest bowl of cioppino that we'd ever seen (a big bowl of seafood soup with everything in it - Jacquie's favourite kind of meal)


lobster, crab, mussels, squid... a big mess o seafood - Cioppino
I don't even remember if I ordered dessert. I think I did... did I? Maybe a piece of chocolate cake or something? I really don't know. I think maybe I was in insulin shock at my blood sugar was out of whack because it was SO rich and SO good. I ate with my eyes closed most of the time.
Oh, and we had a FANTASTIC bottle of wine, eau deauffes or something weird like that. I tried to peel the label off discreetly, but it wouldn't budge.. It was Californian anyway, and the year was 1999, and for $30, it was a PERFECT compliment to our meal. (well, it was perfect until my pasta came, but then it didn't really match, but that was okay, I was too busy eating to bother to drink)
Damn, and this was supposed to be somewhat of a wine blog. Here we are, coming across our first bottle of wine, and we don't even remember the name! arrgh. ah well.

And so that was pretty much it for the night. It was close to 11pm, it was raining a little, so we hopped into a cab and sat in the rain and listened to our driver ramble on in Russian or some Central Asian language into his earpiece and ignored us, and we were back in our beds before midnight, still raving about the food (in fact, we're STILL raving about the food, a week later!)

Anyways - that was Day Two! And if you're really interested, you can read all about DAY III in the next installment of the thrilling, exciting, mind-broadening, Jim and Jax do San Francisco!

Until then... I bid you goodnight. (it's 12:22 on a Friday night, and Jax has been drooling into her pillow for at least 2 hours, night owl that she is!) I'm going to show her how to log onto this sucker tomorrow - maybe she'll do the next update!)

Jim & Jax... Back from San Fran!

Hello to all our fans and regular readers!

And a big, West End welcome to our newest follower, Jen!

Loki & Fred say 'howdy Jen!' 

Anyways, I know you're all dying to know about our big trip to San Fran - so here goes... it was, in a word: FANTASTIC! Jax loved it - and since I hadn't been in 10 years it was like I was rediscovering it myself after all these years. (god, that makes me sound old, eh?)
I didn't tell Jax where we were going, and she was frantic with worry/excitement the day of the trip. I picked her up at 3pm at the Listel, and she begged to know where we were going. I got her a birthday card, handed it to her, and inside I wrote... I WONDER WHERE WE'RE GOING?? I also put our passports inside, so at least she had an inkling we were going to the states.

She kinda figured that we were going somewhere fun. Her co-workers tried to convince her I might be taking her to Tofino - but we went to Tofino 2 months ago, and although the road trip was kinda fun, Tofino itself was cold, rainy and pretty damn far for a weekend (especially when the driver is a wimp and can't make it past Port Alberni)


Driving to Tofino - loads of fun!

So where was I? Oh yeah, so we got to the airport, and headed to the United Airlines booth - we had to fill in a US Customs form saying where we going, so I made Jacquie close her eyes and voila! I produced the Lonely Planet San Francisco Guide along with the air tickets, and surprised her right there.


Cute pic of Jax... where are we going???

San Fran baby!!


And then... well, we got on the plane. Actually we had a couple of beers at the lounge, the flight left at 7pm and we had a couple of hours to kill. Jax was very excited because she thought maybe we were going to Vegas and was wondering how she'd act surprised/excited about that, because she didn't think Vegas was really 'us' - and I agreed.. thus I didn't buy us tickets to Vegas! (Vegas is fun with a group of people - going down for a wedding or something like that... but even then, it's not really my town- everything done to excess, 24 hours a day. I dunno, it's fun... and suddenly it's not and I have to get the hell out of there) But I digress....

We arrived in San Fran at about 9:30, hopped on the BART (we think that stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit) tickets were $8.10 one way, a little pricey, but it whisked us right downtown, and from there were carted our bags about 4 blocks to our hotel, the Inter-Continental! (see previous blog entry for pictures)
It was a beautiful lobby, and they tried to up sell us to a king bed suite, but we decided against the extra $140 and went up to 1601, our room with two double beds. We're used to sleeping in double beds, with a couple of large fur babies... so that wasn't a huge deal for us!


It didn't have a bath though, a huge concern for Jacquie, and she was thinking an upgrade might be in order. However we decided to go out for a dirty martini and a shot of Jameson's at an Irish pub we saw on the corner, and by the time we crashed out in our (very comfy!!) little double bed, we forgot all about it. *Note to Jax - you don't like dirty martinis.

So the next morning we woke up, went for a great swim in our hotel pool, and by 9am we were showered and dressed and ready to hit the road. Jax had a weird dream involving the old catering manager at the Listel.. and that's all I'm going to say about that....

It wasn't super warm out, maybe 15 degrees, but we've been used to 8 degrees this spring (?!) in Vancouver lately (coldest April on record people!) so it felt almost balmy for us. We headed to the downtown core, not really knowing where anything was, and we passed a Bloomingdales, a Burlington Coat Factory, Forever 21, Sephora, Old Navy etc etc. How do I remember these names? Jax repeated them to me MANY MANY times over the course of the weekend. ;-)

Today, according the coupons I made for Jax, today was the day we were to rent motorized bicycles! This was super exciting for me, but surprisingly Jax was quite concerned and worried, and kept saying things like 'maybe tomorrow we'll go biking' and 'I think I can see everything from just walking... we don't need to spend money on the bikes' - I'm a smart man, I know when my wife doesn't want to do something. I can take a hint! However, I know the distances in San Fran are deceptively long due to the hills, and I really wanted us to cross the Golden Gate Bridge by bike! (I don't know why this is so thrilling... we've neither one of us crossed the Lion's Gate Bridge by bike, despite having lived here most of our lives)

So I just went along with Jax's worrying/fretting about the bikes, and figured we'd just somehow 'find' ourselves at the bike store in the early afternoon, and just see how she felt when she got a look at the bikes. Luckily I have the map, and Jax really isn't interested in navigating when we're somewhere new, so I can steer us in the direction I want and she doesn't know it! (or if she does know, she let's me think I'm tricking her. Either way, fun!)

So we walked over to the cable car turnaround, and it was freakin' PACKED. I'd say 100 people, maybe more, lined up to get on a cable car that took maybe 30.


So rather than wait, we decided to walk to the next station, and then the next one, and the next. Ah the hell with cable cars! These hills aren't so bad!!




Hard to tell maybe in the pics, but these are Craaaazy hills!! And they're everywhere. You climb one, then there's another, and another, and it's not like you can go east-west or south-north and skip the hills, there are loops and valleys and peaks and hills everywhere, in every direction. Sometimes you find yourself in a little gully and the hills go up on all four sides. It can get daunting! But it wasn't daunting that first day... that first day we were dressed in our gym/yoga gear and we were FLYING up and down those suckers.

We just kinda headed in the direction of Fisherman's Wharf, ended up in Chinatown, which was like a huge Vancouver Chinatown... but not overly thrilling to people from Vancouver. Maybe if we were from Nebraska the bloody chicken heads or buckets of spices and fishes and mysterious herbs would be exciting, but for us... meh - seen it.

So we walked until we saw a sign for Telegraph Hill, and we both wanted to climb it because we heard the steps were the craziest steepest steps in the world, and that's just the kind of people we are (and luckily we found each other, because really, who else seeks out the steepest steps in the world to climb for fun??)

Telegraph Hill and the COIT Tower were BEAUTIFUL!!
 

The hill itself was covered with a thick, lush green carpet of trees, bushes, flowers... gorgeous. I really wanted to see the parrots (I saw a movie, The Parrots of Telegraph Hill about a wild parrot colony that lives there) but alas, no parrots to be found on this day.

The steps WERE crazy steep, but after having lived and ran the hills of White Rock they weren't impossible to climb. Still, they were long, steep and truth be told, lots of fun to climb. (I know, we're almost sadistic)





There were great little gardens and houses along the 'trail' of steps, leading up the hill. Talk about paradise. These would be SO great to live in, especially if you were a cat. No cars, lots of plump colourful birds, occasional tourists coming by to pet you, warm California weather.... that's the life I tell ya!





So we climbed up the hill, then down Filbert Steps, which were even longer and steeper and crazier than the hill we climbed on the other side. We were quite cocky jogging up the other side, but on the Filbert side we realized that THESE were the steps the guide book warned about! We saw other tourists coming up this way, but not many. Most took tour buses up to a parking lot at the base of COIT Tower. Wimps. We didn't bother paying the $5 bucks to go up the tower, we had a great view of the Bay and Bridge from the parking lot.



At the base of the hill and a little walk aways, we came to Fisherman's Wharf. PACKED with tourists eating chowder in sourdough bread bowls, seagulls galore, a Disney-land type wharf of silly overpriced stores and restaurants, but all in all, a fun festive place. Still, it was quite contrived, not at all like the 'real' San Fran, and while this was the place to catch the boats to Alcatraz etc, it really wasn't somewhere we wanted to hang out a long time at. EXCEPT we got to see SEA LIONS here!! WOOHOOO!!

Very exciting.


Jax thrilled to see the Sea Lions! arf arf arf!




Jim, and large marine mammals in the background!

It was now about noon, so we stopped for a pint and a glass of wine at a weird little bar that looked like something out some 50's mafia movie, all red leather seats and dark corners. And then... why... look where we are!! We're at the electric bike rental store!! What a crazy coincidence. So we decided to go in despite jax's trepidation (and to be fair, she doesn't have a driving license so the thought of driving something/anything on the road was scary for her) but these bikes just looked SO FUN! so fun.




















Not surprisingly, once Jacquie got to sit on the bike and see that there was a key that you could turn on and off the electric part, she was fine. It's a really cool little system. Basically it's a bike with a battery. it's called 'pedal assist' which really means if you drop below a certain speed, the electricity kicks in and turns your back wheel for you. So the slower you go, the more electricity is used keeping you at a steady speed. When you're on flat land, you can't really feel the assistance. But as SOON as you hit a hill... wow!! It's awesome!

So we hop on our bikes and head out onto the street, and soon we're in the park, with no cars, just bikes, and we're scooting along, chatting and pointing out the seals in the bay, the cool architecture, and we're barely pedaling, and passing EVERYONE! It was awesome.

And when we came to the hills, everyone else (there were bikers everywhere, tons of tourists renting bikes to cross the Golden Gate Bridge) had to get off their bikes and push them, struggling and sweating and getting snippy and cross with one another. Families bitching, kids whining... and we passed 'em all on our dinky little electric bikes!!! and another cool part was you couldn't even really see the batteries, so it just looked like we were in tremendous shape, and everyone was in awe of us, passing them with ease on killer hills!


Cool bikes, cute girl, nice bridge!


Dork on a bike

So after a 10 k easy bike, we were on the bridge! Amazing how beautiful the city is, with Alcatraz sitting just a couple thousand yards off the shore (how far is a yard, anyways?)





babe on a bridge. Don't jump!!

The bridge was packed with tourists (it was Easter Friday) but we managed to maneuver our way around them all, and ended up on the other side on some wicked downhills into the sleepy little tourist town of Sausalito. Like White Rock on beauty steroids. Steep, winding hills with fantastic homes perched atop them, all with a million dollar view of San Fran's skyline. Palm trees and blue ocean, flowers and little shops lined the streets... really, if you look up idyllic in the dictionary, Sausalito would be right up there, except for all the damn tourists.


Jax a little wobbly in Sausilito


Jim finds a friend

So after a very odd lunch with some surly waitresses. (I had a very greasy tuna melt, Jax a much nicer shrimp sandwich) we decided to take the ferry back to the mainland... but when we went to the ferry terminal the line up was huge, and the ferry was still an hour away. So what'd we do? Well, if we had regular bikes we'd have had no choice, the hills back to the Golden Gate Bridge were killer and we'd never make it, but with our handy dandy pedal assist electric bikes, it was no-problemo! So we pedalled the full 15k back over the bridge, along with water, and back to Fisherman's Wharf, and our electric meters were still on full despite over 4 hours of pedalling!
Despite the early trepidation, Jax now totally wants to get one of those bikes, and I have to agree, I think the hills of New Westminster would be AWESOME for those suckers.
So, we were pretty tired, and we had Giants tickets for 7pm that night. It was 4pm.. so what do we do? Do we hop on a cable car or bus? NO! We decide to walk the 7k back to the hotel up and over the hills... which was beautiful! We found beautiful Little Italy! BUT... we exhausted ourselves, and by the time we made it to the hotel is was almost 6pm, and after a quick shower we had to walk 2 more kilometres to the baseball field. Holy crap we were EXHAUSTED by the time we got there.


Giants World Series 2010 Win commerative mural


little woman in little italy




the streets of San Francisco!

As I was saying.... we biked the 30 k to Sausilito and back (true, it was pedal-assisted, but still, a loooong way!) and the 2 x 7 k walks from our hotel to Fisherman's wharf and back. By the time we walked to the stadium at 7pm and found our seats, we were ready to drop.

And let me tell you, baseball is NOT the sport to be watching when you can barely keep your eyes open. The field, AT&T Field, on Willie Mays road, was beautiful, and it was a sell-out of 44,000 +. Kinda weird crowd for a sophisticated town like San Fran. It was like the population of Surrey had been dropped off in the stadium... tough girls in tight jeans, meaty guys with caps on sideways and baggy jeans. Or maybe that was just our section - but I THOUGHT we actually had decent seats. But we didn't. $60 seats doesn't buy you much apparently. We had limited view seats, which meant we could barely see home plate, and if a ball got hit in the air we couldn't see it due to the bleachers above.

It was a fun atmosphere, but the game sucked. 4-1 Atlanta, and nothing really happened. Atlanta scored all their runs in a one inning rally, and their pitcher shut down the Giants except for 3 measly hits. Jax ate a hot dog, I had nachos, and we stared at the little men running around the field like zombies until the ninth inning, when everyone else went home and so we snuck down to the good seats on the 3rd base line! The air was open, we could see everything! What a difference! Instantly I felt more awake, and there were seagulls to watch too as they started swooping and calling to each other, forming a big noisy flock above us. No doubt they were excited to get at all the old peanuts and nachos that were sure to be left behind by the big crowds.


The view (?) from the $60 seats.


the view from the $100 seats. Way better, but really, $100 per person to see a baseball game?


Seagulls!

So the game ended, we dragged our tired toes and aching legs back to the hotel, and fell in an exhausted heap in our little double bed... and sleep like kings and queens with no cats to bug us!!

COMING SOON... DAY 2!