Saturday, July 17, 2010 – 11:27am – Laina’s living room, Vancouver BC

I’m torn between going back to sleep for a while or getting an entry in here. So much going on that the days are blurring together. I’ve been doing a lot for the past while, which is great. I feel like I’m living life so much more fully now and I’m really happy and grateful for that. So what have I been up to?

The trip to San Francisco was awesome. I had a friggin’ blast! On Friday, we took the streetcar to the Pier to catch the boat to Alcatraz. The streetcars are really neat. They brought them in from a bunch of other cities that weren’t using them anymore and refurbished and painted them in a colour scheme relevant to where they came from. Each car has the story of its original in-service date, where it came from, etc. posted inside it. The only drawback is that they’re usually packed to the gills and if you’re standing, you can’t see anything except the inside of the car as the windows are at eye-level when you’re sitting. They’re also a bit lurchy.

We caught the boat to Alcatraz and it was so cool to see the island from afar, and the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. I did fine on the boat, though I always get nervous getting on them just in case.

We got to Alcatraz and walked all around and up to the prison and I took tons of pictures, of course. We picked up our audio tour gadgets and it was really neat. They direct you where to go in the prison and tell stories about each area. We got to take our pictures inside a couple of the cells, which was of course the main thing I wanted to do while there. hahaha  Got some really nice shots of the city from the island, too.

After we got back from prison…we went to Pier 39 and had a nice meal at the Pier Market Restaurant. I had fish and chips. It was pretty good, but the coleslaw was terrible. We went into a store called Lefty’s and I FINALLY got my hands on a left-handed measuring cup!  We got several pressed pennies at various stops and I added them to my Mom’s little coin purse where she kept the ones I sent her from places I’d gone. Laina really wanted to go to the Aquarium of the Bay and it was great, too. I was really taken by the beauty of the Pacific Sea Nettle. So beautifully-colored and elegant gliding through the water. Their tentacles are frilly, too, which is neat.

There’s a tunnel in the aquarium where you walk through and the tank is all around you. Sharks and fish and rays are swimming above your head, which is totally neat. At the end, we got to touch a bat ray, shark, skate, sea star and sea cucumber, which is totally weird and squishy. We got some videos of us touching the ray, shark and skate. They felt really weird! The skate was neat because it came up out of the water for us to touch it and the bat ray was jumping up – aka spy-hopping – to see better. It was a very cool experience!

We took the streetcar back to the hotel and relaxed for a while. Can’t remember if it was that night that we went to Lori’s Diner, but I had some of the best biscuits and sausage gravy I’ve ever had when we went there. *drool*

Saturday, we got up, had breakfast at Lori’s and took one of the hop-on, hop-off buses down to the Pier and caught a boat for a cruise around San Francisco Bay that goes under the Golden Gate Bridge. We were on the boat for about an hour and a half and I took a ton of pictures of the bridge from every conceivable angle.

After we got off the boat, we grabbed a snack on the Pier and walked down to catch another hop-on, hop-off bus that took us on a tour around a different part of the city and over the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito. Tons more pictures, of course. Sausalito was a really cute, quaint place and apparently the real estate there is mega-pricey. Bachelor apartments rent for $4,500 a month! OMG!  We got back to the Fisherman’s Wharf area and walked down to a pub and had a beer and some fries. We walked back down towards the Wharf Cable Car Turnaround and this guy was making bracelets with people’s names on them. I picked out the color scheme I wanted and he made one for me on the spot. Very neat! I got one for Jackie, too. Also got Jackie and Mario matching Alcatraz Rowing Team t-shirts (like the one Laina brought me when she went down there) and got myself a really cool Alcatraz hoodie, along with a bunch of other magnets, keychains, postcards and such. Also got a really cool Save the Rock mug from the Alcatraz gift shop when we were there.

We got in line for the cable car and were there for about an hour and a half before we got on. I ended up standing on the side of the car at the front, holding onto one of the bars. I had my backpack on and this lady was jammed right up against me and I was somewhat concerned she might be a pickpocket, since you never know! I ended up moving my backpack onto the front of me so we had more room between us. She was a nice lady, but you can never be too careful! lol  We were going up one of the steep hills and she was freaking out a bit and I told her to just look down. We got to the top of the hill and the car started heading into a freefall down the hill and everyone was shrieking and I put my arm through the bar and let go with both hands and was yelling at the people on the sidewalk while we were going. It was awesome fun and hilarious!

We were late for our dinner reservations at the Tonga Room, but it was an amazing place and the food was fantastic! There’s a pool in the center of the room and a small boat that the band plays on and they move it into the center of the pool. Every 20 minutes or so, there’s a mock thunderstorm inside the restaurant, complete with rain that comes down from pipes in the ceiling into the pool and a strobe light that makes lightning. Very cool!  We ordered a ton of food and had a really good meal. We caught the cable car back to the hotel and stopped by Walgreen’s to pick up a few things before heading back to the room.

Sunday, we got up and packed everything, cramming all our stuff into the big suitcase and small carry-on suitcases we’d brought with us. We walked down to Market Street and got a slice of pizza and went into the huge Old Navy store for a couple of minutes before heading back to the hotel to get our stuff and catch the BART train to head back to the airport. We caught our flight back to Seattle, then a shuttle back to the Red Roof Inn to pick up Laina’s car, and I drove from Seatac to Mount Vernon where we stopped to get gas and something to eat at Taco Bell (more gas. haha). Laina drove the rest of the way back home and we were exhausted when we got back to my house.

I had a really fun time checking in on Foursquare everywhere we went and snapping and uploading pictures to Facebook. Sort of like a journal of the trip, step-by-step.

All in all, it was a great trip. Wish we could have been there longer. We had planned to go see the California Academy of Sciences and I was really excited about that, since I’d seen a show on Discovery Channel or something about when they were building it, and how they designed the “living roof” with all the plants and solar panels. Next time!