OUR TRIP TO SAN FRNACISCO

We decided to go to San Francisco to hear Zoe’s grandson’s band play. He advised us to obtain earplugs as it is alternative rock and loud. It is wonderful that his wife plays in the band as well and they can be together as the band goes on tour next month. We stayed in a small hotel that was recommended and has a wonderful French restaurant dedicated to Joan of Arc with lots of supporting artifacts. It gave me a mini-French fix. Zoe had her stroll down memory lane as she lived and had a business for several years in the San Francisco area. It seemed that every turn brought back remembered incidents to her. The first thing we did was have lunch at the Cliff House above the Pacific Ocean. It seems that Zoe spent many hours there years ago.

I brought my walker and got lots of walking as we spent a day at the Academy of Sciences and the new building of the de Young Art Museum in Golden Gate Park. The Planetarium show at the Academy was excellently done and I hoped it would inspire some of the children in the audience. The de Young had fascinating exhibits of South Sea carvings and masks as well as an intriguing show of textiles that were art pieces in their own right. We opted not to see the Impressionist paintings from the Musee d’Orsay as we have seen them a couple of times in Paris. The new building is unique in that it allows visitors to be able to follow their own path through the exhibits and does not restrict them to a pre-set route. The 144-foot tower twists so that we were able to see the north-south streets of San Francisco laid out below us.

Of course we had to visit Chinatown and ‘discovered’ a wonderful dim sum restaurant that was filled with local Chinese with nary a tourist in sight (except for us of course). On our last night we decided to splurge at the restaurant Michael Mina that specializes in ‘small plate’ cuisine. The small plate image soon faded as the first course came. There was a rectangular plate divided into three sections with three preparations of the main ingredient in each section. With a second course in the same format plus a dessert and complimentary chocolates at the end we were stuffed. We had been able to walk down to dinner but grabbed a cab for the steep journey back to the hotel.

We took a detour on the way back home to Santa Cruz to see Zoe’s other grandson and his university. We had a lovely dinner with him on the pier over the bay. The college was unusual with different college sections and dorms tucked in among the trees. You would really need to be young and healthy to walk that campus we decided.

It felt good to be finally getting out to travel some again. Zoe is healthy and I have not had the health problems that have limited our excursions the past couple of years.