cybergeisha

November 22nd, 2006 - Day Six

After waking up, we took the subway down to the waterfront, where we went to a bagel shop for coffee and bagels. The morning was misty and cool but not uncomfortably cold, and it was kind of fun to walk down the sidewalk and see the fog burn off a bit. I had to use the bathroom, and I swear we couldn’t find one. Finally, we stopped at a weird, “horizontal” mall and got a bathroom code from the mall security to open the bathroom door. Weird.

Spent time at the waterfront, but not much. We found an awesome mural depicting Salvador Dali and took a picture in front of it, but even though we hadn’t done much except walk and eat, we were a little tired so we went back to the hotel room for a little nap. A few hours later, much more awake and relaxed, we headed back out to see the famous Lombard St.. Even though the light was fading it was still impressively steep from the top and the twists and turns of the street were as strange and weird as I’d heard! We decided to come back during daylight. I wanted to go up to Coit Tower, up on top of Telegraph Hill, to get a view of San Francisco at night. I was absolutely not disappointed!

We had a panoramic view of the city, the bay, and even out to the ocean, from the top of the hill, and we found out that we could actually go up inside the tower. So after I snapped a shot of the San Francisco waterfront and the Bay Bridge from the base of the tower and we went up inside to see the 360 degree panoramic view from the top of the tower. Erik took video and I took a few pictures of the arched crown of the open-roofed art deco tower.

The lights that illuminate the tower had yet to come on when we got there, and as they slowly warmed up while we were up there, it caused the the arches to glow against the blackness of the sky. We descended the tower and took a last walk around the the grounds of the park one last time, admiring the fully illuminated Coit Tower’s stark contrast against the black sky.

Back at the hotel, we ordered some delicious pizza and breadsticks. It started raining outside as we ate dinner, and that disappointed us since the next day was Thanksgiving and since we have no family in SF, we had decided to go visit Alcatraz Island and do other “outside” stuff.

With the rain pouring down outside, we watched a movie, and talked to a few friends online. The weather, up until then, had been absolutely perfect. We hear, though, the weather had sucked and been aboslutely crazy in Seattle the entire time we were gone. Lightning and thunder and pouring rain and wind… while we were happily walking around San Francisco without jackets.

When we went to bed, it was still pouring down rain.

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November 21, 2006 - Day Five

We woke up early and went to the Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum and spent the morning looking at art and artifacts, including a big selection of sculpture by Rodin, tons of baroque style furniture, and a really crappy Dalí portrait. I mean, it wasn’t a bad PAINTING, it’s just boring compared to all the surreal, vividly dreamlike work Dalí is famous for.

We spent a while at the where the museum was locacted. The park was at the top of a hill with a beautiful view of the water and the Golden Gate Bridge. We spent a while enjoying the view, and then drove around the area for a while looking at some gorgeous houses and churches. There are SO MANY Cathedrals in San Francisco!

On the way back to the hotel we saw a tall stone pagoda marking the entrance to Japantown. So we decided that we would check it out. Erik parked across the street from a large cathedral with a gorgeous unique roof, and walked down the hill to Japantown to see what was there.

There was a large shopping area that was identical to many in Japan, where Erik tried his first crepe and liked it. We shopped in plenty of stores I’d only seen while I lived in Japan and browsed books briefly at the San Francisco branch of Kinokuniya. Erik took a picture of me being goofy and then we had dinner at a little cafe where I spoke Japanese to the owner. The curry we had was delicious and it was fun getting to use my language skills.

We found the weirdest store ever - a “discount store” of sorts, selling everything from auto parts to packets of ramen and soda, with an appropriate tagline of “different things!” We got a couple drinks and walked around, though the light was fading and we were full and tired. Before going back to the car, we saw the word POST in the cement and took a picture for Postmaster P, the cat.

Yes, we took a picture for the cat.

After a quick stop at Safeway for some snacks and drinks, we went back to the hotel and relaxed. We talked about what we wanted to do the next day and surfed the Internet, ate Nilla Wafers and completely goofed off. Around this time was when we decided “this vacation freakin’ rules.” and high fived like 10 times. Of course, any time we aren’t at work “freakin’ rules” to the point where we have to high five at least once.

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November 19, 2006 - Day Three

We got up bright and early and checked out of Hotel Metropolis, and drove to the Travelodge, which was a little way up Market St in a much better neighborhood.

We spent the rest of the day checking out the city - didn’t do anything in particular, just drove around and looked at houses, walked a bit, wondered why there were so many Brazilian restaurants around, stopped at Jamba Juice (where we got juicy refreshment) and realized that there is no possible way to turn left when you are in San Francisco.

It started getting dark, and we walked up the street to a little Chinese place that was kind of a hole-in-the-wall but had a number of tables full - which is usually a sign that the food is pretty good. While we waited for our food, Erik explained that forks are like corvettes. I couldn’t stop laughing!

Even though we were almost recovered from the trip down and were settling into a good pattern, around 9:00pm we were pretty tired. We were going to walk around more, but we ended up just chillin’, eating snacks, hanging out in the hotel room watching Discovery Channel and surfing the Internet. Around 10PM it was futile to stay awake any longer - we were zonked out.

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November 20th, 2006 - Day Four

Monday morning we woke up a little early and had breakfast at a place called the “all star cafe” on the corner of Van Ness and Market - they had awesome “breakfast muffins” for cheap and really tasty coffee. We also checked out the huge art store next door to our hotel, Flax Art Supplies which had a huuuuuge wooden artist model above the door and was like a WAREHOUSE of art supplies. I wanted all of it!

Around noon, my friend Kurt called me. We’d made plans to go get dinner and go out that evening, but wanted to solidify details. We decided to meet at his place around 7:30 PM. He suggested Erik and I check out the Palace of the Legion of Honour art museum that afternoon, but it was closed, we found out. We had coffee at Caffe Trieste, a wonderful little coffeeshop that had fantastic espresso, Wi-Fi and live piano music.

We ended up spending a few hours plotting out the rest of our vacation, familiarizing ourselves with the area, and planning how to get to Kurt’s place via MUNI (the San Francisco public transportation system). We ended up planning WAY too much time to actually get there and ended up in the neighborhood an hour early, so we got coffee at this adorable little hippie coffee shop on Cole & Haight.

Around 7:00PM we showed up at Kurt’s place, and Michelle, his lovely wife, let us in. Allistair, his son, was being a little fussy but calmed down after a little bit. We talked about movies, stupid naming conventions in He-Man, and video games, and then went to a lovely Italian place for dinner.

He gave me a really cool painting his friend Katie Miranda had done for him years ago. It’s a portrait of him, with Vector, his former car. Katie also worked on the cover artwork for Don’t Be Afraid, the 4th Information Society album. It was very sweet of him, I really like it! Art makes the world a happier place for me.

Dinner conversation was fantastic, and Allistair sat on my lap for the longest time and didn’t annoy me like most babies. He’s really the cutest baby ever - he was totally chill, even when he stuck his forearm in Kurt’s mouth. Michelle is adorable and smart and funny, I really enjoyed spending time with both of them. We walked back to Kurt and Michelle’s place, where Michelle was thrilled to be able to get ready for bed without having to worry about Allistair, who was coming to Death Guild with us.

The club where death guild is held, the Glas Kat was VERY large and had a lot of comfy places to sit. I relaxed and people-watched, Erik danced and Kurt took Allistair around to introduce him to people. Even though Kurt said I was a “loser” for not dancing, I far prefer to people-watch when I’m somewhere new - it was interesting!

Allistair was all dressed up for clubbing in stripey tiny socks, and a onesie was black with the words “CHICK MAGNET” on the front of it. Absolutely true. None of the women could resist squealing and cuddling him, and Kurt was every bit the absolutely proud father, which was adorable. I love it when parents enjoy hanging out with their children, instead of feeling like they are babysitting.

The music was good and the he club was fairly busy but Kurt said it’s usually packed - even on a Monday night, which amazes me! Apparently, that night (being the Monday before Thanksgiving) was pretty dead and nobody Kurt had been hoping to see was there, and Allistair was finally looking sleepy so Kurt gave us a ride back to the hotel.

As soon as we were in the car, Allistair promptly grabbed my finger with a grip of steel, entirely unnatural for a 6 month old baby, and stuffed it in his mouth. I explained to him that my finger was not part of him and I would need it back at some point, but he either didn’t understand or didn’t care. I finally got it back when he dozed off. Cute. Kurt and I decided to meet up again later that week, and after deciding to get together on Friday at some point, Kurt and Allistair went home.

Exhausted, Erik and I watched the end of The Blues Brothers, had some soda and fell asleep.

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November 17th, 2006 - Day One

We left Seattle in a rented bright blue Ford Focus at 1:15PM on Friday, November 17th. We didn’t take many pics on the way down, and Erik drove while I slept most of the way. We hit a lot of traffic in Portland, OR and Salem, OR. I didn’t realize Oregon got so foggy but it seemed as though we drove through so much fog we must have driven into a horror movie.

About halfway through Oregon, we found a Sonic Drive-in - we’d seen them advertised but knew there weren’t any in Washington, so we had to stop to see. Erik felt it entirely necessary to ask the girl who brought us our food if we could video tape her saying “Welcome to Sonic!” for our road trip video, and explained that we were on a road trip to San Francisco, and even though they play ads for Sonic on TV all the time, there weren’t any in Washington, and until then we hadn’t believed they actually existed. She looked amused and agreed, and we headed off after eating some not-too-bad fast food.

We were a little dumb, though, because we should have stopped there for gas.

Not too very long after that, we needed to gas up the car - and we were totally in the middle of nowhere. We first followed a sign saying that there was gas off a certain exit, but when we took the offramp and ended up at an intersection with a creepy “STARLITE MOTEL,” a store that only said “STORE” and a boarded up diner that said “CHUCKHOUSE” and NO GAS STATION. Erik hung a u-turn and proceeded back to the freeway to find a non-creepy gas station area. We kept seeing brightly lit signs for “ADULT SHOP” all through Oregon. It must be a chain like Lover’s Package or something. We stopped at a gas station (weird not having to pump yoru own gas in Oregon!) and laughed because the gas station, the “Adult Shop” and a 7-11 were all that was around for about 10 miles.

We laughed about the Adult Shop for a while, listened to a book on tape for a while, and passed through, uh, Grant’s Pass. We started getting a little irritable and I was feeling a bit tired, and it was close to midnight. We made a few suggestions, discussed it and thought it might be best to stay overnight and continue driving in the morning, so that we could not only be safer but also see the scenery.

Granted, we could have driven further but I had a feeling we were going to be really cranky if we didn’t stop and I didn’t know when there’d be a town that had a hotel. Erik shrugged and as we drove down into California, in the semi-foggy darkness, we admired the stars from the road. Just after the border, we stopped in Yreka, CA and stayed at a Best Western. We were more tired than we thought, because I don’t remember much after we went to bed.

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November 18th, 2006 - Day Two

We woke up early and checked out, took a pic of the town’s sign before leaving into the early morning mist at 8:15AM. The mist parted as we gained altitude and we were treated to a beautiful view of Mount Shasta.

We swerved to the roadside and snapped a picture of a hilarious roadsign directing us to Weed. We had to stop and take a picture of me and a picture of erik with the town’s sign. It was like we’d driven into a Cheech and Chong movie, at least if you’d only heard the jokes.

Northern California was full of beautiful scenery, but it was foggy enough for parts of the drive that we couldn’t take pictures. We stopped in the mountains to get out and stretch, goof around with a funny payphone and use the bathrooms, and then drove til we were just north of Redding, CA.

Prior to making another rest stop, we stopped for gas at a gas station on Hooker Creek Road (hilarious!). The rest stop just outside Redding had a lonely payphone and an ominous sign about rattlesnakes.

I wanted to stop at The Olive Pit in Corning, CA, and as we were pulling off I saw a sign that cracked me up. I’ve never seen so MANY olives and they had a free olive bar. We left the Olive Pit and realized we had driven exactly 666.9 miles since we started.

We arrived at Hotel Metropolis in downtown San Francisco a few hours later and decided we did NOT want to stay there the whole time - we stayed there that night, but left the next morning. That evening, we visited the Apple Store and a big shopping mall with a spiral escalator - we got some pizza, checked out a music store playing old school Nine Inch Nails, and went to the Sony Store. We then went back to the hotel, and passed out.

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