I'm back

And I must confess that though I had a great time in San Fransisco, I did not actually fall in love with the place. Which is funny since I loved the climate(yes I do like the medium coldness of the place), I loved the bus system, I loved the sidewalks, and I loved the different neighborhoods. Almost everyone we met was wonderfully friendly and as genuinely nice and helpful as could be.

Seriously, how can you love the parts but not the whole of a thing?

I have no explanation.

We did touristy stuff. We did non-touristy stuff. We found good places off the beaten path. We thrifted. We walked. We hung out in little local pubs, ate at little local restaurants. We rode the buses, visited a museum on Free First Sunday(Thank you Target-you saved us 24 bucks). We went and saw the Golden Gate Bridge and wondered at how-on a completely overcast day-some how golden sunshine poured down on Alcatraz for at least an hour. Big Daddy D very patiently and I must say indulgently looked on as I shopped for sensible shoes(I packed 5 pairs of shoes for 4 days of fun and not a pair of tennies in the lot-I don't know why). We hung off the trolley car and sauntered through Chinatown, loading up on cheap trinkets and reminiscing. We laughed our asses off at awful expensive food in Ghirardelli Square, toured Pier 39 before it opened and watched enthralled for nearly an hour the soap opera lives of the sea lions that live there. We listened amused beyond belief to the most hilarious verbal confrontation between a shopkeeper and a customer(Thank You!) in Little Saigon and enjoyed the crowded yet tranquil Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. I had the best Chinese food since leaving China ten years ago, saw a dead sea lion washed up on the beach as well as a sea gull and a stranded flotilla of jelly fish, and laughed watching a dog throw a stick for himself and retrieve it over and over and then watched the sun set over the Pacific laughing some more because Big Daddy D was literally shivering with the cold and for once I was not freezing(girly fat can come in handy I guess). We drank bad coffee, ate good bread, broke the law and fed the pigeons and chickadees, froze drinking expensive cheap beer and shivered our way back to the hotel. We had fresh made noodles, greasy snacks and good beer, found mugs to replace those we have broken(alas not at the cheap price I had previously gotten them for), Ichiban Kan'ed and stocked up on bento supplies, discussed nasty public bathrooms and bums peeing in bus shelters, decided not to go to the beach again and pack our loot instead, had burgers and fries and milkshakes and fed nickels to the jukebox, waiting with bated breath til our songs came on.

We laughed, we held hands, we smiled, we were happy to be together, adventuring once again.