A Busy Weekend (w/Pics!)

This is a co-post from my personal blog over at http://nvfreethinkers.blogspot.com/. Thanks!

A Busy Weekend

When my wife and I go on vacation, it is usually to San Francisco, our favorite city in the world. If not to SF, then normally anywhere else along the beautiful Pacific Coast Highway. Those are my stomping grounds, where I am from, and where I dream to retire.

This weekend we partook in a planned trip to the SF area. Back in March for my birthday, my wife decided that she wanted to get me some Giants tickets for sometime in the summer. This inspired some other attractions and the excitement of my son's first trip to our most beloved city.

The Drive:
We live outside of Reno NV a little way, so a trip to the Bay Area is not too far, but far enough to make it not worth taking day trips. The drive is about 4 hours with good traffic and depending on where you are going in the area. We packed up and left early Friday morning in hopes to get checked in to our hotel after lunch. Due to cheap prices, we stayed at the HoJo at the SFO airport in South SF. While this is a bit away from the sights and sounds of SF, it was cheap and right near the highways to cut north quickly enough. We also invited my older sister and her husband to come along. Their hotel was also near SFO, but just a few blocks north of ours. To top all of this off, a good ol' pal that lives in Seattle was down for the weekend as well for some concert. Add these things to our already planned events, and it was a packed weekend.

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The view from our hotel of the South San Fran sign. Don't worry, that is just fog, not smog.

The drive took longer than normally because we had to stop often for my 3-year old son to use the rest room and prevent accidents in the car. On the way down I-80 we pass through the city of Fairfield which, if people are unaware, is home to the Jelly Belly candy company. We decided to stop and take our son to see the jelly beans. When we arrived we took a few pics around the place and got there in time to see how absolutely packed it was and the long wait for the tour of the factory. This inspired us to just take some pictures, hit up the gift shops for the candy, get lunch in their Food Court, and head on our way.

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My son and I at Jelly Belly in my TL shirt.

We got back into the car and back on the road for a bit, but once we got past the Carquinez Bridge the traffic was stop and go until we got past the Bay bridge area. We decided to head south and take the San Mateo bridge since neither my wife nor son had ever crossed it before and it comes out just south of SFO anyway. After the stops, traffic, and route, we ended up at our hotel around 2:30 in the afternoon.

The Events of the Weekend:
First event of the night was a fancy dinner with my sister and her husband. My wife picked out a Moroccan resturant in the Richmond district called "El Mansour." We met my family there and I was immediately struck by the open design of the place. It was surrounded by open, small tables and plenty of fabric lining the walls and ceiling. I had forgotten my camera, so I did not take pics unfortunately. The service was friendly, atmosphere laid-back, and they even washed your hands for you. As for the food, I liked it, but did not love it like the rest of my party did. The Harira soup (spicy lentil) was great and I ordered the chicken w/ onions as my main course. They also served us some Salade Mohammed V (Moroccan salad) and something called Bastela du Chef which was a sweet chicken pie. It was tasty, but a strange mix of sugar, chicken, and spices that I was not all too enamoured with.

The best part though was the belly dancer that they had come out during our meal. As I said, the room was open with the tables surrounding an open floor area where she danced. With her sparkles and chimes, my 3-year old son could not take his eyes off of her. He kept talking with her and smiling, then when we gave him some money to give her as a tip, he got embarrassed. It took some coercing to get him to get up to talk to her, but he finally did. What was the most hilarious though was when she was done, he kept looking back to where she came from and waving her for to come out. He told us she was beautiful and he wanted to marry her. It was great. My son has always been rather into the ladies, but this took it another step further.

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Our belly dancer, Jennifer. She was beautiful. (I took this pic from their website.)

The next morning we were due up nice and early for our tickets on the boat over to Alcatraz. On the drive from our hotel to the Pier, I wanted to find an SF landmark that I had never seen before, the Anchor Brewery. For those that know me, I don't drink much. The best way to not drink a lot is to be picky about what I drink, and as for beer, Anchor is about the only beer that I allow in my house. I love the company, the story, and the tasty beverage. It is the SF brew, so when in SF, make sure to order one. Luckily, I did find the building and took a pic, but I did not get to go on a tour as you have to book them months in advance and we failed to do so. It was a large, unassuming building in the Potrero Hill area of SF. It was nice though to see where they work their alcoholic magic at.

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The Anchor Brewery Building. Oh how I wanted to go in and shake their hands.

While I love SF and have spent more time there then almost any other city that isn't my home town, I had never taken the boat over to Alcatraz before. We were a bit unlucky in that is just so happened that it was the 78th Annivsary of the openning of the prison, so it was packed all over the island. I will drop some pics for you guys that I took. As for being there, it was cool to see, get an idea of scales and everything, but a few things that I had never realized:

1. The island is bigger than I thought.
2. I never realized that there were multiple cell blocks in one big open room. Blocks A, B, and C were all together, while block D was seperated some and contained the solitary confinement cells as well as normal cells.
3. Overall, the main prison building was smaller than I expected.
4. I did not get to experience it as slowly as I would have liked due to my son running around and my wife who gets really anxious around large crowds.

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My wife and son as we waited for our boat over.

The foreboding look as we ride the boat and get closer.

Where you first meet after the boat and get the rules and whatnot.

Cell block C.

The rec yard.

When we got back to shore, my sister and her husband met us at Pier 39 for lunch. I am not a big fan of the pier area being not really into the main touristy stuff, but since we were there for the prison already, it worked out all right. I had some delicious fish and chips with the fish battered in Anchor Steam. That was awesome.

Next we all took my son to the Aquarium that is there on the Pier. Now, if you know me you know that the Monterey Bay Aquarium is one of my favorite places to go ever, so all in all I was a bit disappointed by the small aquarium there in SF, but overall it was neat. They had two large tunnel tanks that you walked under for a ways while the fish, sharks, and seastars crawled and swam all around you. It was neat, but just small compared to what I am used to.

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What you lookin' at?

After that my sister and brother-in-law had agreed to take our son for the night which was nice. As anyone with a wife and kid knows, alone time with the wife becomes rare after the child is born. We went back to our hotel for a while and rested until late that evening when my buddy who was in from Seattle was done with his event and we could get together. We picked them (my buddy and his friend) up all the way north in the Richmond distrcit again, and headed over to the Mel's Diner on Geary. After chatting, eating, and just catching-up, we drove around the city for a while. Our buddy's friend had nver been to SF, so we took her over the Golden Gate, to Alamo Square to see the Painted Ladies, drove down Lombard, and just around the city. Unfortunately it was terribly foggy that night, so we did not get to see as much as we would have liked, but it was fun for a couple of hours. We dropped them off at their hotel and said our goodbyes. It is nice to see old friends.

The next day we had a couple of prime Giants tickets, but first we all went out for some awesome Vietnamese food at a small place in South SF. I had some 5-spice chicken and rice that was friggin awesome. I invited my brother-in-law to join me for the Giants game and he was excited. I am a huge Giants fan and going to the ball park is one of the few things that I enjoy more than almost anything else in the world. Live baseball is the best experience for me and my wife had gotten us prime tickets on the Willie Mays Wall, front row near the foul pole in fair territory. My bro-in-law was is not a huge baseball fan, but had only been to one game in his life before when he was young, so it was about time to head to one of the nicest parks in the major and have fun. We had dogs, Anchor Steams, and snacks as my G-men took down the Rockies in a 9-6 final score on an 8th inner homer to center left from Hunter Pence. It was a good day to be a Giants fan and a beautiful day to be at the park.

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The view from our seats.

Good ol' scoreboard.

My dog and Anchor Steam. I even had two beers that day which is almost unheard of for me, but hey, it was a special occasion.

Buster Posey up to the plate in the first inning where we scored 3 runs.

Me at the Juan Marichal statue.

My sister picked us up once the game was over and took us back to our hotel. Their weekend was over so we exchanged pleasentries and they left to go home. We stayed one more night and left in the morning.

The Drive Home:
Overall the drive home was rather uneventful, but we did stop at Jelly Belly once more to do the tour. A Monday morning was much less packed than a Friday afternoon, so we got right in. It is nice to have jelly beans around because they work well as incentive for a 3-year old. It didn't take long though once we hit the road to find out that for some reason my AC in the car was not working so well. Damn, it appears to be time for a recharge of AC coolant. It was cooling well enough for the drive, but barely. Finally we reached home and had were able to settle down after a fun and exciting weekend.

God damn I love you SF.

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