There and Back

I posted about our drive down to the Bay Area and how fabulous that was. Then we got there and I was too busy to blog. I’ll try to catch up here.

We arrived in Martinez around 1 pm on Friday. Sarah got to meet Nancy and Dave which was nice. They’re all such good friends of mine. The kids played a bit and then I had to take the Klines to the BART. They still had a couple hours to go to meet with their family. I was sad to see them go. We had so much fun together.

When I got back to the house the kids were in the pool….of course. Nancy and I plotted out some food for the week and we hung out. We hung out for almost 2 days. Saturday was a total sloth fest. I put on my swim suit and hung out all day in it. What I did not know is that the back was wearing out and you could see my posterior. Sorry for that Dave. We played Words with Friends a lot! It was great, I never get to do that.

By Sunday afternoon I figured they could use a break. Their kids are grown and they lead a pretty quiet life when we’re not there. I Yelped….love that….and found a Jump Sky High and a movie that we could go to. We did both. Happy Father’s Day Dave. We were gone for about 5 hours.

On Monday we went into The City. Anyone who has lived in San Francisco knows it is THE CITY. We drove in since we were going to be where parking was free or cheap. Our first stop was The California Academy of Science. We spent all day there. There was a lizard and snake exhibit going on. One of the coolest things we saw there was the animatronic snake from the movie Anaconda. It was amazing. We did the snakes and lizards, lunch, Rainforest, aquariums, living roof, penguins, Africa and finally the planetarium. That was a very cool show about the creation of the earth. What a great way to start our city adventures.

That evening we went to Chinatown. It’s the kid’s favorite place in the city. We did a little shopping, had dinner at the place we always have dinner (great location, bad food) and then played in the little park. Such fun and great people watching. And to top it off the parking was free. Go figure. We stayed out until 10:30.

The next day we went to the Exploratorium. It, as always, was GREAT! We love that place and spent the better part of the day there. The one improvement we made to our day was packing food. We spent over $100 on two mediocre meals the day before.

When we all couldn’t stand to be hungry any more we left and went to the Golden Gate Park for a picnic. We dined in front of the Conservatory of Flowers. It was a perfect day. We went to purchase tickets to the conservatory but….THEY CLOSED. Damn, the first thing to go south. We decided to go on a little hike / adventure. Each one of the kids took a turn leading the way. They really thought we were on an adventure. We did come across 2 “camps” and one group of people smoking pot in the woods. Gotta love it.

For dinner we went to Yet Wah, a favorite place from when I was a kid. And it was just as great as I remember. The kids agreed. The food was good, abundant and half the price of the place in Chinatown. Again we were out until about 10.

On Wednesday, day 3 in The City, we went to Alcatraz. We rode the BART in because parking down at the waterfront is about $10 per hour. We packed a lunch and headed out. They’ve changed things a lot since the last time I was there in the 70’s. The kids loved it and learned a lot. It’s been cleaned up a lot so it’s not quite as creepy as I remembered it. The self guided tour is quite good. It was strange to pause the recording because it was so quiet. Everyone was listening and moving slowly. We made the last boat out. This was unfortunate because we were going to try and be home for dinner….ah, that wasn’t going to happen. The web site says allow an hour and a half, we took a total of 3 and a half hours and that was pushing it.

We made it home by about 8:30. Dang it. It was frustrating for all of us. We had dinner and the kids went to bed. Nancy and I talked a bit. She was missing us. If we were going to be visiting, we should visit. I was trying to keep the kids out of their hair but apparently they didn’t mind the kids. As a matter of fact, Nancy was missing us. Fair enough, we would plant ourselves for the next couple days.

Thursday was spent in the pool. Nancy and I hung out. Again, it was really relaxing. We planned for the next day. Sarah and her daughter would be joining us for a little cocktail party and the night. Nancy has a neighbor that I love. His name is Tim and he’s been married for 40 years, has 3 grown daughters and is gay. Apparently he doesn’t know that. If he’s not gay then he needs to take a serious look at the way he projects himself. He is so funny and has lots of great stories. He and his wife, who I would not want to meet in a dark ally, came over for drinks and snacks. We swam and laughed a lot. Sarah immediately picked up on the fact that Tim is gay. The next day she kept singing, “I just gotta be ME!!!” on our ride home. The evening was a success. We stayed up late talking. It was nice for Nancy and Sarah to get to know each other a bit. They’re both such good friends of mine and they both grew up in Connecticut. Hummm.

Saturday morning we all got up got packed and said our good byes by 9:30. I could have stayed another week! The weather was perfect the whole time. I needed sun so badly. I didn’t realize how badly until about day 4 when I started to feel like myself again. And we were off. About an hour into our drive Nancy called. She told me that the kids had packed Dave’s computer bag….CRAP! We stopped in Redding and shipped it back FedEx. There’s $72 I’ll never get back but what are you gunna do? I needed to make sure it got there fast.

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. It took 12 hours with one FedEx stop, 8 potty breaks and an hour to run around at lunch. The kids were fabulous again. They did a few hours of books on tape and finally movies.

All in all is was a very successful trip. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.