San Francisco - Day Two

Once again - I can't promise to make this brief (not even close to brief), but I can promise to make it entertaining!  (To me, at least...)

Lance had to get up early to do some sort of video interview for VEEAM (yes, he's also a TV star), so I took my time getting ready and finding breakfast.  I stopped at this random cafe in the financial district and ordered a bagel with hummus and veggies.  FIFTEEN minutes later I got it.  Seriously, I have no idea why it took so long.  But you know what?  It was SOOOO good!  I don't know how or why, but it was perfect.  The bagel was toasted perfectly, the hummus was awesome, and the tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions were garden fresh.

Or maybe I was just starving.

Either way, it was worth the wait.

I sat in front of the cafe and read my Kindle for a while, watching the traffic and a million people walk by, enjoying the light bay breeze.  I decided I could totally live like this: getting up whenever I wanted, buying breakfast instead of having to make it for ungrateful children, eating outside.

Eventually I had to get up and mosey on over to the Palace Hotel for my first tour of the day.  Since it was close to the Moscone Center and Lance didn't have anything scheduled at the time and because I said please please please, Lance agreed to come on this tour with me. He's such a good sport; I know he's not a huge fan of tours like I am.

Can I just say, the Palace Hotel is super cool?  We learned all about the original that was burned down in the fire of 1906, and then all about the "new" one that is there now.  We learned all about the owners of the hotel and their sordid histories: bank scandals, swindling, closed door poker deals, possible poisonings.  (Sordid histories are the most interesting.)

Our tour started up in the French Parlor.  No, this was never the kind of "parlor" I learned about on the Bawdy and Naughty tour. (Although some of that did go on - more on that later.) This was a place where women could go to unlace their corsets during the course of an evening.  For obvious reasons it was also called the Fainting Room.  Here's the view into the garden court from the French Parlor.

Here's our tour guide.  She did a pretty great job and you could tell she really loved the history of this hotel.

We walked all over the hotel, although now that I think about it, we never did see an actual hotel room that you could rent, which I kinda wanted to see.  Oh well.  Here's the ceiling in the sun room.  Isn't the pattern on their pretty?  The guide said that there's a covering on the glass that was developed by NASA, which allows all of the sunlight in but only 50% of the heat.  I totally need that for some of the windows in my house.

The Palace Hotel is famous for always having 12 dozen roses in the front entrance, every day of the year.  They were simply gorgeous.  It was at this point that I realized I didn't have any photographic proof that Lance and I were actually in SF.  We remedied that.  With the roses.

We got to go into the world famous Pied Piper Bar & Grill.  In the 1970's some dummies decided to cover up the gorgeous glass and carved wood ceilings with acoustic drop-tile.  (You know, like I have in my basement.)  They also thought it would be a pretty good idea to cover up the mosaic tile floors with plaid carpeting, which they simply glued down.  Seriously. Was everyone high in 70's?  Well, the most recent owners of the hotel (some Japanese company) wizened up and decided it would be a good idea to renovate the entire hotel to it's original grandeur - including this bar. It was well worth the expense.

Doesn't it look like something out of a movie scene?  Swanky.

There's some of the tile floor that had been covered.  Much of the floor was ruined by the carpet glue, but they were able to get the original design, colors, and tiles from the same quarry in Italy to replace them.  It was beautiful.

I really wanted to have a nice, quiet dinner with Lance in one of those ultra-high-backed booths.  But my budget did not agree with this plan.

There's my handsome guy... itching to get to his next meeting.  (He had to leave the tour early, which is too bad because I think he missed some of the best stories!)

I had to take a selfie in here because until the 1980's women weren't even allowed in the Pied Piper!  Not that I'm a drinker or really care if men want to have some bar just to themselves, but it's the principle of the matter, right? (What's with my selfies this trip?  I always look goofy in them.  I must be out of practice.)

Okay, so here's some reallllly old alcohol... I think bourbon maybe?  Anyways, it's really old and really expensive - $140 per shot.  The hotel sells it and then the person to get the very last shot from the bottle gets to take it home.  It's made of Svarvoski crystal, so I guess that's worth $140.  I dunno.  I don't know anything about drinking, only that it can be very, very expensive.

And here's the painting that gave the bar it's name: "The Pied Piper of Hamlin" by Maxfield Parrish.  It had just been through a major restoration and had only been back in the bar less than a week; pretty cool that we got to see it.  It's a pretty famous local painting.  The hotel had originally decided to restore it and then sell it, but SF citizens got all worked up in a tizzy about it so the hotel decided to just restore it and return it to the bar.

Then we headed into the garden court.  The windows above are the ones we looked out of from the French Parlor.

True story: the architect/builder of the original pre-1906 hotel kept a mistress at the hotel right next to the palace.  He didn't like having to cross the street to get her and she didn't like the looks she got from respectable folk when she went next door (because they all knew who/what she was!), so this guy did the only appropriate thing to do: he built a covered bridge/walkway between the hotels.  This was such a fantastic idea that soon lots of other rich guys were keeping their mistresses at the next door hotel and having them use the bridge.  It soon became known as the Bridge of Sighs (a la Venice), and if you were a single lady living at that next door hotel everyone knew what you were doing for a... um... living.

True(ish maybe?) story: President Harding, a well known womanizer, died in this hotel in 1923.  That part's true.  The part that may or may not be true is told by the Sheraton family, who owned the hotel at the time.  Apparently they called in the owner of the hotel - who was a woman, by the way - into the president's room to tell her that he had died.  Then Mrs. Harding, who was known to often fight with her husband over his lady friends, claimed that President Harding had died of food poisoning from the hotel and that the United States government was going to sue the owner and the hotel for killing him.  Mrs. Sheraton was sharp, and told the first lady that she had no such proof and would do no such thing!  No one else had gotten sick, only the president.  She demanded an autopsy be performed to check for foul play, such as poisoning. Then she looked over to the nightstand and noticed a cup half full of what looked like water.  She sniffed it and said it smelled "off" and that she wanted it checked for poison.  Mrs. Harding grabbed the cup and threw it down, and claimed that they would not be suing the hotel.  She also refused an autopsy for the president.

True?  Who knows, but it sure makes for a good story.  I'm not advocating the murder of the leader of the free world, but I have to say that I like a first lady with enough gumption to take matters into her own hands.

I would have loved to have eaten lunch here (they have a special one after the tour), but I had another tour I needed to get to.  Wouldn't it be lovely to eat lunch here with your closest girl friends, chatting the meal away while dressed in your nicest clothes? So elegant!

True story: the cheapest bare-boned wedding you could have here would cost, at a very bare minimum, $60,000.  Sorry, Tess.

True story: after World War I (or was it WWII?  I can't remember) the president and lots of kings and queens and dignitaries from around the world met in this garden court for a special peace celebration.  Very fancy-shmancy.  And what better to have at a fancy-shmancy party than doves flying across the room, representing peace and hope. Very climatic.  Well, these doves were supposed to just fly across from one end of the room to the other, as they had been trained.  But apparently the garden court was so lovely and so comfy that these doves decided roost in all the little alcoves up high. For days they tried to get those dang doves down, but with no luck.  Eventually they got them down but wouldn't say how; the press asked over and over if they had been shot, but the hotel adamantly denied this.  Years later, some work was being done on the ceiling and tiny pellet holes were found in the glass tiles.  They had shot the birds of peace!

But the best part of this story?  Trying to explain the irony in this to the German tourists.  They finally got it and laughed hard about "killing the white peace birds"! (Think of this said with a German accent.  I'm still giggling.)

After the tour I had to face something I was a tad nervous about: public transportation.  I don't know why, but the thought of having to deal with this freaked me out a little.  I blame it on all the fun I had on the bus with the kids earlier this summer.  Even though I didn't have kids, I didn't want to have to deal with bus fares and transfers and the crazies that inevitably love to use public transportation.  But I had to, because I was headed to Golden Gate Park and that was just too far to walk.  Luckily, I could get there on the Metro (the light rail), and wouldn't have to make any transfers.  I was still a bit nervous walking down to the station when I had a realization: I had mastered the Underground when I was in London, why couldn't I do it here?  Plus, public transportation info is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator as far as intelligence is concerned, and while I'm no genius I am certainly not low in intelligence.

I got to the park just fine.

It was a bit strange walking around the park.  I had been there several times over, but it was all when I was a teenager.  I loved that park and had lots of fond memories of it.  It seemed a bit surreal to be there as an adult and all alone.  I wandered a bit, bought an overpriced pretzel and Diet Coke from a vendor, and listened to a choir singing for some memorial they were having a the music concourse.  The weather was perfect and it was lovely.

My tour for that afternoon was at the Japanese Tea Gardens.  Again, this might seem a bit touristy. And it is.  And I have been to the Gardens several times, but I really wanted to learn more about them.  The tour was TOTALLY WORTH it.  The scenery was gorgeous and the history was truly interesting.  Not poisoning presidents interesting, but still worth the $7 admission I paid.

Fun fact: Golden Gate park is actually bigger than Central Park in NY.

So the gardens were created as part of a big exhibition SF had just before the World's Fair in New York back in the 1800's some time... too lazy to Google it.  Anywho, everyone liked the gardens so much that they became a permanent part of the park.  The head gardener/caretaker actually lived in the garden with his family.  Their house was where this part of the garden below is now.  But during WWII the gardener and his family were relocated to an internment camp in UT and his home was destroyed.  Isn't that sad?

Oddly, they destroyed the house, but not the entrance gate to the house.

Here's our guide - he's the one on the right.  The one on the left is known as "The Buddha that sits throughout the sunny and rainy weather without a shelter."

The gardens were simply spectacular.

At one point during the tour the guide asked if anyone knew which 2005 movie had been shot in the gardens.  He claimed that no one had ever been able to guess the right answer, but if someone did they'd win a prize.  I thought about it for a few seconds and blurted out "Memoirs of a Geisha".  He looked at me in amazement and said I was right!  How did I know which movie it was?  I had read the book and seen the movie and remembered that the movie had come out when I was pregnant with Josh, so it must've been around 2005.  Plus, it had to have been a movie with some sort of setting in Japan, so... I didn't explain all of that, just said I was lucky.  I won this nifty magnet.  A major award!

When we passed this area we were lucky enough to run into the three head gardeners and the last living person who had actually lived in the tea gardens.  (She was the granddaughter of the original gardener.)  We got to ask them all lots of questions and it was awesome.

 

My feet on the stone bridge... with some koi.  (Can you tell I like to wear maxi skirts when I travel?  So comfy!)

This is the moon bridge.  It's so cool!  It felt a little weird climbing it all by myself, because everyone else was with family and friends and taking pictures of each other.

But that didn't stop me!  I climbed it!

And took pictures of my feet!

And then nearly killed myself tripping over the afore-mentioned comfy skirt.  I've never claimed to be graceful.

After the tour I had some time to kill, so I headed over to the de Young Museum of art, which was right next to the tea gardens.  I spent a lovely few hours there, enjoying the art and enjoying the fact that I didn't have children to fight with.  (As did some other patrons.)  Lucky for all of us, I didn't take any pictures.

The Metro ride home was STUFFED.  Everyone decided to ride into the city at the same time, I guess.  On the way back to the hotel I decided to stop by the Ferry building and do a little shopping.  This sample box of olive oils made it home with me.  They had free samples and they were DELICIOUS; buying them couldn't be helped.

By the time I got back to the hotel I was beat.  Despite my Metro ride I had still walked a good five miles that day.

Lance got back and we tried to figure out what to do for dinner.  We had lots of ideas, but we didn't want to walk far or wait long.  Plus, neither of us weren't very hungry right then. (It's hard to decide on dinner when you're not hungry.)  We finally decided on a Korean place close to the hotel called Stone Korean Kitchen.  We both had the bi bim bap served in 500 degree stone bowls.  SO YUMMY.  (Also, SO HOT.)  I love how the rice gets all crispy on the bowls.  I also loved that instead of having plain old ice water they had cucumber water.  Yum.

After dinner we went looking for dessert, but to no avail.  Everything in the financial district closes around 7pm because no one actually lives there.  This was disappointing, because nothing is sadder than really wanting ice cream and not being able to get it.  Well, the nice restaurants were all still open, but we didn't feel like waiting for a table and having to order and all of that.  And McDonald's was still open, but c'mon, I did not want to go there.  So no ice cream for us.  But don't feel too bad for us - there was still plenty of M&Ms trail mix back at the hotel, which made for a pretty good end to the day.

p.s.  I never thought I could get tired of M&Ms... this trip proved me wrong.

Cole's Preschool Page

I was out of town for the first week of Cole's second attempt at preschool.  I think this turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because so far so good.  No tears, no phone calls, no Cole freaking out about even the thought of preschool.  It was probably better that Janene took him instead of me because Cole is definitely a Momma's boy.  Leaving Momma?  Hard.  Leaving Janene?  Not hard. (Sorry, Janene.)

Cole's really grown up in the past two months or so.  He poops in the potty.  He actually listens to me... sometimes... mostly... well, more than before.  Time outs have been drastically reduced.  And he likes preschool and actually wants to go.

Miracles happen, people.

Here's the "All About Me" page I made for his class book.

San Francisco - Day One

Look, I realize that reading about someone else's vacation can be about as exciting as looking through someone else's old high school year book.  But I feel the need to post this for posterity.  So I promise to try to make this as interesting and entertaining as possible, as long as you promise to pretend you read it all and didn't just scroll down through all the pictures.  Deal?  Deal.

Having spent a good chunk of my life living in the Bay Area, I'm no stranger to San Francisco.  I've been to all the touristy spots several times; heck, I could probably give the tour at Alcatraz.  (I've even been on the behind-the-scenes-extra-special Alcatraz tour.  Super cool.)  So I decided that for this trip I was going to try to do and see things that I had never done before.  I wanted to learn more about the history and culture of the city; way more interesting than whatever's goin' on down at Fisherman's Warf.  Also - less crowded and cheaper.  Bonus.

We stayed at the Harbor Court Hotel, which is right on the Embarcadero (the waterfront.)  That first morning we found a bit of breakfast in the Ferry Building and decided to eat outside.  We had a great view of the Bay Bridge, not that I took a picture of it.  But I did get a picture of the backside of the Ferry Building, which is not nearly as attractive as the front, but oh well.

There's our hotel - the shortish red one in front. (You can see the sign.)

Lance had to head off to the Moscone Center for the first day of his conference, and I had a few hours to kill before my first tour, so I meandered around the financial district, trying to get my bearings.  (That dang diagonal Market Street!  Seriously, Brigham knew what he was doing with the numbered grid system in UT.)  I people watched and window shopped and just thoroughly enjoyed being by myself without having to worry about kids!  (SF with little kids? No thanks.) Then I stumbled upon Crate & Barrel, which I normally love and which I love even more without children!  Good thing for my budget I had a limited amount of space in my luggage; otherwise, I would have bought so many awesome bowls and platters and other wonderful things. (Yes, I know I can buy all that online, but there's just something about being in the actual store...)  Instead, I found an apron that I really like.

It's kinda masculine, but I think that's why I like it.  (Most of my other aprons are quite feminine.)

So finally it was time for my first tour. While planning for my trip I discovered that San Francisco offers tons of free walking tours all over the city. Seriously, guys - these tours were AWESOME!!  The guides were all friendly and intelligent and the tours were all extremely interesting. And did I mention free?  Well, they ask for donations, and I gave the suggested $5 each time, but it was well worth that and more. I went on 5 of these tours in the space of 3 days, and would have done more but there are only so many hours in the day.

The first tour I went on was titled "Bawdy and Naughty" and was about the thriving prostitution business that has always been a part of SF.  It started in a little alley named, ironically, Maiden Lane.  At one point during the mid 1800's over 1000 prostitutes lived on two blocks of this lane.  Yowza, that's a lot of ladies of the evening.  See the gates on the side?  Those aren't the originals, but there really was a gate there at one point to keep the respectable ladies from accidentally walking there.  Apparently, some lady was walking home from church, accidentally went down that street, and was quite insulted when all the, ah, workers yelled things to her like "Why are you giving it away for free when you can get paid for it?!" and things of that nature.  Yikes.  (And haha!)

I learned that just before the gold rush there were around 300-500 people in SF.  Within the next two years that number swelled to over 50,000, most of them men.  Word spread, and working gals from all over the globe came to make money.  On average, the ratio of men to women was 50:1.  It was all about the economics of supply and demand; money was there to be made!

Here's our tour guide; he did a pretty great job, although he often got distracted mid-sentence.  This was the only tour I went on where I didn't drastically lower the median age of the group.  Perhaps it was the subject matter... :)  I must say that considering the subject matter, it was all very tastefully discussed.

Actually, the tour was really informative about all sorts of things.  My favorite parts were about the "Bawds" (madames of the *wink*wink* parlors).  These women knew what they wanted and went for it!  They often had quite a bit of money and influence around town.  These women gained quite a bit of status, and were often in cahoots with the police.  Every year there was a Policemen's Ball and these working girls were always elected "queen" of the ball!  (Seriously, there'd be pictures in the newspaper of the police chief with the madame on his arm.  Everyone knew who she really was but just looked the other way.)

We ended the tour at the St. Francis hotel, which has a really interesting history that I won't go into here because you all have access to Wikipedia.  (But my favorite bit is that the first meeting of the UN was held there.  Cool.)

The tour lasted about 45 minutes longer than I expected, which meant I needed to rush a little if I was going to eat and get to my next tour on time.  Luckily, you can't spit in SF without hitting a restaurant. And everyone - EVERYONE - in the financial gets their lunch to go, so I knew finding something wouldn't be a problem.

**Side note: we decided to not get a rental car for this trip because: 1) parking and driving in SF is - excuse my French - HELLISH, 2) it would have been really expensive to rent, park, and drive the dang thing, and 3) SF is very pedestrian-friendly.  So I walked basically everywhere, averaging about 5 miles each day.  Up and down those dang hills. **

Anywho, as I made my way toward China Town I found a Mediterranean place that was pretty full but had a line that seemed to be moving quickly.  I took this as a good sign and ordered a chicken shwarma to go.  I didn't want to eat in the tiny place, so I decided to take my lunch to the park where my next tour started.  This was... interesting.

For reals.  I was in Portsmouth Square Plaza, where apparently every old person in Chinatown hangs out during the day.  There were tons of old men gambling with different Chinese board and card games.  I totally stuck out like a sore thumb and got some unusual looks.  (Actual song that ran through my head: "One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong...")  But then I found an area that was not quite so gambly and that had other women around, so I felt okay about eating there.  My shwarma was DELICIOUS, made even better by the fact that I could watch this rather round Chinese grandma totally beat these younger men at what appeared to be some version of poker.  I didn't have to speak Chinese to realize that she was quite the card shark; it was quite entertaining.

Eventually my tour of Chinatown started.  In front of this statue. Which happened to have a bird on its head.  This tickled me for some reason and I had to take several pictures.  Because c'mon, the bird was on it's head!

Here's our tour guide - he's the one without the bird on his head.  He was EXCELLENT, by the way.  Probably the best guide all week.

Did I mention how I ate with this view of the Transamerica building?  Pretty awesome.  I was pretty bummed that you couldn't go to the top of that or any of the other skyscrapers in SF.  I guess Chicago has the corner on that market.

Also, the Hilton that's in front of the Transamerica, just to the left?  So ugly.  Seriously, I kept staring at it and thinking that it looked like some sort of Communist concrete building project, which I guess is appropriate since it's right next to Chinatown and all.  But seriously.  I decided that day that while I really do love SF and it's beautiful because it's by the bay, Chicago's architecture beats it hands down.  Anyway, back to the Chinatown tour.

"But Maren", you're thinking, "you said you didn't want to go to all the touristy places.  Isn't Chinatown touristy?"  Yes, very much so yes.  But this tour went well beyond Grant Street (the most touristy spot in Chinatown). We went up and down small alleys, through the local neighborhoods, and down Stockton Street, which is where all the locals do their real shopping.  (Think exotic foods, herbs, etc.)

They put the lanterns up to attract tourists, which is the biggest source of income for Chinatown.

We learned all about how Chinatown started, about the discrimination laws made against the Chinese, about the immigration boom to this area, and the associations that were created to help these immigrants.

We learned about the tong (Chinese gangs) wars and how a massacre of tourists in the 70's finally got the locals to work with the police to crack down on all the illegal activity.  We learned about the opium dens and other not-so-great things that Europeans did to the Chinese.

We learned about how much poverty there is in this area because it still largely is made up of recent immigrants and those who cannot afford to leave the area.  (Mainly the elderly.)  The nicest apartments in the area are considered nice only because each apartment has it's own kitchen and bathroom, instead of sharing them communally.  No one know exactly how many people live in the area, but it is considered the most densely populated area in the country, which I totally believe because it was CROWDED.

We even went inside a folk temple, which people in Chinatown really do use.  They didn't mind if we took pictures, but it still felt a little odd.  They liked a lot of bright colors and lights in there.

Here's the front of the folk temple.

We went up and down all sorts of alleys, most smaller than this.  But this one had the fortune cookie factory, which you can kinda see on the lower left.  It's the last one left in SF, as fortune cookies are now made in big factories across the US.  Fun fact (that I already knew but thought I'd still share): fortune cookies were invented in SF.  They're not Chinese at all, other than they've adopted them because we (Americans) expect to have them with our Chinese (American) food!  I bought a bag of regular and chocolate fortune cookies to take home to the kids, who happily ate several this evening.

It was at this point that I remembered I hadn't taken any feet shots during this trip.  (A tradition started when I went on a cruise.)  So, here are my feet in Chinatown.  Yes, my nails do match my new, comfy Tevas.

After the tour I window shopped a bit, looking for souvenirs for the kids, but didn't really find anything that 1) I was willing to have around the house, and 2) was willing to pay for.  (There's a lot of crap being sold out there, people.)

At this point I must mention that it was HOT.  Okay, not that bad.  But uncomfortably hot in the sun and when you're hiking up and down hills.  That morning I had been freezing, even with my long skirt and jacket on.  This is how you know you're in San Francisco in the summer: freeze in the morning, melt in the afternoon - depending on what part of town you're in.  (Seriously, the micro climates in that town are crazy.)

I eventually made it back to the hotel and crashed into bed, exhausted.  A few hours later, though, I had to get up because Lance and I had dinner plans with the good people of VEEAM.  Yeah, don't feel bad - I had never heard of them either.  That's because you and I are not IT directors.  Lance, however, is an IT director, and happens to be one VEEAM's favorite clients.  We went to the Salt House, which was a pretty happenin' place.  I spent most of the evening listening to boring IT talk (Which reminded me of when I used to work and Lance would come to dinners and have to listen to us discuss advertising.  We're even now, Lance.), people watching, and fighting a losing battle with jet lag.  That said, the food was excellent and free.  We had a GREAT waiter, who didn't make me feel weird for not taking advantage of all the free alcohol.  (He made an excellent Cherry Coke, BTW. :)  I even got to have something I've always wanted to try: poutine.  I don't know how authentic the Salt House's version was, but mercy, it was good.

Lance and I happily walked our full selves back to the hotel, dodging the homeless people on the sidewalks and enjoying our time together.  It was a great first day.