San Francisco

The evening I returned from southern California, Joanne, who I met in Vietnam six moths ago, arrived on a flight from Las Vegas. Since I had last seen her she had made her way through England, Ireland, France, New York City, Miami, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Los Angeles, Colorado, Utah, and Vegas. She was in the final leg of her trip and had arranged to spend a couple days with me in California and then come out to Hawaii for a week or so to get nice and relaxed and tan before heading back to Australia.

She is the second of the people I met on my trip to have come and visited me. Mark, also from Vietnam came through Hawaii a couple months ago. That being said, all of you that I met on my trip and those of you who are old friends from the mainland are always welcome to come and enjoy the nice weather any time you like.

Armed with my Dad's car and a map of San Francisco, we headed into the city. Our first stop was the new De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. The completely new museum was finished in 2005 to much architectural controversy (I like it). One of the best features of the new museum is the 9 story tall tower which has a 360 degree observation deck on the top floor that you can go up to for free. It offers some amazing views of the central portion of the city.

After we enjoyed the view from the museum we made our way along to Clement Street in the Richmond District of San Francisco where we had dim-sum for lunch. Dim-sum typically consists of various types of meats and veggies wrapped up in dough and steamed. Lunch for two came out to about $5 and we were totally full.

After lunch we headed to one of the most recognizable structures in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge. Surprisingly enough, I had never actually walked out onto the bridge, so this was a new experience for me.


We only had so much time on the parking meter so we were only able to walk out to the middle of the span, but the views were amazing!



From the bridge you get one of the best vistas of San Francisco itself.


After enjoying our walk across the bridge we headed down to the north edge of the city to go to Fisherman's Wharf. The area is SUPER touristy, but we were able to accomplish two very important things. One, Joanne was able to continue her systematic sampling of every Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor, and, two, we were able to check out the california sea lions at Pier 39. They are an exceedingly noisy lot, but they are great fun to watch as they jostle for position on the platforms and push each other off. A pinniped king-of-the-hill sort of thing.

After seeing some of the touristy sites in the city we headed out to the Mission District to meet up with my friends Dan and Emily for drinks and dinner. We started at The Lone Palm where we had a couple drinks with some of Dan's co-workers from the Nature Conservancy. I was a little surprised when one of them, who I had never met before, called me a liar when I told her that I was an archaeologist and that I lived in Hawaii. My job and place of habitation isn't that strange is it? After drinks, we headed out to a really good sushi restaurant. After giving Dan and Emily a ride back to their house because it was raining, we headed back to my folk's house after long day.