Had a great time, but didn't leave my heart..

in San Francisco. My Mom gave Nathan and me plane tickets and hotel points for Christmas and he chose the location, but in the end, he wasn't able to go, so my Mom filled in instead. So here's what we did:

Monday- woke up at a very reasonable 4:30 a.m. (the earliest I've ever woken up, by the way) to drive to Chicago for an 8:50 flight. It normally takes about 90 minutes to get to Chicago and I left at about 8:15, but thanks to construction and good old Chicago traffic, I managed to arrive at my gate just 30 minutes before the flight. There weren't any airline surprises, unless of course you count a fully packed plane and an extremely short Hispanic man who sat next to me who believed in neither learning the English language nor deodorant. We arrived after a 4 hour and 40 minute flight, wandered around SFO trying to find the poorly marked BART station. We got to the hotel, unpacked, and tried to find something easy and non-strenuous to do. The easy choice? Travel across the bay and see UC-Berkeley. The campus was not what I expected, but it was very nice. There was a whole area of Redwoods just beyond the entrance and there's a stream that runs down the middle of the campus, which makes for a very serene surrounding. We wandered around looking for Paige's request (a purple "Berkeley" t-shirt), and after eventually finding it, we found the law school. The building seems very outdated but that is based purely on the hallways since I didn't get to see any classrooms or the library. However, there was a nice, typical Berkeley flier begging law graduates to protest at graduation (there's a picture in the slideshow). We then got something to eat, wandered around Berkeley and saw plenty of old hippies, and headed back to the hotel.

Tuesday- We started out relatively early since we were on Eastern and Central time. We saw San Francisco's City Hall, which was a cool building with a dome that replicates St. Peter's Basilica. Outside of the hall, there was a whole group of people doing Tai Chi, which would seem out of place for anywhere but there. Next on the agenda was visiting Alamo Square, which a hilly park surrounded by Victorian homes. But what's so special about these homes? Here's a hint: whatever happened to predictability? the milkman? the paperboy? the evening tv? That's right, the Tanner family purportedly lived in one of these houses (though they've been painted since).

After looking around, we headed down to Chinatown. We ended up eating at this neat sushi place (I know, not exactly Chinese, but compared to some other options, it was definitely the right choice) where the sushi comes on boats that float around the sushi bar. After lunch, we hopped on a cable car and rode down near the bay. After looking around some, we headed to Fisherman's Wharf, which should really be called Tourist Central at Fisherman's Wharf because of a) the sheer amount of people there and b) the litany of vendors selling the exact same, crappy t-shirts.

After looking around (and knowing we'd be back), we headed off for Pac Bell...err SBC...err AT&T Park for the Giants-Astros game. Thanks to stubhub and a bunch of apathetic Giants season ticket holders, I was able to score pretty goods seats for $15 each. We got there really early because I wanted to look around the stadium and try to catch batting practice. As I was walking around in right field, an Astro hit a home run that was caught by a guy standing no more than 5 feet in front of me, and of course I'm still looking for my first home run or foul ball. The Giants won 4-2 on a great pitching performance by Matt Cain (who also hit a solo shot to help his cause). And as hot as it was during the day, it was just as cold at night there and we almost caved in and bought a stadium blanket.

Wednesday- we started off in hippieville at Haight Ashbury. The highlight of this portion was getting four blocks away from Haight-Ashbury and having some drunken vagrant refuse to get off the bus, meaning we had to hike the 4 blocks. That isn't so bad, except for that we saw the lowest of lows in those 4 blocks- myriad homeless people, people who haven't showered in days, some guy humping plastic dinosaurs, etc. At the corner of Haight & Ashbury we found a cool t-shirt store with a bunch of retro products- I got a "The City" Warriors shirt and Mom got a Louisville (not Kentucky) Colonels shirt for Nathan- I'll give a prize to someone who can tell me about the Louisville Colonels without looking them up. We looked around the area and found some famous houses, including the Grateful Dead's house and where Patty Hearst was held for a while after being kidnapped.

Next, we headed to the Golden Gate Bridge. It must have been at least 85* outside, but near the bridge, it felt like 60*. The bridge was pretty awe inspiring and it's pretty amazing that construction in the 1930s was so forward-looking. After hiking about halfway across the bridge, we turned back and headed for Union Square, which is surrounded by a high-rent shopping district, which I didn't enjoy, but Mom seemed to like window shopping and looking for her specific makeup product made by the guy who sang Humpin' Around and introduced Whitney Houston to crack-cocaine. After refeuling at a diner (which turned out to be a local chain and violated our no chain policy for the week). Finally, we hopped on another cable car and rode it all the way to Lombard Street. After climbing up one of San Francisco's famous (or infamous if you're worn out) hills (and Mom was stuck with the backpack), we headed back to the hotel for the night.

Thursday- we packed up and headed for the hotel in Fisherman's Wharf where we were spending our last night (thanks hotwire.com). There wasn't much on the agenda for today, other than Alcatraz and a nice dinner. We caught the ferry to Alcatraz and headed to island that Nicolas Cage made famous (too bad there's no sarcasm alert available on the interwebs, but I hear Al Gore is working on that). Surprisingly, or maybe not for this city, there's a steep incline from where the ferry docks and the where the prison is located (about 130 feet, which is 13 stories). We took the audio tour, which was pretty neat since it was narrated by ex-guards and ex-prisoners. A few things that I didn't know were that a) the island was originally used as a Civil War prison and b) the island was co-opted by Native Americans as a form of protest in the 1970s. We headed back, rested a little, and then had some great seafood at Scoma's.

Friday- Not much to report other than a cab driver screwing us by taking us on the long route to the subway station and by lighting up a cigarette without even asking if we minded. And the result? A solid $0 tip for him. We headed to SFO, rode back on another plane, I drove back to Milwaukee (and got there 3 hours later thanks to getting lost and a lot of traffic) and Mom flew back to Louisville.

Overall, it was a great trip. I'm not sure that I could live there permanently, but I'd at least consider it as there's a lot to do.