San Francisco

my san francisco get-away. here we go. :) for starters, let me explain why this trip happened. a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . . (ok, maybe not that long ago but it was the 80's,) a little girl named anne lived in germany. and every year or least every other year, she flew across the atlantic ocean to visit relatives in california and utah. she earned a helluva lot of frequent flier miles. delta said they would never expire because that was the way the program was back in the day.

well, january 2008, delta said, we're tired of you people with your precious never expiring miles and we're getting rid of the whole kit and kabootle, you have until dec 31 2008 to use or lose. so i used. travis and i discussed it and several factors went into play. what with me being pregnant most of the year, and then having a new baby to take care of, there wasn't anyway we were going to get-away together. and seeing as how they are my miles, he graciously suggessted i take a girlfriend trip. staci also had some miles to burn so it was perfecto. we decided on san fran because we couldn't be gone that long. we are still mommies and it is christmas time. so if we flew east coast (ie new york) that burns a whole day in travel time. so we went west coast and picked a big city we've never been to before. voila! a trip was born.
We woke up at the butt crack of dawn on thursday the 11th and flew from st.george to salt lake. apparently we booked the "library" flight because i was shushed for talking! that's right, a lady in front of us actually turned around and very rudely put her finger to her lips and gave me the stink eye. whatever chica. that was the extent of our travel tales for the trip there. the return trip is another story. don't worry, i'll post details. all in good time. anyway, we got to san fran, took the shuttle to our hotel and it was around lunchtime once we were settled.


here we are in our hotel. we stayed at the hilton in the financial district. very nice digs. we enjoyed our accommodations immensely. thank you priceline.com. we had some city info from a friend of staci's mom and we wanted some good chinese for lunch. we had heard about dim sum but were very uninformed as to what that was exactly. so our very gay, very friendly and very knowledgable concierge joel, helped us out. turns out dim sum is not so much a particular food item but more of a style of eating. its a bunch of appetizer type dishes that they push around on carts and you take some or none of whatever sounds good. they stamp your ticket when you want something and when you're done, you just take your ticket to the cashier. no menus. no ordering and no forks, chopsticks only. i was proud of us for eating our entire lunch, no problem.

the seaseme chicken- fantastic! lettuce wraps- equally fantastic! the squishy shrimp with shark fin- not so much. in fact, i couldn't look at staci while i ate it or i knew i would gag. the cart pushers were not very well versed in english and we had a super hard time understanding what the food was. but that is part of the adventure, right? overall, an A for lunch.
we also explored china town a little after lunch. but i didn't whip my camera out, staci did and so you'll have to wait till she posts to see those photos. we shopped and found lots of . . . um . . . interesting items. very bizarre/touristy/weird things to be purchased in china town. and we bought some fun stocking stuffer stuff for our families. that's all i'm gonna say about that. ;) and FYI, china town san fran is the largest concentration of chinese people (mandarin, cantonese and szechaun) outside of the peoples' republic of china. it felt like we were in another country. and on a side note, it was cold. as in, we wore our hats, gloves, scarfs, the entire time. a quote attributed to mark twain goes something like this, "the coldest winter i ever spent was a summer in san francisco." there is something about that bay air and early morning fog that just chills you inside and out. bbbrrrrr. but it was nice to walk and stay warm.

we explored union square, which is, . . . (wait for it) . . . a big square. shops like gap, levis, macys, victoria's secret, williams and sonoma line all the sides of the square. there is a huge christmas tree in the middle and the whole place is very festive. staci and i went into tiffanys, the jewelry store. we drolled over some absolutley amazing pieces and even tried on an $85,000 dollar ring. that's right, an eight and a five followed by THREE zeros! wowza. they are known for their brillance and sparkle and they live up to the hype, that is for certain. then we wandered aimlessly among the 3 floors of williams and sonoma. kitchen nirvana. i could have spent some serious cash in that store. :) we just puttered around the shops the rest of the afternoon. we bought our 3 day municipal transit passes which were very handy. we were able to ride on the iconic trolleys which, incidentally, are the only moving national monuments in the country. very cool.

here we are at the restaurant where we ate dinner, called anchor and hope. it's an oyster bar/fish house. we passed on the oysters. no thanks. i ordered the lobster roll and staci had the salmon. the bread was delish (a nod to mary ann) and i thoroughly enjoyed my meal. it was very urban and modern. here is a picture of the interior.

here is the christmas tree at union square.


a place called beard papas. recommended by our concierge, staci and i both agreed we could have passed on this and been fine. its a creme puff place, but way too much filling and nothing special at all. this place had nothing on sarah. hey, you live and learn. and the idea is very novel.
more self taken photos. we pretty mastered it in two days. :)
its time for me to go to bed. days 2 and 3 to be continued.