San Francisco

Packing always takes longer than I think it will... So instead of getting to bed early, we left ourselves with only four hours of sleep before our big flight. Fortunately the excitement of travel made it easy to wake up in the morning. We had a quick trip to the airport because we live within walking distance to the Canada Line, which takes us there in about 15 minutes.

Our flight had two stops - San Francisco and Hong Kong. We intentionally planned it so that we had a 12 hour stop over in San Fran in order to see the city and spend time with our friend Bonnie. San Fransisco is a beautiful city. The colourful old homes and rickety street cars almost brings a sense of nostalgia. Many of the street cars are different from each other. We hopped on one which had wooden benches inside as well as signs written in Italian. It must have been shipped over from Italy to be reused. We rode on transit to check our Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf. It is almost like Granville Island, Pike's Place Market, and Downtown Disney all put together. Markets and tourist shops line the walkways of the pier. As soon as we got off the street car it started pouring rain and we had forgotten our umbrella, so we ran inside to get some shelter and found ourselves at seafood restaurant which overlooked the harbor. They apparently had the best clam chowder in town (which comes in a sourdough bread bowl... There is something brilliant about getting to eat the bowl after eating the soup), so we ordered that as well as an appetizer platter. During lunch we discussed some of what we had learned at the marriage conference that we attended right before the trip. Meanwhile, out on the dock there was a massive sea-lion basking in glory. Another sea-lion poked his or her head out of the water and started swimming toward the other one. We wanted to see it jump out of the water, but instead it just came up for a quick kiss with the other sea-lion. At that moment we remembered that it was Valentines Day, which we don't celebrate. However, the restaurant was giving out single roses to all the female customers, which was really nice. We decided to give the rose to Bonnie later.

We didn't get to see much of San Francisco, but I felt like I got a good enough feel of the city to decide that I could live there (wherever we go, we ask ourselves if we could live there if career opportunities ever brought us there. But of course Vancouver is our first choice). After our lunch and a quick walk, we headed to Bonnie's house on the Muni transit system. As soon as we walked into her place, I asked how many people live there because I saw about 300 pairs of shoes stacked by the door. We all laughed because those shoes belong to just three women. We were still soaked by the rain, so Bonnie lent Debbie her sweat pants and I got to wear her scrubs (she's a doctor). We ate leftovers (including some tofu noodles, which I had never heard of before... quite tasty) and had good conversation as I wore Bonnie's snuggie. After a quick visit, Bonnie was so kind to drive us back to the airport for the long-haul flight to Singapore.

-Jeff