First Bay Trip

I went to the Bay Area for my first time about a month ago, and man is it a cool place! [1] Having lived in SoCal and being used to the late and at times inconvenient mass transit, I was quite impressed with the practicality and efficiency of BART. Anyway, the main area that I was so amazed at was downtown San Francisco, which I visited for a whole 8 hours. I went there with Margret (I was staying with her family while I was up there) and we met up with Kirk in SF at the Civic Center. We meandered through Chinatown and Little Italy, and then walked up all the way to Coit Tower.

We decided to go all the way up to the top of the tower, in hopes to get a nice view of San Francisco. The top of the tower gave us beautiful views of our surroundings, and, coincidentally, also allowed Kirk to be right next to a man who proposed marriage to a woman (who happily agreed)! It was pretty cool, because then we all just looked on as they hugged, had a terse but affectionate kiss, and went back to enjoying the view. Since Kirk and Margret brought digital cameras, they took pictures (*cough* which I still haven't received copies of *cough*) of the views (and I believe the newly-engaged couple).

After hiking up to Coit Tower and down, we were more than ready to mangia [2]. On Kirk's suggestion, we went to Pomodoro's to eat, and it was pretty good food. I can't remember what I ordered, but I remember it tasted good. Kirk (he was sort of the guide that day) then took us to this place to get gelatto, and then finally to Cafe Trieste. The gelatto was good, but since I don't drink coffee, I can only take it on faith that it really does make good coffee.

We then decided to head up to Pier 39 to look at the shops. The only shop that we went in was a babushka shop. The shop had some pretty big babushkas, and some of them were based on past Russian leaders. There were also these signs (which Kirk had never noticed before) telling a bit about the history and facts of Pier 39. One of the signs talked about how the pier had to be totally re-done with a cement substratum, which saved it from eventual condemnation by making it much safer.

From there we went to Ghirardelli Square, which wasn't that exciting: good chocolate, but not much else going on. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we're doing this all on foot, so our legs were getting a good work out by walking everywhere. Anyway, so on our way back from Ghirardelli Square, we went to Lombard Street. Lombard Street doesn't have anything that makes it really cool, save its crookedness, and that was enough for me.

From Lombard Street, we walked back down to Little Italy and went to ? Bookstore. Kirk and I immediately tried to find the language section, and Kirk dived into a book on Old English. I, on the other hand, just looked at the titles, and kept interrupting Kirk with a "Oh, look at this!" and a "Wow, this looks cool!". In the meantime, Margret was in another section of the store, and I didn't ever find out what she was flippin' through. We stayed there for about 1/2 hour, and since we weren't buying anything we decided to jet.

By this time it was getting dark, and so we headed back down to the Montgomery BART Station. We had decided to meet up with Ben Strong for a bit, so we had arranged to meet him in San Jose where he lives. Now Margret lives in Milpitas and so we had taken the BART from Fremont. Kirk, on the other hand, lives in Turlock so he had taken the BART from Dublin/Pleasanton. Therefore we decided to go to Fremont, drive to San Jose to meet up with Ben, and then drive to the Pleasanton station to drop off Kirk at his car. However, the direct line to Fremont was no longer running, so we had to hop on the Dublin/Pleasanton line, then transfer to the ?Richmond to Fremont line.

On the the Dublin/Pleasanton line, we had a good conversation with a parent about the relationship between them and their teenager. All of us agreed that teenagers don't realized how much their parents mean to them, and only realize it afterward; it's just tough for the parent to get survive those teenage years where the teenagers act stupidly. The parent was really nice, and we had a wonderful talk about their little son, who was with them too. The kid was very inquisitive and didn't seem to be causing his parent too much trouble.

Well, when we finally met up with Ben, it ended up being at the Denny's where Margret worked last summer. Her brother's girlfriend was our waitress, and we had a good time having a night breakfast and catching up with Ben. He's working at Stanford in a lab, and he's doing much better than he was doing when he first started it about a year ago. It really was good to see him so happy, and he's just one of those people who just makes me laugh every time around him. Anyway, he had to wake up early the next morning to catch a flight to San Diego, so we left after about an hour of chillage.

The other days I was up there I spent with Margret and her family: going to Boomer's (great company, but nothin' new for me), to Marine World (good rides and attractions, and Margret's family is tireless!), and to church (good homily). Nothin' came close to amazing me more than downtown SF did, and since I think this entry is way too long already, I'm stopping.

[1] I know, it's quite pathetic that I've lived in Cali for my whole life and never been to the Bay. However, I have been to NorCal in general: I went to Hume Lake once a year during high school, except for one year when I went to California Golden Boys State which was held at CSU Sacramento. I also went to the Monterey Aquarium with my family after freshman year of college, so that counts too, right? return

[2] Sadly, this is one of the only things I have that point to my Italian heritage (my last name is the only other one I can think off of the top of my head). I actually didn't know "mangia" wasn't English until I came to college and my friends didn't understand when I said, "Anybody wanna mangia?" Of course, I know it's not the right conjugation in Italian or anything like that, but like I said, it's one of the few things that I point to part of my heritage. return

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