I went here and there and…

If you didn’t guess from the photos in my last post, we took a little trip to the San Francisco Bay area. On Saturday, my husband and I, with Adrienne (grandchild #3) drove up to meet Michael (son #2), his wife Melissa, and children Elijah (#5) and Katherine (#6) who were flying in from Salt Lake City.

From the airport we drove to our hotel in Castro Valley, and later that day we drove to Jack London Square in Oakland where the first three photos in the previous post were taken. Our son and wife ran in the Skyline 50k in the hills around Lake Chabot on Sunday. I am not a runner and 50k in the mountains seems crazy to me, but they love it. That night we played a vicious round of miniature golf … I came in last.

Monday our entourage moved on to San Francisco because Michael and Melissa had an American Accounting Association conference to attend. The rest of us went on an adventure. Though my husband and I had been to S.F. many times, we’d never ridden a cable car. As it happened, our hotel was a block from the Market St. end of the line, so we bought round trip tickets to Fisherman’s Wharf.

Newbies that we were, we had no idea we had chosen a peak time to ride. We rounded the corner after buying our tickets and found a very long line. One hour forty-five minutes and a few BK fries later, we were on our way.  The photo in this post and photos number four and five in the previous one were taken during our wait.

Our first stop at the Wharf was The Rainforest Cafe for lunch, where the thunderstorms terrified Katherine. She didn’t quite trust the giant butterfly flapping its wings over our table either. But she loved the mac and cheese. Adrienne was disappointed this Rainforest didn’t serve calamari like the one in Disneyland. Photo number six of Elijah was taken there.

We spent the next few hours walking around the Wharf. Actually, I limped because the night before, I broke my toe by slamming it into a chair leg in the dark hotel room. If you were a reader of this blog last summer, you may remember that I limped around New York City because of a pinched nerve. Now, I’ve become a little apprehensive that a non-fiction book titled Limping through America’s Greatest Cities might be in my future.

Elijah bought a stuffed sea lion, and then we went to see the real ones sun bathing on the pier. The skyline photo, number five was taken from there. After eating ice cream, and buying fudge for later, we headed back to catch a cable car for the return trip. Unfortunately, the sun hid behind the clouds and the wind picked up just in time for our one hour and thirty minute wait because we apparently got in line at a peak time again.

On Tuesday, Elijah woke us to announce his discovery that SeaSea made a noise like a real sea lion when you squeezed him. Michael and Melissa returned to the conference. After Adrienne rocked Katherine to sleep, Elijah and grandpa settled in to watch TV, and Adrienne and I left to go shopping. Actually, only she shopped; I just limped along. Across from our hotel was the Westfield San Francisco Centre, a nine-story mall.  On the fourth floor, she finally found what she was looking for.

Later that day, we all headed back here. Michael, Melissa, Elijah, and Katherine have stayed with us since. The day we got home, we traded Adrienne for her sister Kaitlyn (#1) who’s been sleeping on the sofa until noon each day even though the rest of us are up and making noise around her for hours by that time. Crazy teenagers!

Anyway, that’s what I did this last week while the virtual world continued on without me. If you think I missed something huge, clue me in. I’m trying to catch up on blog reading, and I’ll write a real post next.