At the end of August, when I was feeling most sorry for myself for not having any amazing plans to travel anywhere, commemorating our first anniversary of living in North Carolina, and eating watermelons, I decided to text my friend Bridget to see if somehow we could arrange a visit. I was hoping maybe at least she could come visit me. But instead she convinced me to look into buying tickets to go see her since she lives really close to San Francisco. And let's be honest, it's much cooler to say that you went to San Fran than to Raleigh, right?
By the way, you must already know about Bridget. I mean, we've known each other probably from the first week of living in Misawa, Japan. Bridget lived just a few houses down the street with her three children whose ages matched up great with ours. And her husband is a dentist too who shared a (tiny) office with Robert for three years!!! So our families were very close. Although Bridget and her family have been living in completely opposite sides of the world from us after Japan, we have kept in touch through all these years. Bridget even came to visit us in England.
Bridget is one of those friends that I have collected over the years with whom it doesn't matter that you haven't really seen each other for years or that you text each other once a month. The seed of friendship is forever there and I am grateful for that.
Okay! So! I found a great deal for me to fly to Sacramento in October for 4 days. It worked out perfectly for Bridget as her kids were not in school and so her oldest could watch the other FOUR and we could go to San Francisco for a long girls' weekend. I was so excited!
Our other great friend Tawnya, picked me up from the airport. Tawnya is from our Misawa days as well. She is amazing and inspiring and someone we all look up to:) She took me shopping to the Japanese dollar store, Daiso, since we all miss the cute little Japanese thingies. Then we drove to Bridget's house where we had dinner. Tawnya and Larry, plus our other Misawa friends stationed at the same base, Khurram and Yildiz, came to dinner. It was so wonderful to be there with friends, although I was really feeling a hole by my side, wanting Robert to be there as well.
Tawnya and Larry
Bridget and Tom.
The following morning we got up before the sun was up at 4:30 so we could beat the traffic to SF. It was a Friday morning.
Right after we parked, we found a bike rental place where we got two squeaky bikes, watched a quick video about how to ride to the Golden Gate Bridge and got fitted for helmets and stuff. It was still very quiet in the city and quite chilly.
Just getting a hang of selfies at 8 am.
Can you see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background? We got so lucky to have such a clear morning with no fog at all!
Before I continue, I just wanted to note that I was simply BLOWN AWAY by San Francisco. I loved the atmosphere of the city and the views and beautiful buildings and the variety of food choices. It was simply amazing! It gave me new faith in the fact that there are still so many fascinating places to explore in THIS country. And that is always so exciting for me!
Okay.... Back to our biking adventures. Two girls and their bikes. We looked fabulous!
I don't remember how long it took us to bike, but it was something around an hour and a half. We stopped multiple times to take pictures of the Golden Bridge-hahaha.
It was just amazing to see this iconic bridge so close!
It was even better to be biking ON the bridge! Unbelievable!
The ride back was a lot more downhill than uphill, so it took us way less time. We worked up an appetite by then and felt so refreshed after exercising! So we headed to Fisherman's Wharf.
Bridget took me to this AMAZING place to get clam chowder, the famous Boudins. I loved that chowder and ate the whole portion including the bread:) And it was only 10:30 am!
To rest a bit we hopped on the hop-on-hop-off bus. But we kind of neglected the "OFF" part and just sat on the bus for like two hours enjoying the ride.
We went through the main parts of SF and I loved every minute of it! San Francisco has so much to offer! I was taking lots of pictures along the ride while listening to the live guide who was very knowledgable in his SF stuff but who was kind of hard to understand for some reason. I thought it was maybe because I am not a native English speaker, but Bridget was having the same problem:)
Oh yes! The GG Bridge again! This time we rode in a bus on top of it.
Yes, it was super windy! And so fun!
After we finally hopped off, in the afternoon, we took a tour of the US Pampanito, a WWII submarine docked in San Francisco. We are awesome moms-explorers:)
We had the place almost all to ourselves.
So crazy to see how the submarine operated and how many personnel it could stuff into one vessel.
This is a cool red-lit war planning room.
One thing that accompanied our three days weekend in San Francisco is the sound of the Blue Angels. It happened to be the weekend of their Air Show in the area (Fleet Week) so I was reminded again about the sound of freedom--that booming noise I learned to love after living in Japan.
And then we stopped by Daiso, the dollar store at the mall and bought some more cute Japanese stuff. Pshh...I had forgotten how to make my Japanese picture sign...
And that was Day 1. We were tired but felt like we had accomplished some of the most important things!
The following morning we got up pretty early and drove to Land's End! It was so beautiful to see!
There we saw the abandoned old bath resort that was still flourishing in the first part of the 20th century but closed down and burnt down in the 60s. Somehow I didn't get a picture of it;) Well, actually, if you look beyond my modeling shot you can see it, or what is left of it, down by the ocean.
I feel like I should start bringing a small blowing fan or something to create that "hair in the wind" look. 😆
Oh yes! The Bridge again! Can't skip taking the picture there. As you can see it was a bit foggier this morning than the previous one.
After Land's End we visited the Walt Disney Museum. It was a very informative museum about the life of Walt Disney. I didn't know so many facts about how he became so famous and what his work included. You get in free to the museum with a military ID, by the way.
After the museum we drove to Pier 39 looking for sea lions. Well...they must have been all scared of the jets swishing by as we found only a few of them basking in the sun.
We visited a couple more ships in the National Maritime Historic Park Area.
Then watched the air show from one of the ships and walked over to Ghirardelli Square for some delicious ice cream with fudge.
We shared this. Yummo!
One last thing we HAD to do because we were in San Francisco was to walk up and down the Lombard Street. By then we were the walking champions (we walked from our hotel to the ships, to the ice cream place and now to the Lombard Street). It was not an easy task to walk up from the waterfront streets to the top of the crookedest street in the world! This was probably one of the steepest ascends I had to ever climbed while not hiking. We crawled like little turtles up that hill and finally reached the top of Lombard Street...just so we could go down it now.
The street was kind of crowded with people walking up and down this twisty sidewalk as well as cars coming down non-stop, moving slowly (it's a one way). Although it is merely a short street, it was still just very cool to be there along with hundreds of tourists:)
Looking up the Lombard Street.
We decided to walk some more towards Chinatown as we were hoping to maybe get some good Chinese. After a steep descent we had to walk through crowds and crowds of the Chinese people selling produce on the street. It was seriously as we had left the US and landed in China. I heard no English! And when we reached the tiny Chinese place that we were looking for, they turned out to be practically out of food and almost impossible to understand. So we had to be flexible and figure out what to do instead.
As we walked to another place we came across the free streetcar museum. We spent half an hour or so learning a bit more about the streetcar mechanics.
And finally after the museum we walked down to the Italian town (Little Italy?:)) where we ate at a very cute restaurant, decorated in a very unique style, with good pasta and salad.
Guess what we did after dinner? WALKED to the hotel. It took us awhile, but we made it! And it felt great! My phone showed me that we had walked over 7 miles that day:)
On Sunday morning we woke up early again and drove to Muir Woods. This was such a serene place, especially as we were two of the first visitors to the park.
Amazing tall trees! Old and beautiful!
Bridget and I never tired of talking to each other and still had dozens of subjects for conversation left to discuss.
So we drove a short distance to Muir Beach. It was very inviting, sunny and warm. We spent an hour or so walking around the beach discussing our important life questions:)
On the way to Bridget's home we were hoping to stop by Mt. Tampalpais, but all the roads leading to it were closed!! It turned out later that it was because of a fire that was burning in the forest area nearby. Instead we decided to get an early lunch at a Puerto Rican restaurant. It was such good food!!! I absolutely love trying new kinds of dishes from all over the world and doing it with one of my best friends is even more special.
We drove through Napa area (that would be burning just hours later because of a crazy wind storm that started during the night!).
Before we got to Bridget's house, we stopped by Travis AFB. Oh, I can't describe the feeling I had in my heart when we drove through it. I felt a pang inside as I missed the life we had for so many years.
That evening (after we stopped by Bridget's house and confirmed that the kids were still healthy and happy and the house hadn't been completely destroyed), I went to Yildiz' house for a visit. I met her mom and we chatted for a good hour or so. It was so wonderful to see them--the Shahzads were our sponsors when we first moved to Misawa. Khurram is an oral surgeon for the Air Force who was stationed in England as well, but at a different base.
Seeing friends has been such a good thing for me! I reminisced over fun adventures on the other side of the world, solidified our friendships and confirmed that the only way is forward with our new lifestyle. It was such a good trip and I am glad that Bridget convinced me to go visit her! Till next time:)!
Lyana.
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