Back from San Francisco

This isn't a travel blog, so I won't spend a ton of time talking about our visit to San Francisco. I do need to, just a little though since it was so fantastic. We met my brother and his family on Wednesday. We hadn't been to San Francisco, other than to drive through, for over ten years. When my brother was in law school, he and his wife lived in student housing for Hastings Law School, which is right on the edge of the Tenderloin District... in other words, in a pretty extremely scary area. A guy tried to mug Russ on one of our visits, and on another someone broke into our car and stole our travel crib. We had fun most of the time otherwise, but you can see that that could put a damper on our enthusiasm about visiting, once my brother and his family had moved from there.

This trip, we stayed at a Day's Inn across from the San Francisco Zoo. It was less than $100 o night, which is unheard of in S.F. We had considered visiting the zoo, but the "tiger incident" nixed that. We got there the morning after the attack, so it was BIG news, lots of hints from the media that those boys had been bating the tiger, definitely not smart if true. I'm not sure what I think. I guess the zoo should still have made the cages idiot proof, but I kind of have the same feeling I get if I hear someone has died in a high-speed car crash or while swimming in shark-infested waters. My daughter was unhappy that they had shot the tiger, but what were they supposed to have done?

The highlight of our visit was going to The Nutcracker Ballet at the War Memorial Opera House. It was incredible. At the end of act I, it looked they were actually dancing in falling snow, which even piled up like it was real. We had "nose-bleeder" seats, but still had a fantastic view.
Our motel was quite close to the Cliff House and Golden Gate Park, and yesterday morning Russ and I went in search of a good cup of coffee around that area. We thought that Louis' looked not only like a good place for coffee, but also for breakfast. We were right. This is a picture of my two kids and my daughter's friend, who went along with us. I am particularly happy about this picture because my daughter's friend has on a hat that she knit on the five-hour trip in the car.

I finished it up for her the night we arrived, but she knit most of it. Paige knit one too, but she managed to lose it already. I was so happy about the knitting because Paige has showed next to no interest in knitting or even having me knit her stuff. They were both so into it that we tried to stop at a knit shop on Divisidero on the way to Fishermen's Wharf. It was closed, but we found a fabric store, Britex that had yarn...and thousands of bolts of fabric. The girls bought yarn to knit legwarmers! Their prices weren't great. I bought Paige two skeins of Cascade Baby Alpaca wool for $15 a skein. I'm not even sure that she has enough, but it's worth it to see her enjoying knitting.

We're home for today, and then may head to Santa Barbara to spend the day with my brother and his family there. It's a little closer, only a couple of hours, so I'm ready to get back in the car again, I guess, especially if Paige and I can knit.