A September to Remember

Alan and I have a few months of California living under our belts, and now we have successfully had two rounds of visitors out to see us. My mom and Kyle arrived on Thursday after spending a day at Pebble Beach. I took them on a thrilling tour of the apartment and the dog park, and then Alan and I took them out to eat and showed them a bit of campus. Mostly just the creepy parts: the mausoleum, the Angel of Grief and the cactus garden. We saved the big campus tour for Friday, when we went up in the Hoover Tower. This being my third time up, I learned that you can actually seen San Francisco from the tower. We ended up walking miles around campus. It was great.

In the Rodin Sculpture Garden. Mom, putting her hand upon a naked hip; Kyle, palming a head.



After lunch with Alan, we headed up to "the city" to show Kyle the famous Lombard Street and the Golden Gate Bridge. I think I was even more impressed with the bridge this time around. It's truly an amazing feat of engineering.





From the bridge we headed to our Fisherman's Wharf hotel. After a quick "break" (aka dropping off our bags) we headed off to explore the city by foot. We walked around North Beach (SF's Little Italy) and found Chinatown, which we had fun exploring.



Chinatown was pretty much exactly as I had imagined and seen in movies. We even saw two women having a turf war over which corner each one was allowed to pass out her restaurant pamphlets. I couldn't understand a word, yet knew they had to have been yelling Chinese curse words at each other. We continued on from Chinatown and kept walking...and walking...and walking. We definitely got to see a lot of the city, thanks to the young 23-year-old in the group. Old ladies prone to foot problems like my mom and I never would have made it alone.