One Week of San Francisco 11/9-11/14/2008

Sunday 11/9/2008 – Weather was fantastic, a sunny and brilliant fall day. I met with my Beinu friends and my daughter – Kristin, Grace, Koren and Yamei – in a famous restaurant in Chinatown, R & G Lounge, for lunch. We then took a long walk through Fisherman’s Warf, while stopping at Peet’s Coffee for a relaxed cup of coffee. We ran into one disturbed, disruptive person, loud and unruly, at a Safeway store. My daughter told me, “In SF, you’ll get a lot of this type of crazies. Usually they don’t do harm if you don’t provoke them. In New York, you can get into big trouble with similar type of people.”

Monday 11/10/2008 – My husband Steve and I went to Berkeley, checking out our old haunts (we lived nearby for one year in 1980). Not much was changed. We toured the Spral Plaza famous for the political rallies and riots in the 60s, then went on to Albany where we rented a place on the street of Ordway (We never located the house – they all looked the same.) “Walker’s Pie Shop” on Solano Avenue where old people liked to congregate and socialize back in those days, where one could get a decent size of meal and pie for a fair price, is no more. We then strolled down to Vivarian the snake aquarium, and browsed the REI where we used to do a lot.

Tuesday 11/11/2008 – Veteran’s Day and Kristin had a day off from her paralegal work. Steve, Kristin and I first went to the DeYoung Museum, but it was too crowded. So we turned around and went to the Asian Art Museum instead where they had an early Afghanistan art exhibit, mostly gold pieces from the period when Alexander the Greek occupied northern Afghanistan. Afterwards, we toured around the Japan Center which seemed a bit quieter than I’ve remembered. At night, we met with my sister-in-law and niece at an Indian restaurant, the Rotee, near Kristin’s apartment on Pierce Street (in the Haight-Asbury neighborhood). San Francisco is a beautiful city distinct with its colorful and varied Victorian or Edwardian architecture, much prettier than New York City. It also seems to be friendlier and easier for young people like Kristin to start out, except the rent is quite high for her.

Wednesday 11/12/2008 – I took the day off resting at my in-laws’, only went out at night to meet Steve’s high-school buddy Tom in Berkeley. Tom works for a prestigious architectural firm in SF for over 30 years.

Thursday 11/13/2008 – Steve went with another of his high-school friends, David Gowen, for a strenuous hike. I went by myself to explore Oakland Chinatown on account of Kristin’s recommendation (She thought Oakland Chinatown is a bit more “authentic”, less “touristy” than San Francisco Chinatown.) Indeed, I was able to take care of my mundane Chinese business quite well there: I ate a hearty Vietnamese meal; bought a pair of utterly comfortable walking shoes; picked up some nice jade pieces for my new craft projects,; finally visited the popular Asian community library sampling the large selection of Asian and Taiwanese magazines. I came back and met with David, Steve’s friend, who was quite an amazing individual in his own right: an autodidact who never went to college, but has a great love for nature and is becoming an well-known expert on Bay Area plants, publishing articles in respected journal and all that.

Friday 11/14/2008 – Steve and I went to visit the San Francisco Aquarium. Steve didn’t like it as much as the old one before all the remodeling fanfare (He thought, in an effort to make the aquarium environment feeling “more natural”, the new aquarium was becoming less friendly to the visitors – It was hard to see the creatures, and hard to move around exhibits.) I was happy nonetheless - I got to see the weirdest creature I’ve ever seen in my life: the leaf sea dragon. After the aquarium, we drove to Sausalito for a quick tour, again, not much change there – same old, same old!

Saturday 11/15/2008 – This concluded my 1-week vacation to San Francisco. Susie