A full day in the city, fun!

Captions from top:
Greg and Dani at Coit Tower, View of the city from Coit Tower at dusk, Greg looking cool-almost hipster, Aunt Sue and Uncle Eric at dinner, Chris Greg and Dani at dinner with Rocker poster behind us, Victorian homes on Alamo Square, Victorian homes with the cousins Chris and Claire.

San Francisco Day 3
Day 28
11/13/09

Today we slept in for awhile after our late night exploring the city by bicycle. My aunt had gone in the morning to get Claire from her environmental camp and then swung by our condo to pick us up for lunch. It was great to finally see Claire. We went back to the house and had pitas and hung out until Chris got home from school. We drove by Chris's school, Saint Ignacious in the city, as well as some local museums, the tea gardens, the Haight-Ashbury District, and the Victorian homes at Alamo Square that San Francisco is famous for. We also had the pleasure of visiting Tartine, the French bakery our friend Nathan (who we met on the Leggett climb) works at. Unfortunately we missed him by an hour. We had some amazing pastries at Tartine. I think that if I lived near Tartine I would probably be about 15 pounds heavier because I would eat there every day. We then went down to Union Square, where my Uncle Eric works at an architectural firm, Hornberger + Worstel. He showed us around the office and we looked at the models and drawings of their projects. They work on a lot of hotels and large buildings for universities.

Next we dropped Claire off at a birthday party in ChinaTown and looked around the city more. We went to Telegraph Hill, where the book about the parrots was set. At the top of the hill is Coit Tower. It was built as a memorial to the city and inside the tower are beautiful paintings commissioned as part of a public works project.

Afterwords, we ended up at a nice Italian restaurant called Sardini's Trattoria in North Bay, a traditionally Italian neighborhood. We had an excellent meal and much of our conversation was about a poster behind our table with about a hundred different rockstars drawn on it. We were trying to name as many of the rockers as we could (See picture). On the next block down from this restaurant is a ball park where Joe DiMaggio used to play as a kid. We went to a little pastry shop afterwords and tried our first gelatos and cannolis (thanks Sue!). After dinner and dessert we went down to Fisherman's Wharf to pick up Claire from her party. It was a fun place to be and Greg and I even went into a candy shop with the girls and got some taffy.

We saw a couple more interesting San Francisco sights before heading home. It was so great to have my Aunt and Uncle show us around. We would never have known to see all of the cool little places they took us. It was a good "insider's" view of San Francisco. What a full day! We will sleep well tonight.

Dani