San Fran by the Foot

Did you know that the San Francisco peninsula is right about 6 miles across? Neither did I. While that doesn't sound that large, when you meander, that becomes a long way to walk. First things first though.

I went to the Oakland Temple on Thursday. It is a wonderfully gorgeous temple with one of the top 3 or 4 views I'd say I've seen from a temple. It's the temple where my dad got his endowment and that made it extra cool. I love how friendly everyone is in the temple. It could have been because it was the middle of the day on a weekday and there were hardly and patrons there, but all I did was ask the way to the changing room, and I had a bunch of people to help guide and show me the way the rest of the time that I was in there.

After visiting the temple, I came back to Berkeley and met up with a group from the institute to play Ultimate. I'm not the best (I have a tendency to throw a truly terrible pass when I'm under pressure), but I was able to hold my own with and enjoy the group. I love that at 5PM, it's perfectly gorgeous outside, the same as at 8AM or noon. I'll say it again: 

The weather here is ridiculously gorgeous.

So, now to Friday. I checked out the site where I'm working starting on Monday. It's a lot bigger than I expected, so I'm excited for that. I went and parked my car at the BART station in southern Berkeley, bought a pass, and rode in to San Francisco. I hopped off downtown and started walking. I knew the general direction of Chinatown (the first place I wanted to visit) so I headed that way. I had downloaded an app which runs in the background, and when you pass a site or noteworthy place it plays a little info blurb. This picture -> is of the shortest and most narrow street in the city. Lol.

I wandered my way to Chinatown and found all sorts of wonderful junk there. It's like every single 99cent store sent the things they couldn't send to this section of town. Oh, and then there were all the paper fans and zen gardens and other wonderfully stereotypical Asian tourist goods available for purchase as well. As I didn't want to have to carry souvenirs with me for the next several hours, I only ended up buying lunch while I was there. I couldn't decide on what to get, so I got the equivalent of an appetizer sampler.

As I left Chinatown, I decided to head towards Lombard St. I entered North Beach (little Italy) and, fittingly, found the Sts. Peter and Paul Church. After walking around in there (I LOVE stained glass in cathedrals and the like), I looked up and saw Coit Tower just up the way. That was one of the sights that Amanda and I hadn't gotten to go to while here last year, so I trudged up the hill and got too look back over San Francisco. It's a truly beautiful view, and it is so very different from what I'm used to.

Back on foot again, I finally made way way to Lombard St. (the other attraction that Amanda and I didn't make it to before we had to leave). It is truly mind-boggling that they were able to build buildings on that much of an incline. But (as you can see!) they managed it just fine. I'll have to drive in to the City one of these weekends so that I can drive the "crookedest street in the world".

With some time to kill, I went down the hill (thankfully!) to Fisherman's Wharf. Amanda and I had spent a good amount of time there, so I just wandered around, enjoying it. I got to see them turn a cable car (apparently that's a pretty big deal). And went over to Ghirardelli Square to get my free piece of chocolate. Yesterday was caramel-filled milk-chocolate :) I went upstairs to look at the to-go order counter, and they were handing out free chocolate there too! SCORE!

I watched street gymnasts and spray paint artists, sea lions sunning (it's 22 years since the sea lions took over Pier 39), ships at the piers, and a mediocre magic-show. As I was walking around, I got a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to a guy with a pad in hand informing me "that's a violation of code here, sir." I was terrified that I had done something wrong (like, I don't know, drive around with windows tinted too darkly). I looked at his pad nervously as he was writing and realized just as he informed me that I wasn't "smiling enough" that this was just an average Joe looking for money. When he told me the fine I had to pay went to help a soup kitchen I thought: you know what? That's a heck of a lot more creative way of raising money than just ringing a bell or something. So I pulled of some money to donate. It turns out that the pad he was scribbling on was actually the back of a sticker that says "I Luv Your Smile", so I got that out of it too :)

On my way over to a big food festival, I had to pass by Ghirardelli Square again, so I may or may not have stopped in and gotten another 2 free pieces of chocolate (they'd rotated the workers, so I didn't have to worry about them recognizing me).The food festival looked good, but I wasn't ready for dinner yet, so I walked a ways further down the shoreline. They're getting ready for the "Escape from Alcatraz" (I just started typing Azkaban, lol) Triathlon. It really looks like it is going to be a cool triathlon- they start in a ferry just off Alcatraz and then swim to the peninsula to bike and run.

So I got to the Palace of Fine Arts and walked around it for a while. It's a beautiful building that has been without a permanent purpose for nearly a century now. It was built for some expo, and it was so beautiful that no one wanted to get rid of it, but they couldn't figure out what to do with it, so it's done a bunch of random (and sometimes menial) things. On my way from there, I stopped by the shore to watch a bunch of wind-surfers and kite-surfers on the bay. It looked so cold out there, but it also looked like they were having such a good time!

I was finally more than hungry for dinner, so I headed over to the food festival. There was food representing at least 15 different countries there, and I ended up trying a pork-belly burger. It was quite tasty. I had to decide at that point whether to wait and see the next band come on stage at 8, or go next door to this Improv show I had seen an ad for. Improv ended up winning out, so I bought a ticket and headed up.

The format for the show was a version of what they termed "The Harold". I was really interested to see it, but also kind of nervous. I'm used to Jester'z Improv, where you don't have to worry about what's on stage. The first act started with the prompt "Blue" and they started in to 5-part harmony improving a doo-wop song. I melted right then and there. Two scenes later, at the "Blue Moon Lookout Spot" there was a duet just as good as the first song and soo funny. I cringed a bit when they dropped an F-bomb, but then they finished the act with an improvised Shakespearean monologue which was amazing. Act II started after intermission with the prompt "focus" and they actually did the first scene from a suggestion I'd thrown out, which was really cool. Pretty early on in the act, the language started getting worse. I told myself if they used the f-word again, I'd have to leave. The next scene improvised a song which I would assume would have the title (from how often they repeated the line as I was on my way out of the theater) "We're F***ed!"

It was time for me to call it a night, so I grabbed some groceries and hopped on a bus headed downtown. My phone had long since died (I got the picture of the improv theater just before it shut down), so I was pretty much flying blind on this one. I started talking with a group of (very obviously!) tourists from Wisconsin. When they found out where I was getting off, they decided to get off there too, because it was the closest stop to their hotel. The problem was that I wasn't sure exactly where that stop was. And suddenly, the blind was leading the blind. Luckily, as the bus filled up, a native sat down next to me and let me know right when to get off. A quick BART ride, and I was back in Berkeley and home in my bed. Quite an adventurous day, but also most exhausting. My highlights for today are going to be lunch with a bunch of the other new Bayer interns and getting my laundry done. And I am just fine with that :)