July 4th, 2010 in Destin Fl. for a mini vacation

Kathy asked me if I was going to write a journal of our trip to Destin, Fl. similar to what I did for our trip to Sanfrancisco. I’ll hit the highlights and points of interest (for me anyway), give my observations on the oil mess in the Gulf, and fill in the chinks with my usual catty remarks and sarcasm. It’s been a couple of weeks since we got back so I won’t attempt to put it all in order.
The ride down turned out to be really nice. Once we got off the interstate below Montgomery we turned off the beaten path and took the back roads all the way to Destin. It was all farm country on a two lane road. We passed thru several one-horse towns that looked as if they hadn’t changed in 50 years. Lucky for us that Kathy’s Toyota gets good gas mileage. We didn’t see a gas station for nearly the entire time. Some of the ones that we did see were shut down. If you weren’t a farmer in this part of the country, you were in big trouble. I don’t know what kind of work would be available other than farming. I even saw a sign on a trailer asking for work: “day laborer”, work needed. That guy must have been in serious money trouble. It started to rain on the way down and got worse the next day.
We were pelted with a steady downpour of rain the entire first day in Destin but we had a plan for it. Other than narrowly missing several drivers who appeared to be suicidal with their left turns immediately in front of us during the rain and testing the limits of our little buggy’s braking we spent the day shopping. We have been going to a lot of antique shops lately. I look for old woodworking planes and try not to buy tea pots and she looks for everything. I guess it’s a sign of getting slightly older when you see items you really don’t consider junk, just stuff you had 30-40 years or so ago and there is no way they could be considered antique. So we hit several antique stores and gathered a little information about an outdoor flea market that was upcoming on the weekend. Lunch found us nearly the only people occupying an out of the way Asian restaurant. I think it was Japanese and Chinese together. She had sushi and I had tofu. It was all excellent as I knew it would be, judging from my observations on the general hygiene of the place and tacky decorations on the walls. The best Chinese restaurants are to be found in the seedier parts of town and have to be really old and established before the food gets that down home flavor and they can be trusted. We also decided that sushi is the number one choice amongst the residents in that area because it was everywhere we went. I think we ate sushi nearly every day. At the little restaurant I bought her a pair of woven flip flops with some fancy needlework on them. She only has about 200 pairs of shoes in inventory and was worried that she was going to run out. I enjoy buying things for her and since they were smaller than a breadbox, watching her face light up is well worth the money.
Try as I might, I couldn’t find what I wanted in any of the antique stores and try as she might, Kathy couldn’t find anything she didn’t want. I had to talk her out of several items including some that were so large they wouldn’t even fit on top of the car, much less inside it.
The sun came out the next day and we didn’t see more than 5 minutes of rain for the remainder of our trip. We ran right for the beach and expected to be the only ones there because the media reported that everyone cancelled their vacations due to the oil spill in the Gulf. I guess the ones that were there already didn’t know how to listen because the beach was pretty packed. Beach real estate is pretty scarce and what little is available is shared by way too many people. We were given directions to our designated beach access by the hotel folks and told to keep a pass on the dashboard for the guards at the checkpoint. I told you that the beach is getting harder and harder to access and the guards and turnpike are a sure sign that access is being controlled tightly. We had a square of sandy beach that was about the length of the back of a sister hotel to ours with warning signs to stay the heck out of “their” beach on either side of the hotel next door. “No sunbathing or loitering” I pondered this a moment and decided that walking was neither of the two and took my chances and immigrated to the adjacent beaches. As I walked from hotel to hotel, the beach was much less crowded than ours. Beyond the hotels it was empty except for the FEMA crews who were patrolling looking for tar and oil.
The wife eventually decided she wanted to go out into the water. It was very rough due to the hurricane that was heading into Texas. I warned her not to go in above her knees as I figured she would get dragged out to sea by the rip tides and/or strong waves. She went out about 3’, lost her balance (and just about her bikini too), and was unable to get up. I was sitting there watching her flop around in the water wondering if she was ever going to be able to stand up again of if she would really get dragged out to sea when some guy walked over to her and fished her out. That was a close call.
Subsequent visits to the beach were pretty much the same except that one late afternoon on the July 4th weekend we were close to a bunch of college kids who were having way too much fun. Kathy stared and grinned at them the entire time. I figured that she wanted to go over there and hang out. If they would have so much as waved at her, she would probably still be down there with them. Maybe she was planning to conscript a few of the boys to rub suntan lotion on her. I wasn’t being too helpful in that dept. Probably would have been slightly more fun than sitting there listening to somebody bitch about how loud they were, I wish they would turn off that jungle music, when are they ever going to leave, just want some peace and quiet, etc. The kids ended their party by singing, “I’m proud to be an American” at the top of their drunken voices which ended with a round of applause by everybody within hearing distance. They stumbled off, leaving empty beer cans and beach chairs behind for others to clean up after them.
I did get to watch a pervert in action while he took a picture of a young girl in a bikini laying on the beach next to us. He walked past her in a straight line while his head turned around like it was caught in a tractor beam. Circling around behind her, he pulled out his cell phone then snapped the picture while pretending to make a call. He even held up the phone to his ear for a few seconds then walked off behind us. I don’t know if he got a shot of Kathy in her bikini or not since he walked behind me as well. I told her what happened and mentioned the possibility that he might have gotten her too and it freaked her out. Within minutes she knew that she was going to lose her nursing license and everyone from her work would recognize her on the website that this guy was going to put her picture on. She was laying on her belly so it would have had to been a shot of her behind. I had to ask her if she thought the people at work would recognize her rearend or not. She was sure that the pervert would have her on the internet in moments and we had to do something to stop it from happening. She wanted to shut down his website. I told her that it would be no problem as there couldn’t be more than a couple of websites with pictures of girls in bikinis on them. A little while later her ranting and general panic subsided.
She got a little oil on her suit at the beach and spend an hour back at the Hotel trying to get it out. I got a spot on my leg somehow. Other than that, there were a few chips of tar here and there but it wasn’t a big deal.
We ate a lot of seafood while there and paid a king’s ransom for it too. Lunch was nearly as expensive as supper. I paid $70 for a lunch of crab legs for her and grouper for me. We also got to wait for it for over an hour. As a matter of fact, the cost for a meal in the upscale places was even more horrible. I paid $100 for a couple of steaks and some drinks at a place called “Tommy Bahamas bar and grill”. We couldn’t get a table because more of those people who didn’t know about the oil crises were in there so they let us find a spot at the bar. Kathy wanted a Long Island Iced Tea so I got her one. Later I found out they were $11.25 each. She asked me for another so I got it and didn’t think too much about it until it was time to leave. She couldn’t finish her $35 steak so I told her to cut it up and we would take it home in a doggie bag. Watching her try to slice it up revealed that she might be impaired in some way. She was smearing that thing all over the plate and half of it was falling off onto the bar. I asked her if she was drunk but she assured me no problem, she was fine. We got out of there after having my wallet molested and I immediately confirmed my suspicion that she had one too many of those drinks. She was stumbling pretty bad and had bumped into me several times so I got her pointed in another direction and took her to the hotel. I was kind of thinking that the bartender sure did put a lot of alcohol in those drinks while I watched her make them and I also forgot that little miss muffet had trouble holding down even a half glass of wine without getting really silly. After the upscale fleecing, I went back to my usual lousy Chinese restaurants and found the food to be every bit as good, if not better, with pricing that even a cheapskate would smile at. Speaking of that, we were in Publix picking up some bagels and drinks and I also wanted to buy a small can of shaving cream. All they had were big cans which were more expensive than I was willing to shell out. I told Kathy there was no way I was going to pay $1.55 for a can of shaving cream when I knew I could get it at home for $.99. I told her I would just shave with soap and skip the shaving cream. About that time I thought I heard her muttering “cheapskate” under her breath. I turned around and asked her what that snarky comment was and she repeated it for me quite a bit louder. Anyway, I got to eat boiled shrimp that still had the heads on them at the Chinese place. Pretty cool. That and I had some of the hottest (spicy) chicken I had ever eaten. Those jalapeno peppers in there were enormous.
We found the flea market on Saturday morning but there was hardly anyone there. So we headed on down the highway to waste an hour or so in the hopes that more people would show up. Floridians aren’t much for getting up in the morning, that’s for sure. I even took Kathy to a yard sale to see if they were any different than the ones at home. After we got away from the tinsely, touristy part of Deston, it started to look more like the Florida I like. Local businesses, people, and the like. We didn’t see “Alvin’s Island”, the gift shop and junk emporium on every corner. No fancy outlet malls, shopping villages, or boutiques. The flea market turned out to be a lot of fun. They had a little bit of everything and it was obvious that nearly everyone there was a local. After lunch we started to head back to the hotel and got caught in a horrible traffic jam. It was the holiday weekend and I attributed it to tourists/vacationers but we later saw that there was a wicked wreck that slowed everything down. One car was on it’s roof and the other looked like it had been crushed in half. We found out the next day that there had been at least one death. I was bitching to Kathy about all of these tourists jamming everything up and that we were going to have to find another place to stay about the time we came upon the wreck. She didn’t care about the traffic and was simply happy to be there but indicated she was sick of all the complaining.
We looked around at the new trendy shopping villages and outlet malls but I hated every bit of it. There were signs in some of the clothing stores that they had exactly what the movie stars wore, the latest fashions, all priced accordingly. I didn’t find much that interested me. The hurricane that hit the area a few years ago, leveling it, ruined the entire town. Old Florida, with it’s beat up shell houses, old falling down restaurants and charm had been replaced with Hollywood wannabe designer outlets. One day I told her we would try and go inland a bit to find the old cracker Florida and we didn’t have to go too far. Another indoor flea market, some antique stores and my favorite; lousy Chinese restaurants, lifted my spirits.
At one antique store in the scary part of town, I found the holy grail of teapots; an English one that was made in Staffordshire, England. Exactly what I had been looking for and even on sale. I got it for around $16. In another one, I spied a pair of old Stanley woodworking planes laying on the floor halfway underneath some other things. I dragged them out and got down to some serious haggling with the owner. I got them both for $100. I didn’t need them but at that price I couldn’t resist. Those antique dealers are a pretty crafty bunch. The guy knew what they were worth. He told me that he asked someone he knew who was an expert and priced them on the high side for good measure. I told him my intention was to use them and not simply flip them for a profit. I think that’s why I got such a good deal.
On the way home we stopped at this tiny restaurant in the middle of nowhere. It had about 20 tables and was packed full. Everybody knew everybody. Our waitress was serving her Grandpa at the table next to us. The people waiting for a table were visiting with friends who were already seated. The food was incredible. We ate some real country cooking and the total was less than $20. During the meal Kathy had that interested smile on her face while she stared at the people across from us. When the waitress switched her plate and one of theirs, she saw her chance and jabbered with them for 15 minutes. I’ve got to get her out of the house more often.
I think I’m done with Destin. Next time we go to Florida I’m going to try and find a place that isn’t so developed. Navarre just might be the place; right next to the flea market. If I find somewhere fun, Kathy is likely to run off on me with a bunch of college kids or something.

Biscuit bodhisattva

Anybody who has known me for somewhat longer than 5 minutes knows that I like to cook. I have historically gone in for the strange and oriental pursuits and like to boast that I'm fairly good at it (I like to boast about anything I think I can get away with). It's been more than 15 years since the wife got me that hand hammered wok from the 30 minute infomercial we saw on TV and I'm still spending a large number of Sundays in the kitchen whipping up stir fry and dumplings for the family and occasional stray teenager. Any kid that shows up at my house becomes mine while they are here (usually with my son) and they will always be fed. I get a big kick out of sitting them down at the table and watching them eat. (I like to use them as guinea pigs to try out new things too). We once had a door-to-door salesman show up just as we were sitting down to eat a big Chinese feast. He was young and looked really hungry so I made him sit and eat with us and wouldn't talk business until we were all done. I didn't buy anything from him but he walked away with a full belly. So the other day it was getting close to suppertime and I was wondering what to fix. The idea of having supper at a cheap restaurant was looking good since I'm on vacation and there wasn't anyone here but me and the oldest son, Marsh. As I stood there in my pantry, waffling over the rather bleak selection of supper choices, in walks the other son and one of his friends. I had been hoping to catch him here for a few minutes since I always subcontract out all of my Christmas present wrapping to him and I had fixed his car this morning; so he owed me large, as far as I was concerned. I hit him up about the gifts I needed wrapped and he countered with the excuse that he couldn't because he had a friend over. Not to be outwitted, I immediately volunteered her as well and they were both conscripted into service as gift wrappers. There wasn't a press gang in the King's Navy that could have put those two to work quicker than me. She thought it was fun since she liked to wrap gifts anyway. I thought it was fun too since I wasn't going to have to do it. I like to buy gifts but I'll leave the wrapping for others. I loaded them up with all of my things and just for good measure I also gave them what the wife had left to wrap as well. "Being one of my kids" occasionally is a double edged sword in that you will do some chores.

My belly reminded me that I still hadn't solved the food problem yet and I quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to bail out and eat somewhere else. I thought about take-out pizza but remembered that I was facing the jaws of 3 hungry kids plus myself and my wallet was already groaning from Christmas spending. No problem, I'll whip up a batch of spaghetti. Cheap, quick, easy. Big problem: no noodles. I swear I had two big boxes of spaghetti noodles and now they're gone. I looked around for other options and started to get a little nervous. Jeez, I needed to go grocery shopping. We were out of everything. All that was left was the chicken in the refrigerator that had been seasoned for the next day's supper. I was going to make Southern style pan-fried chicken. It was going to be a special meal for the wife. You see, all these years that I spent studying the mysteries of Chinese cooking had left a big void in my ability to cook traditional Southern foods. Recently I had been practicing but the results were not too good. I was hitting the biscuits pretty hard and had been interrogating the older women at work for their secrets to biscuit Nirvana. I would bake up a batch, try them, scrutinize them, then back to the drawing board for more questions and answers. I watched Alton Brown on the food network. I studied recipes for hours on the internet. I discussed protein content in the flour on biscuit forums. Some said it was the type of flour, others mentioned shortening instead of butter, perhaps it was my kneading technique. My boss at work even floored me with the statement that he just bought premade biscuits in the frozen food isle and baked those! Oh, the inhumanity of it all! Imagine it if you will, simply popping a few of those floured hockey pucks into the oven and calling them biscuits! I believe that is still a misdemeanor in some formerly Confederate states. I just can't go on about it. I summed up all of my choices and decided that the best thing to do, considering the circumstances, was to cook tomorrow's feast tonight. The wife would understand. She knows kids too and wouldn't want to see any of them starve to death if they missed one supper. (She also knew about my biscuits). So there it was laid out in front of me. I was going to go all-out, hog wild, and fix a traditional Southern supper. Pan-fried chicken, made from scratch biscuits, mac and cheese, and corn. Only logistical obstacle was that I needed to get that stuff cracking right now. I set to work like a wild man, using my years of experience as an Industrial Engineer performing stop watch time studies to prep and cook everything as efficiently as possible and with the least amount of effort.

You're most likely wondering why I didn't make mention of gravy, that most puritanical object of Southern affection. They say it flows in the veins of all the sons and daughters of the Confederacy. I must admit that gravy is my Achilles heel. I just don't get it. When I make my confession about this shortcoming, I usually get grins and suggestions. "Oh it's so easy". "All you gotta do is..." I listen with a sheepish grin and think back to the day that 3 foot high flames were blazing out of the frying pan the last time I attempted gravy. My insurance agent has written a clause in my homeowner's policy that I am not to be making any gravy in that house or my fire insurance is cancelled.

I think I had it all on the table in about 35 minutes. As I was racing around trying to get it all coordinated and ready, I nearly forgot about the biscuits and pulled them out just in time. Brown but not burned, I was happy. The kids didn't say much, they were too busy stuffing themselves. But I did hear one comment: "These biscuits are so good, just like my Grandma makes". There you have it, the ultimate compliment, the purple heart of cooking, an Oscar: "just like Grandma's".

Tea for one

Tea for one

Tea is the second most popular drink in the world (water is first). Nothing to it; simply drop a few tea leaves into a pot, add hot water and enjoy. Or so it would seem. Actually, tea is sort of a Zen-like endeavour that can best be described as a journey with no end. The proper marriage of two simple ingredients has endless variations. Water is the first ingredient and thankfully the only variation is the temperature. The freaks will argue that the water must come from a running stream and cannot be bottled or (God fobid) come from a tap. I believe the most over-the-top example of water collection is the tea water that was gathered for an empress in China from the dew of plum blossoms in the mountains every morning (it's true). For the moment, I'll just get my water out of the tap, thank you very much. I can't taste the chlorine in it thanks to my filter. Maybe not good enough for the Empress of China but good enough for me. Tea water temp. can (and should) vary from boiled to just slightly warmer than tepid. It all depends on the next ingredient, the tea itself. The same tea will taste vastly different depending on the temperature of the water it is steeped in. I opened a package of "Sencha", a Japanese green tea and became a little worried when I saw it. The leaves were tiny. It smelled different that the other teas I had been drinking. When I tried it, I hated it. Tasted awful. Besides being tenacious, I am pretty cheap, so I wasn't about to throw it away or give up on it. Pretty good combination for a tea drinker. So I started experimenting with this stuff. The first thing I did was to heat the water less. In order to heat water anything less than boiling requires careful observation of the water as it heats in the kettle. I think that some kettles act different than others. I've got a cast iron kettle and it acts differently than my old tin one. Anyway; I had read in "The Tao of Tea", one of the great Tea classics, that tea water was to be heated to various degrees that were described by the size of the bubbles in the kettle. "When the bubbles are the size of shrimps eyes" is the temp. for white teas. "Bubbles the size of crab's eyes" is the setting for green teas. I think that "bubbles the size of fish eyes' is the setting for oolong and black teas but since I don't drink much of these, I don't pay attention to that one. Anybody out there ever seen a shrimp's eye? Or a crab's eye for that matter? Not lately, I'm sure. Well, it's a fun thing for me to tell others about anyway. Gives the whole experience a little bit of mystery to it. So, as I watched my water in the kettle for a crab's eye sighting, I noticed that the size of the bubbles does indeed change depending on the water temperature. Oh, I could get all technological on it and stick a digital thermometer in the water to indicate the ideal temperature but sometimes I prefer the old ways. Besides, who wants to stand there with a probe in their hand when all they have to do is look for the crab's eyes right? I started to pull the kettle off the stove earlier and earlier, noticing the behaviour of the bubbles and the water itself until I got the hang of this fish eye stuff. There is one other sign, which is most difficult and elusive to look for and that is "at the first breath of the water", meaning when you see just a faint wisp of steam from the pot. I don't usually catch that one. I believe it has more to do with the ambient temperature in the room anyway. So, as I progressed to catching crab's eyes, to shrimp's eyes, I noticed that the tea was starting to taste a little better. Tea should feel "silky" on your tongue. You will know what I mean if you get the temperature low enough. When everything comes together, the taste difference is dramatic. I've noticed that some teas are actually sweet, others have a wonderful woody taste, and others simply are hard to describe in words but they do taste good. It's possible to compare tea tasting in the same light as wine tasting. I had a tea in one of Sanfrancisco's Chinatown tea shops that was so good it didn't even taste like tea. It was fantastic. It was also $700/lb. yikes.

So I've determined that water temperature plays a big part in the preparation of tea. I think that this is of primary importance, the other variables are of lesser concern but merit discussion anyway. The amount of tea placed in the pot also determines taste but this runs in conjunction with the steeping time. Add too much tea and you better decrease the steeping time. Too little and let it sit longer. It's all about balance. I believe that the taste of the tea will be different depending on how much is in the pot. Take two pots of tea, side by side, one with too much tea and the other with not quite so much. Let them both steep, one for a little while longer than the other (the one with the lesser amount of tea in it) and they won't taste at all the same. I prefer to fix a pot of tea with the intention of only using the leaves once. Some like to throw the leaves in there and pour the water over them mulitple times, letting the tea steep longer after each pour.

So what's left? Why, the tea of course! Every tea has it's own method of preparation. The water temp/steeping time/quantity of tea leaves is different for each one. It took me nearly the entire jar of that Japanese Sencha tea to figure out how to correctly make it (at least to where I liked the taste). I went from hating it at the beginning, to loving it in the end. It really was wonderful stuff and taught me tea preparation. I need to dig around in my tea stash and see if there's another bag of that stuff hidden in there.

Man's best friend

So there I was, sitting in my easy chair, chatting with cupcake, quietly discussing our upcoming date on Friday. Scooter was on the couch sleeping and, after a fashion, woke up to jump in my lap for his daily visit and back massage . He had that friendly look in his eyes, as dog's do when everyone is home and they insist on being the center of attention. He usually won't come to me unless I call him so I was rather enjoying his uninvited company. I knew all he really wanted was his back scratched but I didn't mind being used. Petting a dog is very therapeutic and tends to make me forget my worries easily. 30 seconds into our little nightly visit and Scooter pukes all over my lap! K A T H Y!!! GET THIS LITTLE BLANKETY FRICKIN" SOB OUT OF HERE BEFORE I DROP KICK HIM INTO THE NEXT COUNTY!!!!! I guess we'll try it again tomorrow night.

Sanfrancisco day 7

Fisherman’s wharf

Our last full day in Sanfrancisco and all we had left to do was to take a tour of the bay. I was a little worried that we had run out of things to do. The guide book that I bought said to avoid the wharf because it was too touristy and did not capture the real feel of the city. At the end of the day I was in disagreement with the tour book about the wharf. It turned out that we had all kinds of things to do and see. We started out on the tour boat. It was a little hokey; what with our “tour guide” being Captain Nemo and some other silly characters. It was informative though, and the cruise around the bay was very nice. If I had another day I think we would have sailed across the bay to the tiny town of Salsilito. It was recommended by Captain Nemo as a fun place to spend the day shopping and looking around. We saw Alcatraz island. Pretty creepy even from just the boat. Here again, the tour book said it wasn’t worth going to but I think I would have liked to walked around on it anyway. We got to sail right underneath the golden gate bridge, then turned around and headed back. I think the whole tour was something less than 2 hours. I’ve left a few pics here of sights from the boat and one of Kathy in her scarf. She now looked just like the rest of the local Sanfrancisco hens. A good many of them were wearing scarfs. I bought that one for her in Chinatown, of course.

Back from the tour boat we walked along the waterfront and took in all the sights. The famous walruses on Pier 39 were there. I wasn’t impressed. I had more fun looking at all of the boats along the way. There were quite a few fishing boats there of all sizes and shapes. They were in varying degrees of seaworthiness too. A couple looked like they were about to sink right there at the pier. We came upon the very last of the Liberty ships from WWII that was on display. We didn’t go on it. There was a submarine from WWII there as well. I’ve been on a couple of these before so we didn’t take the tour. We did tour several boats that were moored along another pier though. There was a very large sailboat named the Balclutha that we spent a couple of hours on. Very neat ship. It was used to haul timber to Australia then used to haul salmon from Alaska. It was huge. There was also a large steam powered tugboat named Hercules that we walked thru. The tours were fun.

For lunch we stopped at a large bar with very lousy service but pretty good food. Then it was more sight seeing. There were all kinds of shops and street vendors selling mostly jewelry and portrait painting. The guide book said that the food along the waterfront was way overpriced. I disagreed again. I felt like it was way overpriced in the whole city. We never did get a bargain on any food.

At the opposite end of the wharf is what is known as the Ferry building. We looked around in it for awhile and what do you know, there was a tea shop there. Imperial Tea Court. (Okay, I knew about it already but I wasn’t letting on). We had tea in what I figured was the closest thing to an authentic Chinese tea house as could be had on the North American continent. The tea was served in gaiwans, which is a Chinese cup with a lid and a saucer, not the tea pot most are accustomed to. We enjoyed it as best we could but considering we were a little hot from the long walk, it would have been better to have something cold instead of hot tea. Oh well, I had to do everything and time was really running out on us. I picked up a tea decanter while we were there and actually restrained myself from buying any more tea. I had already shelled out over $150 for about ½ pound of the stuff in Chinatown a few days earlier.

The street car ride back to the hotel was interesting. We were packed in that thing like sardines. This was the same line that had passed us a day or two ago and left us to hoof it back thru North Beach.

We did some shopping and looking around in a huge mall when we got back to Union square. The mall must have had 10 floors. I gave up and gave out after about 5. We saw so much that we just couldn’t take it anymore. We even ran into another tea shop. It was about that time that I had had all I could take. A slick talking salesgirl tried to sell us some hand lotion or something that was supposed to be the fountain of youth but we managed to get out of there without buying any. She wasted about 45 minutes of our time too. I wasn’t too happy about that but she wouldn’t let us go and Kathy isn’t the type to just walk away like me. There was a leather shop that we wandered into that was having a fashion show. We were invited to stay for it and were even offered champaigne but when I saw the prices on that stuff, we beat a trail out of there. Way out of my price range. The girl that spoke to us looked like a plastic surgeon’s worst nightmare. She had every plastic surgery operation you could think of and they all turned out the same: terrible. She didn’t even look human but at least she was very friendly to us. This place had a couple of young girls at the entrance standing around looking pretty with next to nothing on too. The things they will do to separate you from your money. Unbelievable.

That evening finished our adventure. The next morning we packed and headed over to the bagel shop for breakfast and a packed lunch then it was time to wag all of those suitcases around until we got to the airport. I have never been so happy to be able to dump those things off. I humped them from the hotel to the train thru downtown Union Square, then thru the airport terminal to the tram, and finally to the ticket counter at the airline. I couldn’t believe that we managed to fit all of the junk we had bought into those suitcases. It’s a shame that you have to bring your own food onto the plane but air travel just isn’t the experience it used to be. It’s horrible and I doubt it will ever get any better.

Well, seven fun days of shopping and sight seeing complete! Our 25^th wedding anniversary gift to each other was little more than a dream fantasy two years ago when we first started talking about it and I’m glad that we saw it thru. We started planning for this about 9 or 10 months prior to leaving. I also never thought that we would actually go. When it was getting close to time to be making reservations I threw out the idea of Plan B to Florida instead but Kathy really wanted Sanfrancisco. A couple of days after getting back, I asked her if she would like to do it again and she said “Hell no!” I think I might have walked her too much. She was a trooper though, never complained a bit the entire time, even when I screwed up the streetcar schedule a few times.

Sanfrancisco day 6

The Sanfrancisco Zoo and the Hang Ah tea room.

Day 6 of our adventure saw us heading to the zoo. I had high hopes for it since SF is such a large city and the bigger cities usually have the better zoos. Well, it turned out to be less than stellar. It wasn’t really much better than any other zoo I had ever been to. I’ll post a few pictures just for fun anyway. On the way there, I started to get a little cocky with the transit system and nearly had us going in the opposite direction that we should have gone. Lucky for me, we were saved by yet another local resident who pointed us in the right direction. I just love those locals. They have got to be the friendliest people on the planet. The zoo is a long ride from where we were staying so we got to see quite a few sites on the way to it. Mostly, it was “how the other half lived”. We went thru a few areas that looked pretty grim. I was glad the train didn’t stop at any of the scary places.

As I said, there isn’t much to report about the zoo. The pictures tell the story well enough. When we got back to our room I wanted to take another crack at Chinatown and specifically, the Hang Ah tea room. I told Kathy I wanted to head over there to get some dim sum since the last time we were there all we had was tea. While there, another local mentioned to us that the Hang ah had the very best dim sum in all of Chinatown. A pretty big boast since there had to be at least 500 Chinese restaurants in the city but I had started to put a lot of trust in the locals and if he said it was the best, then that was good enough for me. We headed out with my assurance that we wouldn’t have to do a lot of walking since we were both tired from hoofing it around all day at the zoo. My perceived familiarality of the MUNI transit system was faulty again. The street I wanted to go up didn’t have the street car line I thought it did so I told her we would just have to walk a little bit to the next bus stop. Trouble was there wasn’t a next bus stop. We got to within eyesight of the Chinatown gate and I said we might just as well walk it in. The road was steep and we had already gone many blocks and Kathy was winded. Then something else hit me. Just where had I seen this place? I wasn’t sure. We walked around while I tried to find a landmark to get my bearings but it wasn’t happening. Further and further and no dim sum. It was very late on Sunday afternoon and I was getting worried that they would shut Chinatown down on us before we had a chance to eat. I was getting pretty worried about Kathy so I resorted to leaving her in one spot where she could rest while I ran up ahead and scouted around for our destination. I eventually found it and dragged her up one last steep hill before we got to the alley where it was located. In we went, panting and red-faced, for the prize at the end of the line.

The Hang Ah isn’t known for its décor. Inside it is all plastic dinnerware and colors. The white walls are trimmed in green and orange. By green and orange I mean bright, plastic green and bright, plastic orange. It is tiny. The dining room couldn’t have been much bigger than two typical bedrooms. We got the same waitress as last time and she was really happy to see us. A Chinese girl (imagine that in Chinatown), and had come over from China to get work. She was from Guangdong, I think. We chatted with her the entire time we were there. She had no concept of America from a geographical standpoint. She didn’t know where Alabama was and I don’t believe she had ever looked at an atlas of the country. I guess I am just more interested in geography than the average bear. I encountered the same thing with a guy I met on the wine tour who was from South Africa. He didn’t know anything geographic about the United States. He didn’t even know where Florida was and this guy was studying to get his PHD. Heck, at least a hick like me knows where Cape Town is.

Dim sum at the Hang Ah is a little different that what is considered traditional. You order what you want, and then they bring it to you instead of wheeling it up on a cart and tossing it out at you. Everything we tried was fantastic. The rabbit shaped dumplings were the best. They looked just like little bunnies right down to the ears and tiny eyes. Almost too good to eat. I had read that this place was the first dim sum house in Chinatown and had been in existence since the 20’s, I think. There were even pictures of Chinatown beauty pageants from years ago hung on the walls. I was disappointed in the tea. It was served in that all too familiar, stainless steel pot that is the epitome of Chinese restaurant tea. I have eaten in hundreds of Chinese places, from crummy, run-down hole in the walls, to really fancy ones and except for one place, they all have that same sad looking disgrace of a tea pot. Lucky for me that my favorite place back home serves me tea on a nice ceramic one like God and Buddha intended. We stuffed ourselves then said goodbye to the waitress. If I ever get back to Sanfrancisco, I believe this place will be my first stop.

For the ride home, we caught what appeared to be the last street car out of Chinatown. It was getting late and they were starting to roll up the sidewalks. I finally got my directions right and found the original car line I had wanted to use so the walk was quite short. It was barely 6:30 in the evening and Chinatown was getting very quite and dark. Kind of fitting to see it this way since we would not be coming back for the rest of our stay.

Sanfrancisco day 5

Japantown

Day 5 of our big vacation and today was destination Japantown. We headed out on the MUNI transit system and got off waaaay too soon. I must have misfigured our stop off point and we had to walk for a while to get there. This area was very nice. I found out later that Japantown is bordered by Pacific Heights which is one of the most upscale areas in Sanfrancisco. We hiked on in and I was taken back a bit with the area. It was pretty demure compared to Chinatown with all it’s glitz and tinsel. There were no throngs of tourists. No mobs of Japanese people going to the market to get the best deal on fish. It was pretty quiet. We poked around in a few places and didn’t see much until we came to the Soko hardware store. Oh my, this was my kind of place. They had tons of woodworking tools and many of them were Japanese tools. I picked over everything 3 times before going downstairs and getting overwhelmed all over again with all of the kitchen wares they had for sale. Nothing touristy about this place. They just had a lot of Japanese stuff. We looked around and I told Kathy we would come back to pick up some goodies I had my eye on.

We nosed around a little more, into a couple of small shops and a grocery store but we were mainly looking for the Japanese mall. When we found it, it wasn’t like what you would expect from a mall. There was not really any parking and it looked like it was tiny. Once we got inside, we found out that it was fairly good sized. Every store in this place was Japanese, right down to the Japanese dollar store. That place was hilarious. We looked thru furniture stores, antique stores, even a drug store. I started to blow off the drugstore as a waste of time but the more I looked, the more interested I became. There were literally tons of items in there for sale that you would never get in any regular drug store. The antiques were amazing, and the prices matched. I didn’t even know what half of that stuff was but it was expensive. In the tour guide I had bought there was a couple of sentences about a restaurant in Japantown that was one of the most authentic ones in all of Sanfrancisco. I didn’t have much faith that we would find it but we ran right into it. It was in the mall and had to be the smallest restaurant I have ever seen. It was more like a café and only had about a dozen tables, half of which were out in the walk area of the mall. I showed the small write-up about the place to the waitress and she took it back to the kitchen for them to see it as well. I asked her to have them sign my book but they refused, stating that they couldn’t duplicate the owner’s signature. I felt bad about that but I guess it was some sort of Japanese thing. While we were there an older gentleman struck up a conversation with us (the typical friendly as heck Sanfranciscan). He asked us why we were there and we told him we were celebrating our 25^th wedding anniversary. He was impressed and said that it was unusual to find anyone that had been married for that long anymore. He said that he and his husband had been married for 20 years themselves and …………….????? (insert loud record needle scratching across the entire album here). Well, we both smiled kind of sheepishly and said that was “great” that they had been together for that long and prayed there would be no more details on the “marriage”. He caught us totally off guard because he just talked and acted so normal. His “husband” came prancing over a while later and we knew who wore the pants in the family at that point. He had been haggling for a piece of expensive jewelry next door and was a giddy as a little school girl about it. It was only going to cost $1,000 and he had been working on the owner (a friend of his) for quite a while to get it to that price. The older guy said that he had all of his money tied up in jewelry since he was afraid to invest in anything else. Evidentally, the guy was quite wealthy. I’d be wealthy too if I never had any kids. Anyway, the conversation was pleasant and entertaining, especially watching the faggy one skip back and forth from the jewelry store. He wasn’t the least bit interested in eating his lunch and left his “husband” to fend for himself. Oh well. We left the little café, after having completely enjoyed our wonderful lunch, and spent a couple more hours exploring the mall. I stuck my head in a sushi restaurant where the food goes around a huge table in little boats. The smell nearly knocked me over but I would have tried it anyway. That mall turned out to be bigger than I could guess and we took in every bit of it. There were many Japanese restaurants. If I ever go back to Sanfrancisco, I just might stay in Japantown. It was really neat. Out of the mall and back to Soko hardware for my goodies. I bought two Japanese chisels and a Japanese saw. I also bought my souvinear tea pot. It was so different that I couldn’t resist. I had looked at easily over 500 tea pots and bought one from a hardware store, of all places. This one was unusual because of it’s texture and color. I like the shape too. Kind of small and really rough on the outside.

The guy we were talking to at the café told us to head over a few streets to Filmore because the shopping was supposed to be real good. We went the opposite of what I think he really suggested and ended up in a not so nice part of town. It felt like we were in the “hood” and we weren’t liking it so we went back. My plans to take a certain MUNI bus line were foiled when I found out that the street only went one way. I would have to find another route back. No matter, there was a little park just up the road that I wanted to see. The traveler’s guide said it was nice even though the guy at the restaurant said it wasn’t worth looking at and there wasn’t anything up there.

The walk up the street started out nicely. Lots of neat little stores to window shop in. Problem was, the street was getting steeper, and steeper, and even steeper. The farther we walked, the more strenuous it became. I knew where the park was, it just seemed to be more out of reach than I had anticipated. I was getting a little worried about my sidekick too. She was trucking along, not complaining a bit, but I knew she was running out of gas. We had to stop to rest many times before we got to this mountain park and I do believe the oxygen up there was a little thinner than down in Japantown. When the edge of the park was in sight, the hill was really steep, so much that I was a little concerned about our chances of making it. We troopered on like a couple of Mt. Everest sherpas and finally made our base camp at the edge of the park. Along the way we stopped and chatted with another local while we caught our breath. Friendly as always, she was pleasant and well spoken. Originally from Pennsylvania and quite happy to have that state in her rear view mirror to boot. At the park entrance, the steps were nearly straight up and looked to be about 2 stories high. This was beginning to get to be more trouble than it was worth but I was going all the way regardless. We trogged up the stairs and scaled our way to what I initially thought was the summit of this place. Turns out there was another area that was even higher but first we had a nice rest on a park bench.

In front of the park benches was a children’s playground. There was a small birthday party being held for a little girl. She looked to be about 5 or 6 years old, in a pretty dress that could have been a ball room gown, barefoot, with long blonde hair that was tangled from the wind. There were 4 or 5 of them in all, running around and laughing, taking a bite of cake that their mother was holding for them when they got the notion, then racing off for more fun. I watched them while I was still panting from our hiking ordeal, figuring that the steep streets didn’t even affect the locals, and amazed that these little kids had so much energy and joy. The whole scene didn’t look right to me. It was windy, a little cold, and the air was wet with a slight fog. Looking around it was obvious that we were on one of the highest points in the city. The view of Sanfrancisco bay was ours at a glance. And right in the middle of it there were these little munchkins, racing around barefoot in their fancy dresses, as the birthday party drew to a close. There was some cake left and I was wondering if they would offer any to us. We weren’t too close to the party but I wanted some cake and some more Sanfranciscan conversation. The little ones were rounded up while a couple of parents exchanged contact information. Everyone was thin. I couldn’t imagine being overweight in this part of town. In the city a car is not really necessary but even with a great public transportation system, there is going to be a vast amount of walking. The party faded off and we began to notice another curiosity in the park; there were several really nice looking dogs being walked by their owners. It was a dog show. Petigreed and neatly groomed, we watched all manner of fancy pets paraded thru the area. I wanted to make the final assault on this mountain park in order to reach the highest point, so after a 30 minute rest we continued on. It wasn’t too bad to the top. There was a small forest up there with some huge trees. We walked around and admired the view, a little curious about the young couple snuggled together on the ground all wrapped up in a blanket in a never ending embrace. After a while we decided to head out of the park but we kept hearing very funny noises from the trees. They sounded like monkeys, or at least something we had never heard before. After several minutes of puzzling, the mystery was solved when a dozen birds flew out of the trees. They were some sort of parrot or cockatiel that was native to the area, told to us by a lady we ran into down the path. There was a large hawk way up high in a tree that would just sit there and never fly off. The other birds were not happy with the situation and were squalking loudly. The lady told us that the hawk was part of a mated pair that had a nest and tried to raise babies. The babies died and one of the hawks flew away. The other one had been sitting in the very top of a tree, preening itself for days without flying. She was worried that it wasn’t eating and was going to die. She had been watching the hawks for a long time. We chatted with this lady for over 30 minutes before finally leaving the park. It was a steep downhill walk but certainly was easier than it was going up. My plan was to head to the waterfront and maybe check out the Ferry building before it got too late. We walked several blocks and admired the architecture along the way. There were some large, spectacular houses in this area. Halfway down the mountain we spotted a cable car and jumped on and rode it all the way to the end of the line. From there we looked around the waterfront and Ferry building a little and decided to get home since it was getting late. I was getting pretty cocky with the street car system by now so we headed to a stop and waited for one to pick us up. About the time we saw one coming, it was already passing us by! The stupid driver even waved at us. I couldn’t believe it. That line would have dropped us right off next to the hotel and here we were, stranded. I thought that maybe it only stopped at that place at certain times of the day so it was time to start hoofing it back. That was going to be quite a bit of hoofing too. We walked (uphill again) for several blocks to try and find another street car line that would take us home. I had a general idea of where we were but didn’t realize it was that far to the hotel. Before we knew it, we were right in the middle of the red light district. Hoochie coochie bars and adult night clubs everywhere. By shear luck, we also ran right into a restaurant that was supposed to have really good Italian food. It was called “A Tu Tu Qua”. The wine country tour guide had told us about this place a couple of days before. We went in and had supper. Two appetizers, a small pizza, and two glasses of wine for $70. Jeez. I felt like my wallet had been molested. Anyway, the food was very good and it was unique. The pizza didn’t even have sauce on it. I made a new plan for our trip back to the hotel and it looked like it was going to take us thru Chinatown again. I realized that we had landed in North Beach which borders Chinatown on the North side. Just outside the restaurant was an all Chinese band. They were playing Chinese instruments that had that funny kazoo/whiny sound. The band was pretty large with about 12 people in all. They weren’t half bad and drew a pretty decent crowd. Kathy got right up next to them and admired their weird looking instruments. Some of them only had 1 or 2 strings. A little farther along Chinatown and we managed to catch a street car back home. This was by far our most adventurous day and was my favorite. We slept good that night since I guessed we must have walked several miles in all that day.