Off to see the Philip - California Day 3 After Nap

Dan and I for a while have been using BN and AN to tell time... that's before nap and after nap. Because really that's what life is like with a toddler. And it has pretty well split our days and thus the current twice a day posting. We've had pretty big adventures both before and after nap and since I seem to have time during nap time to post, why not post twice a day.



Again, as I posted last time, Saturday was JoAnn's day to take care of Lea all day. In the morning while we are at the festival and in the evening while we went to San Francisco (Oakland) to visit my college buddy Philip.



Ron and JoAnn were scheduled to go to Ron's granddaughter's First Communion. They were excited to take Lea. I took it as a great compliment that Ron was excited to show off his step-son's daughter at his other granddaughter's party. It is pretty exciting to be the "out of town grandkid." So they went to Emily's Communion and party. Grandma and Grandpa said that Lea behaved wonderfully at church. Even told Grandpa Ron, "Shhhh... Don't talk in church Grandpa," when he leaned over to tell her how well behaved she was. It sounds like they had a good time at the party playing with the other kids, some of which will be here Sunday for the big birthday party. Sounds like Lea did just fine without Mommy and Daddy for the day. I think making it the third day helped since she had a few days to get acclimated. They said she took her nap well and went to bed well. We stopped in to change clothes between the festival and our SF trip so we saw her for about an hour after her nap and maybe that helped her know we were still around.



We kissed the little one goodbye, loaded up Maggie and were on our way. The drive to San Francisco... well we were headed to Philip's house in Oakland... the drive to Oakland takes you between these hills/small mountains that are loaded with wind farms. The picture doesn't do it justice. There are miles and miles of wind turbines on the hills. It is a pretty site in its own way.


Philips house was a very cute apartment that over looked the other cute houses. He called it a transitional area. Meaning they are tearing clearing out the undesirables and raising the property values. The 4 plex Victorian next door was for sale for $699,000 - we picked up a flyer if anyone is interested.
Maggie got us to Oakland and was right on her estimated time, but took us to the wrong end of the street. With a phone call Philip knew exactly where she had taken us and we shut off Maggie and turned on our brain and found the house with no problems... parking on the other hand... what a nightmare. All parallel street parking. Glad I wasn't driving. Philip drove us into San Francisco so we didn't have to fight our way. Even with Maggie, the drive would not have been as easy. Philip drove like a local with enthusiasm and confidence... not like we would have, with cursing and searing.

Philip had a friend in from Ohio named Jullian. He was very fun and we were glad we got to meet him and that he was able to go to dinner with us.

Philip took us all to Brandy Ho's. A favorite from the last time we were in San Francisco. It is very very very very spicy (did I mention it was spicy?) Chinese food. Spicy, but very good.

I had General Chicken with enough sweet to offset the hot. It was delicious. I wasn't bright enough to take a picture before I started eating, but here is the empty plate. You can see the pepper bits hanging out. Phew my eyes were burning after trying a bit of Philip's dish. And he ordered Medium spicy. Dan (who has a bit of a bronchial cold type thing, poor guy) said it cleared out his sinuses for a few minute.

Brandy Hos has fantastic dumplings. We had fried dumplings and they make them fresh. Here are the women making the dumplings.

We left BrandyHo's to head up the hill - Everything is uphill. We joked about it but, seriously, it seemed like anywhere we went was at least a bit up hill. Philip teased that that's how you end up with San Francisco Butt... all that good workout. So here's a shot of Philip's SF Bottom (and Jullian's Columbus Ohio bottom.)
Philip looked FANTASTIC if I may say so... so good to see him and he seemed so happy and good so it was a real treat to get to visit.
We wandered into City Lights Book store - former home away from home to such writers as Kerouac and Ginsberg. There is a Beat Poet Museum across the street now, but we didn't check it out. We just perused the book store.
Then after those 4 blocks uphill, it was time for desert. We crossed the street from China town into Little Italy (almost literally) and went to the delicious Stella Patisserie (bakery) and had Tiramasu and coffee. You can see my slight sunburn from the Asparagus festival in this pic.

We then picked up the car (so it didn't get towed at 8pm like the sign said... and sure enough when we got to the car there was a tow truck at the end of the street waiting for the clock to turn.) and went for a cocktail. We went down tot he Embarcadaro area and were headed to a brewery. After I had extolled the virtues of such dives as The Carousel Lounge in Austin, and One Nostalgia Place and Elbow Room in Dallas, we could not pass up the "HiDive" on the wharf when we saw the sign.

While we expected the clientele to be like the sea captain from the Simpsons, it was all young and hip. Philip said there are new condos that just went in making the whole area much younger. Cool logo on the menu.

It was a few blocks from the ballpark and though you can't tell from this picture we could see boats pass on the water from the window at our table. It was really a lovely place to watch the sun go down and the ships sail.
Philip at the window... he had only one cocktail, despite the look on his face in this shot!

And that concluded our San Francisco visit. We picked up the van and Maggie took us home. We had to stop for gas and so I wanted to commemorate the gas prices.