City Hunt
Today marks the first anniversary of my starting work at ALZA. Oooh. Real world. Scary! In honor of this momentous occasion, I will blog about my Sunday adventure: the San Francisco City Hunt! Totally unrelated, I know.
So I had not seen Carrie in a while, since she went back home after spending the summer on campus. We had planned to meet at the Powell BART station in the city at 10:15 (she coming from the East Bay and me from down South). Being the meticulous planner that I am, I allotted myself exactly 45 minutes to get up to the Daly City station, which turned out to be just perfect because when I parked there, I still had two minutes to get on the train that was waiting for me. What I had not anticipated, however, was that it takes exactly three minutes to walk over to the ticketing machine to buy my ticket. Alas, the long-awaited reunion would have to be delayed for another 15 minutes, at least. Shit. What a crappy way to start off the day. Or so I thought.
If that were the story of the day, however, you would be thinking, "Aw man, Fe. Your life is so depressing! Give me something to cheer about!" And that would be the point when I would tell you, "Ah ha! But you are wrong. There is a romantic-comedy-type happy ending!" You see.. Carrie, being the Bay Area transit system expert that she is, timed it perfectly so she would get off at a stop between Daly City and Powell, so she could hop on my train and still have enough time to scour almost all the seven cars to find me. What a pleasant surprise!
As for the day, I feel it might be easier to list out the things that we did and then maybe go into detail (perhaps in this post or another) about the things that stood out. Anyway, we: visited her grandfather and saw lots of digitized old photos from the 1950's, took a bus to Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf, had clam chowder in a bread bowl, walked along the shore to Ghiradelli Square, sat around and watched the waves, walked through North Beach to visit Justin's place (though he was not there!), walked through Chinatown and got lemon tea, hung out at the playground on Kearney, went to Macy's so she could exchange some earrings only to figure out that they were bought at Nordstrom, talked her into getting a nice pair for next year's VBall, visited her aunt's place to play with her little cousins (so cute!), and had a nice Italian dinner at Kuleto's.
One thing I noticed is that San Francisco is really, really small. I mean, by the end of the day, I was not even that tired and we had been walking on and off again for about ten hours, seeing pretty much everything we wanted to. I think the best thing about that day, aside from the good company and good conversations, was that even though we both kind of know the city pretty well, we still managed to do enough touristy things to keep it fun. Heck, we even brought our cameras and took some rather fobby pictures, which I will probably post at some point. Another thing I noticed is that I absolutely love little kiddies; they are so freaking adorable!! At one point, the older one walked up and put a Mr. Potato-Head mustache on me and giggled nonstop (yeah, we got a picture of that). It is such a great feeling, too, when you teach them something or give them an order and they just obey, like when it was cleanup time and I made them pick up all the toys by making it into some game. Haha. Carrie claims that I just like to train them to be my little slaves. I beg to differ! Anyway, good times.
Until the next city hunt, stay tuned!
So I had not seen Carrie in a while, since she went back home after spending the summer on campus. We had planned to meet at the Powell BART station in the city at 10:15 (she coming from the East Bay and me from down South). Being the meticulous planner that I am, I allotted myself exactly 45 minutes to get up to the Daly City station, which turned out to be just perfect because when I parked there, I still had two minutes to get on the train that was waiting for me. What I had not anticipated, however, was that it takes exactly three minutes to walk over to the ticketing machine to buy my ticket. Alas, the long-awaited reunion would have to be delayed for another 15 minutes, at least. Shit. What a crappy way to start off the day. Or so I thought.
If that were the story of the day, however, you would be thinking, "Aw man, Fe. Your life is so depressing! Give me something to cheer about!" And that would be the point when I would tell you, "Ah ha! But you are wrong. There is a romantic-comedy-type happy ending!" You see.. Carrie, being the Bay Area transit system expert that she is, timed it perfectly so she would get off at a stop between Daly City and Powell, so she could hop on my train and still have enough time to scour almost all the seven cars to find me. What a pleasant surprise!
As for the day, I feel it might be easier to list out the things that we did and then maybe go into detail (perhaps in this post or another) about the things that stood out. Anyway, we: visited her grandfather and saw lots of digitized old photos from the 1950's, took a bus to Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf, had clam chowder in a bread bowl, walked along the shore to Ghiradelli Square, sat around and watched the waves, walked through North Beach to visit Justin's place (though he was not there!), walked through Chinatown and got lemon tea, hung out at the playground on Kearney, went to Macy's so she could exchange some earrings only to figure out that they were bought at Nordstrom, talked her into getting a nice pair for next year's VBall, visited her aunt's place to play with her little cousins (so cute!), and had a nice Italian dinner at Kuleto's.
One thing I noticed is that San Francisco is really, really small. I mean, by the end of the day, I was not even that tired and we had been walking on and off again for about ten hours, seeing pretty much everything we wanted to. I think the best thing about that day, aside from the good company and good conversations, was that even though we both kind of know the city pretty well, we still managed to do enough touristy things to keep it fun. Heck, we even brought our cameras and took some rather fobby pictures, which I will probably post at some point. Another thing I noticed is that I absolutely love little kiddies; they are so freaking adorable!! At one point, the older one walked up and put a Mr. Potato-Head mustache on me and giggled nonstop (yeah, we got a picture of that). It is such a great feeling, too, when you teach them something or give them an order and they just obey, like when it was cleanup time and I made them pick up all the toys by making it into some game. Haha. Carrie claims that I just like to train them to be my little slaves. I beg to differ! Anyway, good times.
Until the next city hunt, stay tuned!
