Victory!!!

I'm not so much relishing my being correct as I am amazed and excited by the fact that I was indeed correct and it happened once again.  We ran into someone we knew.  I was just thinking earlier today that the trip was almost over and we hadn't seen someone we knew yet...and then out on Fisherman's Wharf we crossed paths with Mitch Walorski, the dad of one of my old grade school friends (who I've also run into in Chicago when he was with my cousins).  And I thought back on all the minute choices that has us walking right through there, right then, to have the opportunity to run into him.  Unbelievable.

Today was swell, aside from failing to see the one thing I'd wanna see in SF.  We found out the Alcatraz tickets were sold out until Monday.  The night tickets were sold out months ago and we never got day tickets ahead of time.  Punch myself in the crotch.  We got lucky with a room in Yosemite, but not so with Alcatraz.

We had already had an interesting morning- after Chris spending an hour last night and us spending another hour this morning, trying to figure out where to stay in SF, we ended up literally driving into the street and back into the next parking lot to the Motel 6 and spending half as much for a room.  Its clear you get what you pay for- but still not bad all in all.  The BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit- train) goes from a mile from our hotel, in Oakland, to downtown SF, in like 20 minutes.  Just as good as walking to a damn hotel downtown SF, without the price.  Our hotel is right by where the A's and Raiders play.  Kinda a junky looking stadium.  We did have a decent free contintental breakfast this morning, highlighted by the magical drink Very Vanilla Silk, which they had in weird tall little juice box type things.  Yeah I took three.  Its the nectar of the gods.  One of them is still on ice here with a leftover piece of pizza, since this ghetto-ass place doesn't have a fridge.   Yeah we left the white-people hotel last night and came to the black-people hotel tonight.  Sorry if I offended anyone but look outside and tell me it isn't true.  Its like night a day, from one parking lot to the next.

What I don't get about this whole place is first, why Oakland is a separate city and not just an extension or suburb of SF (though I guess the same applies to St. Paul, MN) and second, how the hell does Oakland manage to support, and NEED, their own baseball and football team?  I don't really get it.  Oakland is a decent sized city and all, but its literally right across a bridge (albeit a 2+ mile one) from SF.

We got to see The Church of Christ the Light before we left Oakland this morning, once we made our accomodations decision, and that was sweet, since its the most expensive Catholic Church in American history (200million I think?), and isn't finished, and we got some lady to walk us into the building.  Its pretty inspiring inside.  We then got to drive to SF and across Golden Gate Bridge before ditching the car and starting the hiking portion of the trip again, up and down and up and down the hills of San Francisco.  The stories weren't kidding.  We even saw the Crooked Street, which was pretty sweet slash ridiculous slash sweet.  It'd be cool to live there.  Golden Gat was so foggy we couldn't see half of it and couldn't see jack once driving across it, and the fog was visibly drifting rapidly.

Fisherman's Wharf and all that came with it, was like Navy Pier times a thousand, and was lots of people, shopping, food, and repeated identical camera shops and trinket shops.  Seriously, the exact same yellow sign saying "Convert Memory Cards to CD" in three stores, in one block, exact same displays in the window.  How is that possible.  We also saw over 200 sea lions chilling on the docks.

Chinatown was quite...Chinese, and hopefully we can see Japantown tomorrow.  Its farther west along with Haight and Asbury and Golden Gate Park.  We shall see.  We had lunch in some place with some Tsing Tao beer.  Tasty.  The weather is temperate and breezy, high of 63, and we got to wear pants.  The breeze feels great.  Was sunny too.  We walked around and saw a few churches, Little Italy, and ate dinner there, ACROSS from a more expensive place Tiffany recommended called The Stinking Rose: A Garlic Restaurant.  

We also saw Crooked St., climbed up and down a million ridiculously steep streets, and generally marveled at the weather, the hills, and the architecture.

Tomorrow we see all the cool buildings on my list (okay 2-3 of em, cause we already saw TransAmerica) and then have dinner with First Response's former HR person Bev, who loves wine.  Friday our flight is at 4:20 but checkout is at noon so then we have our bags and probably unfortunately just go to the airport and chill.  Nuts.