San Francisco

San Francisco Bay
The wind blew hard as we walked along the trail down to the Golden Gate Bridge (right; not in photo).

I was woken up at around 5:15am in the morning.  That meant I had had about seven hours of sleep...not bad compared to 4 the second night from when we had arrived in the States from China.  (Someone had set one of our very loud alarm clocks downstairs to ring at 2 o'clock in the morning.  It rang for an hour, and I couldn't fall back asleep after ordeal.)  I was glad I had prepared my backpack the night before.  It saved me a lot of time as I jumped off the top of my bunk bed and rushed to get ready to go on our annual family road trip.

My sisters and I had packed all our clothes into a luggage.  I carried that down the stairs and shoved it into the trunk of our van.  After everyone (excluding my brother, who was still sleeping until two minutes before our departure) had made a few more trips carrying items down into the garage for the road trip, we set off.

We would be on the road three weeks.  We'd spend one week in Sacramento and two in Oregon.  Though Sacramento was our main destination for the first week, we planned to stop by San Francisco on our way up.

Rest stop on I-5 N
The drive would have initially taken 6.5 hours, but due to three stops at rest areas we arrived in San Francisco at about two in the afternoon.

Streets of San Francisco
When we drove into the city, I had my first glimpse of what I had heard so much about San Francisco: the steep, up-and-down streets.

We decided to visit the famous Golden Gate Bridge.  After taking some time to find a parking spot, we walked down the trail toward the bridge.  The temperature wasn't very low, but the winds blew so fiercely that it almost seemed as if you were in the middle of a tornado.  Some toddlers and younger children were knocked off their feet by the strong wind, and my head and ears hurt from it.

The Golden Gate Bridge
The first thoughts I had when I saw the bridge were:
1) It's really real!
2) It's really red.
3) It's really big.
4) Does anyone still use the bridge?
5) Can we walk on the bridge?
6) Is there any food?  I'm awfully hungry.

Beside the bridge were plates with historical information on them.  Here are a few of my favorites:

I saw some ships in the Bay, but I couldn't identify them.  They were so far away.

I want to study engineering, so this is a favorite.  I think I would prefer aerospace engineering, though.

I really don't know why, but I love World War II history.  I added the information on this plate to my storehouse of knowledge.

We had planned to visit friends in the afternoon, but what we hadn't counted on was downtown traffic.  It took us nearly an hour to travel two blocks, but thankfully we got out of the mess and found a parking space near Pier 39.

Our friends were waiting for us at the Fog Harbor Fish House on the Pier.  The waitress gave us 8 menus along with 4 kids' menus.  I wondered if I could pass for a twelve-year-old.  Looks like I still can.  ;)

Even though I knew the kids' meal serving sizes probably wouldn't satisfy my hunger, I ordered one anyways after discovering there wasn't anything on the adult menu I could eat (all lobster, crab, shrimp, clam, even swordfish...).  Still, we had a wonderful time.  I had all the sourdough bread and butter I could possibly eat.

At around eight o'clock in the evening we left for Sacramento.  We checked into our hotel at about ten or ten-thirty, and I fell asleep almost immediately.

This week will be a wonderful one!