San Francisco and Palo Alto

February 25

Hooray for work trips - that we also counted as a birthday trip - that we get to do together!  Matt has to get CME credit (Continuing Medical Education) every year.  We've used it as an excuse a few times to go together on a trip that gets partially paid for.  This year he settled on a conference in California - Palo Alto - focused on humanitarian aid medicine.  We thought we'd extend the trip a little  and make it a real vacation, just the two of us.  

I was actually more nervous that than I thought I would be to leave our little people.  But when our neighbor and good friend, Beckie Gilmore, said she would be able to help my parents with the kids I was much more at ease to be going.  Matt gave each of the Littles a blessing the morning we left.  He does so much to try and be a good father.  Much of it goes unknown or unnoticed.  I'm grateful not only for his service but for his example.  

After the blessings we hit the ground running.  San Fransisco/Palo Alto, here we come!!!

We were pretty excited.  Here's our first selfie as we got to the airport.

It turns out the the traveling part of vacations is quickly becoming one of our favorite parts of the trip.  We chat about things and get into longer conversations that are hard to have without being interrupted by work, people, sleep, meals, and other responsibilities.  Once we landed we took BART (mass transit) and started heading towards our hotel, which was in downtown SF.  On our way we wanted to grab something to eat and this little place caught our eye.  It was Nepalese food, which we had never had before but we were excited to try.  It was pretty good (although we didn't get to eat it until we got to our hotel room, so it had lost some of its freshness.  Still, great start.

Here's our hotel, Park Central.  Matt had picked it because we'd be able to walk to a lot of places from it.  We were going to be here for 2 days before we went to Palo Alto for the conference.  We stopped at the concierge's desk in the lobby for a map, had a good chat about things to do and see, dropped off our luggage, and headed out the door. First stop: China Town (because it was close and because it sounded like a cool place to start).  

 

Turns out that the Chinatown in SF is the largest one in North America and has the largest community of Chinese outside of Asia (thank you Wikipedia).  It was fun to walk around and smell around.  It was remarkable how much it reminded me of walking around in Panyu or Guangzhou.  I guess that shouldn't have been surprising, but it was quite fun to have China on the brain.

It wasn't long before we started facing the famous hills of San Fransisco.  Wowzers!  They were crazy steep.  It's hard to capture the steepness of the hills, but we muscled up several of them.  At one point we realized we were on Lombard street, though not the wiggly part, but a more normal looking section.  As we walked further down we could see "the most crooked street in the world" a few blocks away.

   

   

We saw signs for a "Coit Tower" and followed them to a pretty view and a closed museum.  We didn't care.  It was such a pleasant evening to be out walking and talking.  We did get our first glimpse of the Golden Gate bridge.  It was dusk so we decided to start wandering back toward the hotel and find a place to eat. 

Of course we wanted to try a ride on a cable car, so we jumped on one which took us several blocks to the end of the line where it is turned around.  We enjoyed talking to the trolley drivers.  I couldn't believe that they still run by holding onto a huge cable that runs just below the ground.  It is apparently the last manually operated cable car system in the world.  We found a nice Indian restaurant for dinner and tried a few new dishes.  It was yummy (but then again, we're big fans of Indian).  While at the restaurant we got to talk to the Littles.  They were having a wonderful time!  Still made me a little homesick for snuggling with them as we put them to bed.  

When we were checking into our hotel, one of the amenities listed was free bicycle rental.  We asked as soon as we could if they were available, but they were already out.  So the next morning (Feb 26) we had a light breakfast of fruit and juice we'd bought on the way home the night before and asked about the bikes.  They were available so we got our helmets on and we were off!  I'll be honest, I was nervous, and told Matt so, because, well, SF has CRAZY hills.  It turns out, however, that the location of the hotel was only a few blocks and slightly up from the wharf.  So we cruised down to  water's edge and then along the piers.  It was a great ride, mostly level or a slight incline/decline.   

He looks good on a bright orange beach cruiser, don't you think ;)!

We got down to Pier 39 and it was kind of chilly, so we got a hot chocolate and sat on the pier to drink it and watch the fog clear.  As we left we heard the barking of sea lions and found a whole crowd of them around the corner from where we were sitting. We watched them for a while and read about how they started coming after an earthquake in 1989.  There are several hundred that come every year.  At one point there were more than 1,700 sea lions!  Super fun.  Kate and Daniel would have liked watching them.

We biked through the Maritime National Historic Park to look at some old ships.

Then we decided to try and bike to the Golden Gate Bridge.  It looked far away, and again, I was more nervous than Matt, but didn't want to miss out.  There are a lot of things that I do because of Matt.  I love that about him.  The ride ended up being quite pleasant.  There was one hill that I had to walk the last half, but other than that we did great.  There were a lot of bike paths and we weren't in a lot of traffic.  I was surprised that it was still foggy by mid morning, but that is normal.  It was really pretty, even romantic to be riding along in the mist along this famous bridge.  

   

We stopped for lunch at a sea food place because we figured we should take advantage of getting something fresh.  It ended up being disappointing - looked like they took the leftovers of everything in the kitchen and through it in a soup.  Oh well.  We stopped a few other times to look at things that caught our eye before getting the bikes back to the hotel in the afternoon.  We had already checked out and grabbed our bags and walked to a park.  We sat on a bench and read some more of "Pencils of Promise" which we were almost finished with, and chatted and snacked.  It was kinda perfect.  When do we do that at home?  That will be a date night when the weather warms up - a park, a book, a snack, and each other.

We walked to the train station and headed to Palo Alto, to Stanford University, where Matt's conference started the next day.  I had an interesting experience standing in a large group of people waiting to board the train.  I started looking closely at those standing around.  They were all talking, or reading or staring or smiling or whatever and I wondered where each one was going, what each one was like.  And then the thought came to mind that they are each perfectly known and loved by Heavenly Father.  Perfectly known and loved!  I felt a sense of awareness of how important each one of these people were.  And then the gate opened and everyone started moving.  It is amazing to me, and yet makes so much sense, that Heavenly Father knows each one of us.  Knows where we are and where we are going and has a plan for our happiness.   

The train stopped right next to the hotel which was also just a block from the campus.  (This is Matt on the train enjoying his treat of orange gummy slices and a ginger/orange/dark chocolate bar.)

The rest of the weekend was spent with Matt at the conference and me reading, walking around a mall, watching movies, and strolling down the streets of Palo Alto and eating yummy food.  We took a bus to ********** to go to church.  It's always interesting to walk into a ward that you have no connection to and see how it looks.  Several people said hello.  One of the speakers spoke in a way that Matt totally related to, which he mentioned afterwards.  Monday morning we literally ran to the train station and almost missed our plane, but we made it!  By the end of our trip we'd eaten Indian, seafood, Greek, American, Japanese, and Burmese.  It was deeee-lish!  We got home and all was well there.  Mom and Beckie and chatted become buddies while watching the kids.  That was such a great comfort to know they were well cared for.  It was a great trip.  Let's do another!