My 30th B'day Surprise

The above slide show contains my favorite pictures of the weekend Steven and I just spent in San Francisco.

Let me start from the beginning...I turned 30 last month. When Steven turned 30 last year, I surprised him by taking him on a cruise which he had never done before. So, when my turn came to turn the big three-oh, he wanted to surprise me, too.

We have been talking about going to San Francisco for about 10 years now. Steven grew up there and wanted show me around his old stomping ground. (Just in case anyone reading this doesn't know my husband, he would never, for all the money in the world, use the phrase "old stomping ground"...that would be ME.)

He managed to keep the secret all the way to the gate to board our flight before he "showed" me where we were headed...you could've knocked me over with feather!

Our flight was great and when we got there, he had reserved us a convertible. It took about an hour to get it, but it was SO worth it!!! As we were leaving the airport, we asked the lady that had helped us with our car to recommend a restaurant and she sent us to a Filipino restaurant very near the airport. This was my first time to eat any of the food we ordered and it was GOOD!

That afternoon, we walked around Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39. It had been a long day so we went back to the hotel for a good night's sleep...the next day was going to be FULL!

On Friday morning we woke up and went across the street from our hotel for breakfast and it was delicious...one of those local, tables on the street affairs and we were ready for a great day. We got the car and drove up to Muir Woods and Sausalito that day.

I don't know what to say other than it was one of the most beautiful, peaceful and awe-inspiring places I have ever been. No words or pictures could ever do it justice. It is a MUST visit place for anyone going to the Bay Area, for sure. After exploring the Woods, we went into Sausalito for lunch at a restaurant called The Spinnaker. It is on the Bay with all-window-walls for the best views. This is where I ate the best sandwich I've ever eaten. It was a fresh oven roasted turkey with dill havarti cheese - the cheese alone would make you smack your mama - tomatoes, and fresh avacados on sour dough marble rye toast. I would consider moving to California just to be in close proximity with this sandwich...or maybe I'll just learn to make it...yeah, that'd probably be easier.

After lunch we drove back into the city because we had tickets for the 3:00 ferry to Alcatraz. On the way back we began to see the fog roll in under the Golden Gate. It was truly a sight to see as it started out so small that it looked like smoke from a fire and grew to the point that it obscured view of the city from the bridge and the bridge from the city. As we drove across the bridge the fog was coming across it so that it was under the bridge and above it and trying to come across it as well. The cables were breaking the fog as is came across making it look like whispy fingers curling through and across trying to reach the other side. It was quite cool...to watch and to feel...the temp dropped about 10 degrees from the edge of the bridge to the center.

When we got into the city, we had a little time to kill, so we drove over to Lombard street and drove down "The Crooked-est Street in the World". It was fun and beautiful with gorgeous views of the city and the Bay covered in a "floating cloud".

After driving in the city a bit, it was time to make our way over to the piers to catch our ferry. One of the strangest parts of this trip was how remarkably different the weather was from one spot to the next with as little difference as one mile between them. Our trip to Alcatraz was no different. The tour told us that the distance from the island to the mainland is about a mile and a quarter. By the time we had reached the half-way-mark, we could no longer see the city clearly and when we had reached the island, the city was completely obscured by the fog.

The tour of the prison was interesting and informative. One thing we learned that was more than a little surprising was that while the prison was operational, there were about 260 civilians living on the island, including the families of some of the guards...yes that includes their CHILDREN!!! That's all I have to say about that.

The tour was sad, in a way. I know that the men housed there were "hardened criminals", but the sizes of their cells, the utter isolation, it was, simply put, sad.

That night we went to Chinatown and walked around and bought a kite and had dinner.

The next day we drove down Hwy 1 along the coast to Santa Cruz. That was the most beautiful drive I've ever taken and I don't think that any words I could come up with could do it justice. The "poem" I posted yesterday was inspired by what I saw.

In Santa Cruz, we went to the board walk, road a roller coaster, and ate lunch on the pier before heading up to San Jose to begin our tour of Steven's childhood. It was so much fun to see the places he grew up and watch him remember "riding his bike down that street" or his "best friend living in that house". He showed me where his family lived in San Jose and later in Alameda, then took me to the apartment complex that his grandparents maintained. Across the street from the apartments is a beach on the Bay. His grandfather used to take him there and they would make kites together out of bamboo, and rice paper using (somehow) rice for the glue. We went to that beach and he taught me how to fly the kite we had bought the night before in Chinatown. It was a special experience.

When we were finished flying our kite we headed back into town to find some dinner. We wound up in Little Italy at a delicious restaurant. We ate pasta.

Our flight on Sunday morning was at 9-something, so we ended our vacation very early in the morning, but, despite the fact that I am NOT a morning person, I can honestly say that after the relaxing, refreshing, and wonderfully reconnective time we'd had together, I didn't mind.

Thank you, my precious husband, for loving me so well. You are the perfect partner that God designed just for me. I love you.