Wind in empty spaces

2004-02-08 - 9:12 p.m.

Hey there, why don't you have a seat while I tell you all about my day?

Doesn't that bench just look so inviting? It looks to me like I should rollerblade to this bench and then sit there and read a good book while I polish off an ice cream cone. This bench is actually in Ghiradelli Square in San Francisco and the view from there looks like this:

The weather was beautiful today. I couldn't ask for better weather in San Francisco. Look at all those sailboats out there in the bay!

So this morning we got up relatively early and then drove from Sacramento to Vallejo. In Vallejo we ate breakfast and then hopped on the ferry to San Francisco. It's actually a fairly long way, taking about an hour to get from one place to the other.

The above picture is the Bay Bridge reflected in the window of the ferry. The first thing we did when we got there was to walk around Pier 39. One of the things Pier 39 is most famous for is its sea lions. They have a whole ton of them that are always there making quite a racket.

We managed to resist the clam chowder on Pier 39 and instead strolled up Jefferson to Ghiradelli Square where we stopped and had sundaes. From there we walked back down to the piers and decided to go on a tour (where I passed myself off as "under 17" without anyone giving me a second glance) of a World War II submarine. It was actually very interesting, but if there is one place I would not want to be during a war, it would be a submarine. In fact I'm not sure I'd ever want to be in one when it was actually diving, even without a war. For some reason they really scare me. But from the deck of this submarine where it was moored in the bay, I could look out and see Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the seeming hundreds of sailboats that were out in the bay today.

As the sun began to think about setting, we reboarded the ferry and headed back north to Vallejo. I'll leave you with one last picture taken as we passed one of the myriad sailboats, looking out at Angel Island in the foreground and the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.