Christmas in San Francisco - part II

I'm finally back online so it's time to catch up with the events of the last several days! I went up to San Francisco to spend Christmas with my brother David. On Sunday, he showed me around his neighborhood--specifically Clement Street, which is an assortment of Asian Food Markets, restaurants (Thai, Sushi, Dim Sum mostly...), hipster boutiques and so on. One of the boutiques was Park Life which carried ironic t-shirts, arty books and kitschy and unique gift items. I told David it was a toy store for adults. He agreed.

On the way back to his apartment, we stopped into this cool little floral shop/boutique on California Street called Japonica which carried an assortment of beautiful items--hand knit scarves, hand-crafted jewelry, perfumes and other lovely things. The nicest thing about Japonica was its very friendly and gracious owner. I left with a yummy smelling and healing lotion--and sample of soap. As we headed home, David mentioned that he lived close by to the beach and hearing that, I insisted we check it out.

So we went down to Baker Beach which isn't like SoCal beaches. Instead of palm trees and white sand, there are a plethora of evergreens and the sand is like sandy dirt. From the beach, you can see the Golden Gate Bridge and it looked so close to where we were, I said why not walk there and check it out? So we walked, and walked and walked some more. Mind you, while the shoes I was wearing were comfortable, they were not walking shoes and I was toting my purse and recent purchase. David was carrying half a dozen grapefruits purchased at an Asian Market and some wrapping paper.

We finally made it to the bridge and even walked onto it. The cars whizzing by were making Speed Racer type noises and the vibrations were pretty intense. We were too tired to walk all the way across it, so we headed back. David decided we should take a shortcut through The Presidio. I was all for a shortcut by that point. I'm big on walking but it felt like we'd walk 20 miles by then. So we're taking a trail through The Presidio, but we get off track and end up walking and walking and walking some more. At one point I say to David, "I thought we were taking a shortcut!"

We finally got close to home, but I needed a rest so we stopped and cooled our heels on a park bench by Mountain Lake--one of three natural lakes in the city. I use the term "lake" loosely. This thing is more like a duck pond. Truthfully I've seen rain puddles bigger...But it was pretty and peaceful and nice to look at while we rested our poor tired legs.

We eventually made it back to the apartment--but had to go out again to meet up with friends for dinner at Pizza Orgasmica. David's friend Janna and my blogging buddy Tami joined us for pizza with names like "Ecstasy" and "Serpent's Kiss." And it you think the pizza names are racy, you should see the names of the cocktails!

To be continued...