San Francisco and such
I'm back from my San Franciscan adventure with a story or two to tell.
Traveling with my aunt was...interesting. She and I really don't have much in common at all, which had me a little worried at first that we might not have anything to talk about. I shouldn't have been concerned; we had a blast anyway.
San Francisco's kind of a weird city, but I like I a lot. I wasn't expecting it to be so cold -- I mean, it's on thng to hear that it'll be chilly and quite another to step off the plane into cool, damp air that seems massively out of place in August. It's been hovering in the 90's back in Ohio so I'm sure not complaining.
Some highlights:
+ I met quite a few strange characters in the city, including an aging hippie named Bruce who owned a woodshop. I was talking to my aunt when he randomly asked me if I was a scientist. I told him I was planning to be a biologist, andhe laughed and said he could har it in my voice -- then correctly guessed that I was an Aquarius and "a free thinker". And he gave me a bracelet for free. I was charmed but a little bemused.
+ We took a Segway tour. Yes, I am in fact that nerdy. Seriously, though, as absolutely stupid as those things look, they are the most wonderfully intuitive, easy-to-use and downright fun devices ever. I was terrified I might fall off or not be able to balance, but they're amazingly easy to get used to and I was zipping around like a pro within minutes. One of the best parts of the tour was the odd looks, comments and generally hilarious reactions we'd get from passers-by -- some dude on the street struck a defiant pose as we passed and yelled, "You'll never take me alive, Segway Gang!" I'd post pics, but my aunt hasn't uploaded them.
+ SF has the best food ever. Seriously. Some highlights include a Brazilian steakhouse (it's like a meat orgy!...only way more classy and appealing than what that phrasing probably conjured up), an awesome Chinese place called R&G Lounge (which also serves shark fin soup for $75 a bowl and also will cost you a hell of a lot of karma points, but that's beside the point), and an Italian restaurant where I tried spaghetti with rabbit sauce (delicious, actually). My aunt is a coffee addict, so every night we'd go wandering down to the Italian district and pick an espresso shop at random for dessert. They were all excellent.
+ Climbing Coit Tower at sunset is a very good idea. We had no idea what said tower was and decided to go on a quest to investigate, and wound up with a fabulous view of the city.
+ Haight-Ashbuy is sketchy but one of my new favorite places ever. It's like a solid mass of graffiti and hippies and interesting shops. I hung out in a Communist coffeeshop and an anarchist bookstore, and befriended the dude behind the counter after Ram Dass (aka the original Richard Alpert) came up in conversation. For some reason I have a peculiar habit of making friends with people whose ideologies couldn't be further from my own.
My favorite part of the Haight?
Amoeba Music. Best store in the entire world. They have an unbelievable variety of obscure, rare music there -- hell, they had U2 stuff I'd never even heard of, and trust me, that's saying something.
Case in point: rare edition of Achtung Bay with Adam naked on the front. I LOLed.
+ The Japanese Tea Gardens were very cool. I got a bento box and some sencha there for lunch.
+ The California Academy of Science was right next door to the tea garden and was definitely worth checking out, especially for the multi-level rainforest biodome. Have some pics, it was futuristic and awesome and we spent a good deal of time thawing in the synthetic tropical climate.
+ Muir Woods was amazing. It's like a redwood cathedral. The pictures absolutely cannot do it justice, but have a few anyway. You will notice I managed to find a deer as well.
All in all, it was a fun trip, and it was neat getting to know my aunt a little better and get to know about some of my family history. The only thing I'm regretting? The jetlag. So it goes.