California visit 8/1/09

I had a wonderful opportunity to meet my mom and visit my brother Ryan and sister-in-law at their home in Freemont, California. It was such fun and I really enjoyed visiting. Ryan was a great tour guide, and Mary stayed very busy with her Anesthesia work as she is knee deep in

her residency. They have several lime and fruit trees in their back yard. The weather was amazing there.

Our main source of transportation was the Bart railway transit system. This was (for good reason) very foreign to me. There were all types of people to watch on the Bart. Mom and I were a little scared of it all at first, but we got the hang of it. We took it to San Fransisco for my first day. Here is Alcatraz. It was very cool from a distance. That is a close as we got this time.

We walked all through main town San Fransisco. It was very windy, of course. We went to the Fisherman's Warf for lunch. We saw Pier 39 and all of the sail boats and sea lions on the way.

Ryan and mom are both seafood fans, but all who know me know that I am not! Here is one of the dishes that I ate (for documentation). We got crab legs, swordfish steak, and this seafood stew in the picture called ciopinni (sp?). It was acutally not bad. I avoided the tiny purple cuddlefish though. I was already out on a limb tasting everything. Those would have put me over the edge.

Chinatown was pretty cool. Mom got us sweatshirts and we got a smoothie. We drove through a small part of Castro (to catch mom off guard).

It was neat to see these famous things that I have only seen in movies or heard about. The streets are very steep!

Another day, we went back with their dogs and took the scenic tour. We walked across the Golden Gate bridge. It was very foggy and windy there!

We hiked some hill that had a great view of the bridge before we got on it. Kermit and Blakey had a nice walk.

The view from the bridge was awesome too, even though I am not sure exactly what it all is.