San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO/BAY AREA VACATION

This past April, 2000, we went to the San Francisco/Bay area. It was the first time Penny or Karen had ever been there. I actually lived there for a couple of years in the mid-80s during my "pre-Penny" years.

One of the first things we did was see my cousin in San Jose. She took us to Stanford University. This picture was taken of a church located at the university.

While Penny stayed with my cousin in San Jose, Karen and I took off to go wine tasting in Napa Valley. This was taken at our favorite winery there--V Sattui. What's neat about this winery is that you can only buy their wines either at the winery or on the net.

This is a picture of Penny sitting outside catching some rays after our tour of Alcatraz. The entire concept of The Rock was fascinating and to see how the prisoners lived back then amazes me to this day. The audio that you listen to as a part of the tour (for an additional price, of course) really makes it seem like the prisoners' ghosts are still around.

Here is Karen at the Crab House at Pier 39. This is one of the last places to have personalized matchbooks since San Francisco passed the public non-smoking ordinance. I was lucky enough to get a couple of these matchbooks for my collection.

Here's a relaxed and jovial Penny waiting for lunch to arrive. She, too, is a fan of some forms of seafood. Gee! I wonder where she gets that from?

After lunching on the seafood, we wanted to see some redwoods so we drove to Muir Woods. This place is so unbelievably majestic. The air had an incredibly sweet aroma permeating from the huge redwoods. During our walk, chipmunks often darted across the footpath in search of food. This is a definite must see if you are ever in the area!

We rented a car during our vacation so that we wouldn't limit ourselves. We put over 1100 miles on it in 10 days! On one of our "jaunts" we went to Monterey and spent the entire day there. To the right is a picture of "sea pens" taken at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. If you ever get to Monterey, you must check out this aquarium that focuses on the type of sea life indigenous to the Monterey Bay.

And of course there's Lombard Street (the crookedest street in the world for those of you who might not know)!

While walking around in San Francisco, we saw a ton of limousines just driving around. We thought they were occupied by famous people but were we wrong! At one of the long lines for the cable cars, a man asked us if we wanted a ride in a limo to anywhere in the city. It was only $5 per person. How could we refuse?

When we arrived at Union Square, we got out of the limo. Then after some shopping, we walked over to San Francisco Center and I couldn't resist taking this picture of Nordstrom's. The architecture in San Francisco is simply breathtaking!

During our last day in San Francisco, we had time on our hands before our flight was departing so we went to Golden Gate Park and made it to the Japanese Tea Garden. Here's one of my many pictures from the tea garden. It was a very nice way to end this very busy and beautiful vacation.