San Francisco (at last!)- Monday, July 10, 2006

We woke up in our nearly-beach-side hotel in Pismo Beach today. Though it was much cooler than it had been, Julie and Anna went down to the beach while we waited for Emma to wake up. They were amazed at the number of sand dollar shells that were laying there and gathered up quite a few to bring home.

We continued on route 101 for most of the way to San Francisco. It is "El Camino Real"- the royal road that the Spanish used to connect their missions. The route was marked with interesting bell shaped signs every mile, and every 30 miles or so, we would pass another Spanish mission. We had lunch in San Luis Obispo.

The drive was long and trying for all of us. The girls were restless, and we thought we'd never cover the four hours of driving we had to cover to get to San Francisco. We got into our hotel near the San Fransisco airport between 3:00 and 4:00. We unpacked, freshened up, and went to explore the city.

The weather here is very strange. It is so much cooler than it was a few days ago in LA. The girls are wearing their jackets. Plus there are bands of thick dark clouds that are very localized over San Francisco. Since it was getting late in the day, and some of the things we want to do may be better if it ever is clearer, we decided to go to Chinatown to see what we could see.

We drove into San Francisco without a great deal of difficulty, but when we found a parking garage near Chinatown, we got lost trying to get out of it and up from one street to Grant Street that Chinatown is on-- literally up. It was one storey above where we were standing. When we finally got to Chinatown it was great fun. There were lots of shops and we went in a few. We thought that the prices were better than Chinatown in Toronto and not too far off from what we had seen in some places in China. Emma bought a paperweight/snowglobe that she liked. (She broke it over the course of the evening, and we secretly replaced it). Anna bought a purse with dogs on it. Julie bought some silk placemats, but her big purchace was another suitcase. It's actually quite nice, with pictures from around the world on the outside of it. We figure we will probably need it for our trip home. We already had trouble with our luggage on the way in, and the woman from Delta had us shift some of our things from one bag to another because it was overweight. Having a third bag will make it easier.

We ate dinner at an interesting place in Chinatown. Emma got her noodles that she loves. Anna shared some of the noodles with her too. We did a little more shopping and came back to the hotel. Now, Julie is doing a load of laundry to try to catch us up a little bit, and I'm trying to catch up on a few days of the blog.

We'll check in again tomorrow with more about our day in San Francisco.