Playing Tourist at Home

This last weekend, my cousin spent a couple of days with us, and we played tourist together. She lives in Oceanside, which is near San Diego, and came up to visit us, to see our Great Aunt, and to spend a few days in the Sacramento area, where she has quite a few friends, before jetting off to Orlando with one of these friends for a vacation. This is the cousin that I went to France with last year, and we always have fun together. She flew in on Thursday, and we went to lunch and walked around a bit downtown. In all of her visits to see us, she has never seen the downtown area, so it was fun to show her. We had an excellent lunch at one of my favorite places, Va de Vi, which is a tapas type restaurant, where you order a bunch of small items and share. We had what was perhaps the best burger I’ve ever had, a cacio e pepe biscuit, street corn, beet salad, and black cod. Everything was delicious, though the black cod wasn’t as flavorful as everything else. I’m not sure if it was just too delicate, or if we were getting full. Perhaps both. Then we came home and made European Dinner for Ted and Maya, and relaxed for the evening.

Friday, while Ted and Maya toiled away at their jobs, Carey and I took BART into San Francisco and did the touristy things. I had thought we might have lunch at one of the restaurants in the Ferry Building, but we weren’t quite hungry yet, so we instead walked along the Embarcadero to Pier 39 at Fisherman’s Wharf. There is nothing more touristy to do in San Francisco than Pier 39, I don’t think. It’s the kind of thing you only do when family or friends are visiting, and you act kind of horrified about the whole idea of going down there, but then when you go, you have a great time. We had lunch at a restaurant Carey remembered enjoying with her dad perhaps 20 years ago, and it was delicious and we had a great view. It was overcast but the sun was starting to come out. We had crab cakes, clam chowder, and Caesar salad.

After lunch, we were looking around and Carey was laughing about a memory she had years ago, of going to an Oxygen Bar at Pier 39. Lo and behold, it was still there, and they now have a water massage option as well. So of course, we gave that a try.

The water massage is a tube type thing you lay in, and it closes and jets of water massage you through a layer of protective plastic. Was it as good as a normal massage? No. Was it fun and did it feel good? Yes. We then tried the Oxygen, which I don’t think really did anything for us.

After Pier 39, we walked over to Pier 45, where we visited my very favorite attraction, Musée Mécanique. It’s a weird collection of ancient arcade artifacts, some of which used to be at Playland (like Laughing Laffing Sal up there). The collection was then housed behind/below the Cliff House restaurant at Ocean Beach, but when they renovated that in 2003, it moved to Fisherman’s Wharf, which is probably a better location for it.

I wonder if these guys used to have pants, or if they always looked Iike they were in their tighty whities?

The French Execution has been my favorite since I first saw it in 1988. I know, this means I am a twisted person, but I just cannot stop laughing at this one.

The whole place is ridiculous fun, though that Laffing Sal is truly frightening. After the Musée, we walked over to Ghiradelli Square and decided to sit and have a glass of wine (for me) and a cocktail (for Carey), at a restaurant that has amazing views, McCormick and Kuletos.

After refreshing ourselves, we decided to go look for dinner. Why, you might ask, would we go somewhere else for dinner when we were at a lovely restaurant already? Who knows. Mainly I guess because this is a seafood restaurant, and we had seafood for lunch. Also, we weren’t quite hungry yet. Also also, I suddenly remembered the wonderful Italian restaurant I had gone to with some friends, about a 30 minute walk away. OK! I made a reservation online, and we headed on over.

Montesacro is a small chain of Roman restaurants. They have four locations, one in Brooklyn, two in San Francisco, and one in my little town of Walnut Creek. I first tried this restaurant last year, where I had an amazing dish, cacio e pepe, which means ‘cheese and pepper’, and is clearly a flavor combination that I enjoy, as the biscuit we shared on Thursday was also cacio e pepe. The dish is hand made pasta, Pecorino cheese, and black pepper, with some pasta water to make it creamy. It’s kind of like fettuccine Alfredo, but to my mind, much better. I had been telling Carey about it since we went over the border from France into Italy last year, where I hoped to find it on a menu (but didn’t, it is a Roman dish, we were far too far north).  So off we went, and the walk helped, we were ready for a light dinner. Not that you could call cacio e pepe ‘light’, but by sharing that and a salad, along with some delicious Italian wine, it wasn’t too much food. The salad was delicious as well, described as: Cavolfiori – roasted cauliflower salad, black olives, capers, cherry tomato, chili, and herbed breadcrumbs. Our waiter was utterly charming, from Florence, very helpful and made the meal fun for us. Then we were ready to walk again.

We started out thinking we would walk back to the waterfront and walk along the piers to the BART station, but then we thought maybe we would walk to the Cable Car route and do that, seems like fun. We found ourselves walking up Lombard, the straight (and very steep) side, and then down the crooked (and very steep) side, which was fun. Neither of us had ever walked it before.

From there, we were walking towards the Cable Car tracks, and we came across a worrisome sight, an urban coyote. Blurry picture.

We were very worried about it, worried that it was going to get hit by a car. It was in a pretty quiet neighborhood, but only a few blocks from a much busier neighborhood. We thought of trying to call animal control, but it slipped away before we made a decision on that. So on we went. I felt kind of guilty about not helping it out, but looking online, it is illegal to re-home coyotes in California, and the advice is only to call if the animal is acting dangerously. Interesting. Finally we found ourselves at the Cable Car line, and got on and rode to the top of Nob Hill.

There we got off and wandered over to the beautiful Grace Cathedral. We went inside, where there was a poetry reading going on. We didn’t stay long, it was getting late, but we did hear the poet say ‘Dick Pic’, which I didn’t really expect.

From there we walked down California street to the Embarcadero, got on BART, and came home. It was a long day, we walked about 9 1/2 miles, and we were tired when we got home. But it was a great day.

If Friday was walking, Saturday was driving. We hopped in the car and drove about an hour and a half to see our Great Aunt, who is 99 (100 in April!) The last time I saw her, before our trip to Alaska in August, she was pretty strong. She was walking around (using her walker) and getting about pretty well. But she had a fall since then, and while there is no injury that they can find, she isn’t doing physical therapy, doesn’t want to get up, and so is in a hospital bed. It’s sad to see her that way, but it was great to see her. We brought her pizza, which she LOVES and hasn’t had in about 100 years (she said), though Carey’s step mom brought her some just a few weeks ago. After that we drove about 1 1/2 hours to Antelope, a town outside of Sacramento, where Carey’s friend lives. I dropped her off there, then drove the 1 1/2 hours home. I enjoyed listening to my audiobook on the way, and saw a beautiful sunset. It was a lovely weekend, and a lot of fun to play tourist with Carey.