Chewymom

As though posts about farting criminals weren’t fluff….

Here are a few more pics from San Fran. I could post for months about the trip and still not run out of photos, because Chewydad and I were both camera-happy and easily came home with 1000 pictures. Gotta love digital! In the interest of not boring you to tears, I won’t post them all, I promise. But here are a few more of our fun trip, in no particular order.

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The Redwoods:
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The happy couple (that would be us!)

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Lombard Street (aka the really, really curvy street)

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THE bridge (Golden Gate, of course!)

So, you’ve seen the food, and no blog would be complete without a tour of San Francisco beverages. Can you tell the Chewy family lacks excitement in our neck of the woods? And maybe I was having a little too much fun with my camera. Ya’ think?
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This looks like just a bottle of water. And it is sort of. Notice the name “Geyser” on the bottle? Notice my pants? Ironic, huh?

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I’ll start off the “real” beverages with a Green Apple Tea:

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Moving on now to coffee. Now, we drank plenty of Starbucks, mind you. But we also enjoyed several other coffees (or rather lattes).

There is Peets:

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Then there’s Tully’s:

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And then there’s Irish Coffee which was REALLY GOOD, but I have an entire post dedicated to that. This was at Union Station:

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Since we’ve moved into more alcoholic drinks, next I give you the wineries. I’m embarrassed that we didn’t take any pictures of our wine tastings, or of the paper to-go cups of wine we took on the bus at the last stop. Let’s just assume that we were too busy tasting to be bothered with photo-documenting. But I did manage to photograph some barrels of Chardonnay:

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This was my Mai Tai at the Oriental Pearl:

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And then the Martini at Broadway:

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And of course there’s the Mojito from the cigar bar. I won’t lie–I thought this was really gross. (Although you might notice that the glass is empty.)

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And I did say cigar bar, and while I didn’t drink a cigar, I certainly did help Chewydad smoke one. And I have photo-proof.

The first time we saw Bush Man, we were on our Segway tour, and our guide gave us the heads’ up. I was really thankful, because this guy would scare the heejeebies out of anyone!

One thing we found so amusing in San Francisco is that you can make money doing just about anything. We saw more street musicians and performers than we could count. I have dozens of videos of them. Some were quite good and even had cds for sale.

But Bush Man had to be the most entertaining. Bush Man spends his day crouched beside a garbage can. He is always in the same location. He holds two large branches in front of himself, so he resembles, well, a bush.

When someone passes by, he yells and jumps out and scares them silly. Crowds gather across the street to watch Bush Man terrorize unsuspecting tourists, and then he demands payment. So people put money in his little cup for the privilege of watching him scare people. And that’s how he earns a living in San Francisco.

Gotta love it.

Coming from the fast food capital of the world, Chewydad and I had one goal when it came to food in San Francisco. Don’t eat at any chains. We succeeded in our goal. Check out this photo tour of our good eats!
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The first night, we ate at a little hole-in-the-wall Mediterranean restaurant. It was tiny, full of locals, friendly, and totally delicious! I started with quiche, soup, and little rolls (can’t remember what they are called).

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We polished off our meal by splitting a creme brulee.

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The second night we ate at the Oriental Pearl in Chinatown, thanks to the recommendation of some friends of ours. It was packed, and the diners seemed to be a mix of locals and tourists. Check out Chewydad with our delicious Asian food.

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On the third night, we went on a tip from our Segway tour guide and after some hunting, found a little Sushi restaurant that was definitely geared to locals. It was along a side-street, down in a basement. Once we found it, we were put at a table that was bumped up to a table of four Japanese young people. We observed them so we didn’t make complete idiots of ourselves as we ate. First, we were given an appetizer. The O’Charley’s equivalent of yeast rolls. Only this appetizer was edamame. Yum!

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Scott ordered Nigiri sushi: yellowtail tuna and a redfin tuna, and a California roll.

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I got a vegetarian fried sushi roll, which was to die for. And yes, I managed to eat it and a salad with chop sticks! Go, me!

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Even though we were totally stuffed, we decided to try some mango ice cream. It was served in tiny balls–six of them. Each piece had a rice pastry shell surrounding it. So light and yummy!

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On the last night we took the recommendation of some friends and went to a very pricey restaurant called Boulevard down near the water. Our reservation was at 9:45, which just happens to be past my bedtime. Especially when it is two hours later back at home, making it more like 11:45. It was totally worth it.
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We began our meal with spinach ravioli. Well, technically we began it with a couple of martinis. But food-wise, we ordered the spinach ravioli, which were brought to us on a rectangular plate. All three of them. And let me just say that one of the coolest things about the meals in San Francisco is that they do NOT have the attitude that more is better. That might partially explain the difference in the obesity rates between California and Alabama.

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Next, I ordered a vegetarian plate, where the chef basically presented me with a sampling of the many vegetable side dishes that are served with the other meals. Isn’t it pretty?

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We finished our meal with dessert. Two little chocolate bon-bons.

I think my next post will be a tour of the beverages. Which basically amounted to coffee and alcohol.

Chewydad needs to go into business as a trip planner. Neither of us is highly skilled in making up our minds, but after weeks of agonizing over what in the heck to do for our 20th anniversary, we finally made up our minds to go to San Francisco. Once that was in place and the airline tickets purchased, meaning we couldn’t change our wishy-washy minds any more, Chewydad kicked it into gear. He planned so much fun stuff, I had Facebook friends begging to know who was my trip planner.

We arrived rather late on a Thursday night. I won’t tell you about our dinner yet–that’s a later post. The next morning, though, Chewydad had booked a tour of San Francisco for us. On Segways!

Y’all, if you’ve never ridden on a Segway…Oh. My. Goodness. It is way too much fun. And just check me out and tell me I don’t look cool. Go ahead…tell me! You know I do.

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So, Chewydad and I got back last night from our WONDERFUL 20th anniversary trip to San Francisco. My mind is pretty much mush now, so don’t expect any post of great eloquence in the next few days/weeks/months. Haha.

Before I post a few pics, I need to give a shout-out to the wonderful Chewy-in-laws who held down the fort in our absence. They kept the Chewykids fed, bathed, clothed, and made sure they got to school, got to soccer and football, got to work, ate their Wheeties–you know–all the important stuff. The kids are thoroughly spoiled now, especially Sally who conned my mother-in-law out of convinced my mother-in-law that she needed three new dresses and a giant Barbie head for applying makeup and creating hair-dos. Sally is having a rough re-entry into the real world.

Also, I wanted to say that if any of you are searching for an anniversary idea, I can’t recommend San Fran highly enough. The weather was glorious, the people uber-friendly, the food…well, let’s just say I came back 5 pounds heavier, and that’s in spite of the incredible amount of walking I did! And if you figure I was gone for less than 5 days, that means that I consumed 3500 extra calories PER DAY–above and beyond the calories I burned walking. Not right.

Well, I don’t want to keep the public waiting, so here are the first of many pictures of our trip.

Got Irish Coffee?

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