I KNOW the way to San Jose! I do!
My husband and I finally went to San Francisco last week. We just went for a vacation, and hell, let’s face it; the place looks kick-ass on the Rice-a-Roni commercials. Plus, they have wine there, lots of wine.
We like wine.
As you have probably guessed, we both LOVED wine country. My husband and I went on a tour of Napa Valley on the Monday that we were there. It was beautiful, and it was warm (I’ll get to why this was such a relief later). We toured five wineries in a limo, with three other couples. Some old people drank us under the table on our wine tour. We quit tasting after the second winery and did not have the champagne in the limo. I was already on Tum’s at this point, and I had to take a crap at winery number three. If you know me, you know my stomach does not tolerate change well. The older couple, their daughter and son-in-law had two bottles of champagne and tasted at five wineries; plus, they split a bottle of wine with lunch. I would have puked for sure.
All vomit and acid indigestion aside, the Napa Valley is BEAUTIFUL. I want to live there someday. The only problem is for what we paid for our house in Indiana, we could get a trailer in Napa. I shit you not. I actually looked it up. A trailer. For $625,000, we could get a two bedroom, one bathroom shack. So, I will need to work on winning the lottery before moving there.
As far as the city of San Francisco goes, I didn’t leave my heart there; but I probably dropped a few pounds. Man! Every time I visit a big city, I am glad that I live in the suburbs. I do love to drive my car to where I am going and park right out front. In the big city, this just does not happen. You have to walk A LOT. Don’t get me wrong; I was glad to have the extra exercise, but I don’t think I could live there. It would involve taking public transportation with OTHER PEOPLE, and I just really don’t like other people.
Speaking of other people, my husband and I came into contact with lots of strange folks in San Francisco. Here are just a few examples:
We saw a man with pigtails.
We saw a lot of men wearing Capri pants and sandals. We played a game called “Gay or German” whenever we saw a femininely dressed man. Only once did we have to say “both”.
We saw many, many homeless people. There are 10,000 to 14,000 homeless people in San Fran. Once, we saw two homeless men in a screaming match, outside Walgreens.
We heard a hooker complaining (very loudly and with lots of f-bombs) about another hooker, while walking down the street talking on her Bluetooth.
Our cab driver to Haight-Ashbury spoke Russian on his Bluetooth for the entire trip, except for the two times he said, “Whatever!” Love it!
After seeing many women in heels and short skirts, just hanging out at the tourist spots, we came up with a new game: German or prostitute.
My husband and I did all of the typical tourist things. We rode the trolley twice. It goes really slow and the driver has to pull back on the brake lever really hard on the hills. It was kind of like riding a really slow roller coaster. The trolley is great if you a tourist; but, I doubt that many locals take it to work.
The husband loved the wharf.
We made a pilgrimage to hippie land –Haight-Ashbury. If you know my husband, you know that he is a hippie at heart; but even he was disappointed with Haight-Ashbury. There is a Ben and Jerry’s on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. Corporate America has taken over. You can put all of the Cherry Garcia in there you want; it’s still corporate. Plus, who the hell wants to eat ice cream there. It’s friggin cold and cloudy all of the time. We know why Mark Twain said, “The coldest winter was the summer I spent in San Francisco” or something like that. I bought a fleece jacket the day that we hung out at Fisherman’s wharf and toured Alcatraz. I kept it on the whole time we were there, except when we were shopping. It’s frigging HOT in all of the stores. I got the warm wateries from all of the temperature changes.
We learned some valuable things on our trip. First, on Fisherman’s wharf, they have public bathrooms that require tokens to enter. This keeps the 14,000 homeless people from living there. We still have our toilet tokens. This way we won’t have to “do the dance” while rushing into a store to request a token.
We learned that it is not a good idea to stand up on top of the double-decker bus because you could get electrocuted and decapitated by the cable car wires. Of course, my husband and I stayed on the lower, enclosed level of the bus because it was TOO DAMNED COLD on the top level. : )
We learned not to ever bring elderly people with us to San Francisco. There was a 13 story hike up the hill to see Alcatraz. Our mothers would not have made it.
We learned to buy the iPhone elsewhere. There was a block long line at all times, all five days we were there, in front of the Apple store.
We learned that we are not as fit as we may have thought we were. My husband and I were completely burned out on day five and retired to our room at 2:30. We are old. J
My husband still has faith in the whole, “miles” thing; but I relearned that it is all corporate bullshit. I STILL have not flown first class. I am 36 and ¾ years old. The husband was supposed to arrange this with “miles” and “upgrade” us; but “miles” were useless. There are so many restrictions etc. Of course, I shouldn’t complain; there are people who have STILL not used indoor plumbing facilities. So, I will stop bitching about this.
It should not be cold in July. Ever.
My husband and I are both happy to be home and ok with the fact that we are “suburb people”. You couldn’t pay either one of us to live in a big city. We do want to visit the San Francisco area again; but, we would like to spend four days in Napa and one day in San Francisco, as opposed to the way we did it this time. Napa is so much more our speed. Plus, they have lots of wine. : )
I KNOW the way to San Jose! I do! was originally published on Petty Thoughts