July 11
After a night painting the town red, we spent the morning catching up on our much needed beauty sleep. While B continued her snooze fest, K & C got up and headed through Chinatown down to the Italian district for breakfast. After K’s pizza rumor the previous night, we were all still craving some so it was decided that breakfast pizza with eggs, cheddar and ham would have to do.
K & C returned to Nob Hill, leftovers for B in hand, to start a day of laundry, world cup, and afternoon sightseeing. When sleeping beauty finally arose, cousins, travelers and friends gathered around the television to catch the world cup final (on at 11:30am on the West coast). Even though it seemed as though the entire room was rooting for Spain, B’s lone voice would still call out for the Netherlands every once in a while. Unfortunately for her, majority ruled and (as we hope you all know) Spain took home the World Cup.
Once we had had our fill of futbol for the day, we put in another load of laundry (just one of many) and set out for our afternoon of being tourists in an unfamiliar city. Our first stop: Food! Or so B thought… Our first first stop was actually a Verizon store where B could get a replacement battery for her newer phone. (This was something she had been trying to do all trip since her older phone died so quickly. She was getting so mopey and cranky about her lack of battery power that K & C finally found a store and shoved her through the doors.) When the phone battery conundrum had finally been solved we made it to our REAL first stop – a late lunch at Mel’s drive-in, a diner style restaurant with a delicious selection of burgers. K & B each ordered one of those tempting patties with fries while C went for the ever popular chicken pot pie. The food was delicious and all was going well until we came upon what we now can only refer to as… “the Incident.” Seeing how tasty B’s fries looked drizzled with some of Heinz’s most famous product, K reached for a bottle of ketchup and began to shake it to mix the juices around. Unbeknownst to her, the previous ketchup lover to use that condiment did not return the lid correctly and as K shook the container, the top flew off, causing that “sauce americaine” to spew across the counter at K. B & C immediately jumped into action grabbing napkins from their receptacles and scooping the ketchup up off the table. It wasn’t until C turned to ask K if she was alright that she realized that she had not, in fact, survived the attack unscathed. Red sauce hung from her hair and clung to her cardigan like battle wounds and it wasn’t until K wiped her face that we all realized she had football streaks of ketchup across her cheeks as well. B & C helped clean her up as much as possible so that we could quickly finish the meal and pay and then it was back to the apartment for a shower and clothing change for K.
While K got cleaned up, C contacted her friend Mason from LA who was coming up to say hi and chauffeur us around the city. When Mason finally arrived, we headed out again, this time to get around to all those fabulously touristy parts of San Fran. We started with driving down the twisty end of Lombard St. As we got closer, traffic began to slow and we eventually realized that traffic cops were needed at each end of the block to direct cars through the famous switchbacks. After making sure no one felt carsick (C?), we continued on to the Golden Gate Bridge. As C and Mason informed us, this was Frisco’s foggy season and the city doesn’t usually warm up until August. Of course, this would explain why there was a thick cloud layer hovering over the bay and bridge as we looked out over the water. It was still pretty nifty to see what was, for 27 years the longest suspension bridge in the world. Once Mason helped take our tourist photo in front of the bridge, we browsed the souvenirs and headed downtown to get a feel for the central part of the city.
Mason did a great job walking us up and down blocks he was familiar with and introducing us to the city as well as the west coast. After climbing all of San Fran’s hills, we concluded that people who live in the city must have really nice butts. As we browsed the shops, we passed a cupcake store called “Cako” and knew we couldn’t resist. Since cupcakes are all the rage right now so it would almost be uncool of us not to stop. We each chose a cupcake to – red velvet, apple pie, and lemon raspberry – and we found a hotel lobby to relax and eat them in. The cupcakes turned out to be the perfect appetizer since not long after we finished them, we found a Thai restaurant downtown to have dinner at. We each ordered a different dish and shared them all, family style. The food was delicious but the company was even better. Mason regaled us with stories of all of his crazy mishaps and social experiments that occurred since he last saw C that had us aching with laughter.
When dinner had at last ended, Mason chauffeured us back to Nob Hill where we all said our first goodbyes of San Francisco. Afterwards, we unloaded our car for a full-on camping gear clean up. We also had an appointment the next morning at the Honda dealership and we didn’t want to look too crazy with all our cross-country getup. With all of our stuff spread out, it looked like we were taking over the apartment (sorry, Bridget!) but we tried to keep everything as centralized as possible. When our laundry and dishes were done for the night, we said goodnight and goodbye to our hostess and tucked ourselves in to bed for another campless night.
Mileage to date: 4,064
States visited: California
Yellow car count: A moratorium was placed on the yellow car game while we were within San Francisco so the scores remain the same.
C – 118
B – 139
K – 151
Highs and Lows:
Group high – Tour guide Mason
Group low – Fog hiding the bridge
C high – Mason!
C low – Fog
B high – Cupcakes
B low – Sleeping in
K high – Mason’s dinner stories
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