The anticipated day came and we were not on schedule, lol, we originally had planned on leaving to Gilroy at 7 am. We were to get up have breakfast and then get all our stuff ready and leave, well it never happened. DJ forgot her gameboy at her mother’s home and we wanted her to have something to keep herself busy for the long drive. We had to stop by and get some coffee and we stopped by Carl’s Jr.; coffee like I expected it to be was horrible, but it was something warm in my stomach,
(I wonder if there is ever a time where I don’t complain about something?! Hvnly?).
Drove and drove, over the hills and prairies of our lovely central valley, until we came to highway 152 the Pacheco Pass. This was a beautiful drive, it was a hard on my Scion because we were going uphill, but the drive was peaceful. There is a man made lake along the highway; I forgot the name of it. There is an interesting and scary note events on Wikipedia about the highway we drove through, go read it
here. After that great drive through the Pacheco pass we arrived to Gilroy, Garlic capital of the world. Every year they have a famous festival and anything you can imagine is cooked with garlic. I’ve always wanted to go the festival and get a chance to eat all things garlic, it was a fun place and it had great places to eat and lots of activities for the kids, but in the end I was a bit disappointed with the place; it was a fun adventure and we had a great time, one more going to the memory bank.
We were in Gilroy for a few hours and after eating and playing around there we drove up the 101 to our final destination, San Francisco. This took about 2 ½ hours to get there, I almost got lost because of an exit numbered 182 and that was the highway I needed to take once we were near San Francisco;(I seriously hate places that have street names and exit numbers, I have yet to see this in Los Angeles or SD county, but Chicago, Arizona and I just learned parts of Santa Clara County are places who number their exits, it's stupid if you ask me, a name of the street and an exit number, do you have EMTS who can't read?. I think I just answered my question, their might be drivers who can't read but who can recognize numbers, but if you can't read you shouldn't be driving - Get off the road; thank you God for my sense of direction and giving me a great instinct to overcome the evil that lurks in this world trying to confuse us all. When I enter San Francisco it gives me great pleasure; it’s like reliving the first encounter for the first time, it’s redundant but that is the feeling, a feeling of redundancy. You get this feeling like ah… there you are, just where I left you, great to see you again, beautiful as always. The temperature is the greatest, cool, low to mid 70’s during our stay. DJ was extremely happy to learn we were going to be staying in downtown, she is fascinated by the fact that people live in apartment complexes or homes that are near the center of the city; she compares this to Los Angeles, a city where everyone runs away from come 5pm on a weekday and on the weekends, it’s a desolate place. We walked around a few streets the first night to get a feel of the place and show DJ around. We had dinner at
Tad’s steak house, this place is located near Powell & Market, a small place that gets busy from time to time, but serves one of the best grilled t-bone steaks I’ve ever had with a baked potato; menu is simple but always great to go back there and have a bite. We walked back to our hotel and saw a group of people gathering around listening to some funk, all the songs they played had the same beat to it, I thought they were playing the song called “Cutie Pie”, it was fun just standing there like a tourist clappin’ my hands. I was about to start yelling “clap your hands everybody, and everybody just clap your hands, to the people out front, clapd your hands…” I thought I was Curtis Blow, then a kid approached me asking, “do you know where I can get some weed”, I was like “nope not around here I don’t”, then he said,
“I got some good dubs if you want to buy some” As if my response made him believe that since he was inquiring, I to, was looking for some. I thought about it for a moment, cuz I haven’t been to San Francisco and traveled above the surface streets, but I had to pass on that great opportunity to purchase myself a good “dub”, as the vagrant called it. Saturday; Rooster wakes me up and we get ready to travel to Fisherman’s Wharf, we told DJ about a surprise and she didn’t know about it until we arrived to the Wharf, and even then she had no clue, so we had to come out and tell her, lol. We took a trolley up Powell to Fisherman’s Wharf, this was a cool and funny adventure, the driver almost took off without us and DJ was sitting on the trolley already, a good laugh. We had lunch at the Wharf and hung around until our Ferry started to board; we took a tour of the bay and snapped some pictures. We relaxed for part of the evening after our boat adventure and got ready for dinner at Sushi Rica, they had some delicious rolls, the placed was changed up a bit, but still had good food. Saturday we used public transportation to get around the city, and a cab; I can’t remember the last time I did this. Sunday was another cool weather day, this day was dedicated to visiting the bridge, DJ was excited to know we would driving out there and talking a walk on the bridge. This would also be Hvnly’s first time on the bridge, since the tragedy of September 11th the bridge has been closed to pedestrians.
The bridge is magical, it lends itself for great photography,
I feel I took one of the best sets of photographs while on this trip. Monday was departure day, we ended up going back to the Wharf and had some calamari before leaving and bought some bread and chocolates for the folks back home.
This was a wonderful trip; it was great to have DJ with us and have her live and experience a city that we love. I’m glad DJ was able to see the city, learn about it and understand there are great places out there waiting for her to explore. She has sparked an interest in photography, and she’s not bad for such a young age (just move that lil’ finger DJ!), practice will make perfect and she will learn, I know she will. She’s getting a digital camera for xmas and I think I will start dj’s-viewfinder for her. I hope she becomes a traveler and one day unexpectedly I receive a picture of her in the mail, standing in front of The Sphinx or the wall of China; I’d prefer for her to roam the earth than to sit at home talking about boys and fashion. She has a bright future ahead of her and I can see the thirst for knowledge in her, I love you little girl! I hope to take you with me to more cities around the world.
Looks like several murals are going to be removed from the streets of Los Angeles, specifically the east side, a little known ordinance allows the city to call for change. I remember driving down Soto St or Brooklyn Blvd, which is now called Cesar Chavez Blvd, my parents would call or say "por la bruk-leeen" that was back in the 1980's; we would around town and I would see an Aztec warrior holding his dead wife or girlfriend. A group of friends hanging out, some in their lowriders just having fun, but now the city is calling for change. Graffiti murals or store signs are what covers most of the street when you drive down Cesar Chavez blvd, most of the owners preffer these, than to have a gang sign tagged on the wall, or a tagger's signature piece. The city wants them removed or they have given the owners the option to have wall repainted witha different mural. I think the problem here is that the city has defined what's considered "graffiti", let's see what happens. I will drive by there one of these days and take some pictures of the famous murals that adorn the panaderias and "licorerias", liquor stores.
