San Francisco

As part of our extended Christmas break/holiday we not only went back to Phoenix ( and yes, I did go to the house where I swapped some useless clothing for some more practical stuff for the upcoming months, and I did some laundry and just plain hanging out), but we spent almost a week in San Francisco. Our friend of many, many, many years (early elementary for C. and late elementary for me) finally found the woman he was fated to be with and they set a date for the wedding, which was about 2 weeks ago. There is nothing on this earth that would have kept us away. Since many of his other friends felt the same way too, it was a reunion of sorts of people we had not seen for years. They came from all over the world to witness this event! I won't be posting any photos of the wedding or of the long lost friends who attended, so I will summarize that part and then go on and put the tourist part of trip down for you.

The wedding itself was held in a Catholic cathedral near the Haight/Ashbury part of town. The sermon was the most insightful and hopeful summary of marriage that I have heard (in particular from someone who is celibate), and I am chasing it down for my own savoring. The bride had organized things so well, that there was a bus that transported all of the guests that stayed at the same hotel, to the service, and then around the city, between the service and the reception. The reception was a very classy event at Treasure island, with totally delicious food, great wine and fun 80's music to dance to. When the event was over and the bus took us back to the hotel, we went across the street and eventually closed the voo doo bar down ( not only that night!!). The bride was gorgeous, I had a chance to dance with the groom and the event was everything that we imagined and then some- A night to remember (for the final 80's reference). We have the photos to prove it too.

We had the most unbelievable weather for January in San Francisco. It was sunny each and every single day and it was warm enough to consider taking the fleece jacket off on some of the days. This, and the 9 day pass to the cable cars and electric trams allowed us to play tourist in this town. We managed to spend our days walking around the town and our nights closing down the local bars. The tourist portion of our time in San Francisco will have to be the subject of other posts.