Getting Caught Up (Part I)

Well I'm way overdue on telling you about one of my best weekends here in the great state of California.  My friends Steve and Theresa, old Fish and Wildlife colleagues from St. Pete came into town Thursday, May 19th.  They flew into San Fran Wednesday night, spent Thursday morning hiking around Muir Woods and walking over the Golden Gate Bridge and then came south in the early evening.

We spent Thursday night watching the Bruins defeat the Lightning 2-0 and then went back to my apartment to catch up a bit more and they crashed early due to the jet lag.  Friday was an exciting day in the big city of San Fran...They had tickets to Alcatraz for the 9:10 boat but since I had recently been to the Rock I passed on this opportunity.  Instead I got some breakfast at Mel's Diner (yummy biscuits and gravy) and then headed to Chinatown.

Welcome to Chinatown!

I had never been to Chinatown before and I'm glad I got the chance to spend the entire morning there.  San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in North America and the largest outside of Asia.  The people, the stores, the random items for sale, food, you name it; everything was all quite the experience for me.  I even walked out with a couple of souvenirs!  As I walked up Grant Ave. and finally reached the outskirts of Chinatown I saw North Beach just across the street.  I was standing in between China and Italy!!  I just thought it was pretty cool to be standing in between two completely different cultures, only one block apart.

Anyone for some chicken's feet?!!

After Chinatown I walked to Nob Hill, poking in and out of stores I clearly couldn't afford to buy anything in and then had lunch at a sandwich shop.  After lunch I dropped the car off at a garage near the stadium (AT&T Park) and then met up with Steve and Theresa.  They had a blast on the island and once they grabbed some food we shot up the street to the Transamerica building.  For those of you unfamiliar with this it is the largest building in the city.  It looks like a giant pyramid and is 850 feet tall.

The pyramid is located near the Church of Scientology building which we of course had to venture in to.  It was just about as weird as you would have expected but told the history of how it came about, the room covered with quotes and even a big picture of John Travolta's head!  They then wanted to head into Chinatown so Steve could try to find an Alcatraz shirt that he didn't find on the island...he also did not find one here, FAIL!  After looking in a couple of stores we took off for the stadium because it was extremely important that we get there early so we could get a San Francisco Giants snuggie, the giveaway for the first 20,000 fans entering the game!

I walked in and immediately started jumping on their couch...

You might laugh at the fact that we headed down early for a snuggie, and to be honest I haven't even taken mine out of the bag yet, but I have never seen lines this long to get into a ballgame.  We were almost 1/4 mile away from the stadium and once we started moving it took us over a half hour to get in.  We got our snuggies and then toured the stadium a bit since it was only 5:30 and the game didn't start until after 7:00.  As we were walking around there were several sketchy old guys trying to buy peoples snuggies off of them for $10!  The game was great and the Giants managed to pull off a good win in extra innings.  Overall it was a very productive day!

Can you find the stadium?

Getting closer... 

And we made it!