Happy Wooden Anniversary to me!

On Saturday, June 10, 2006 Rick and I celebrated our 6th anniversary (which the proper “modern gift” is wood – how that is modern I’ll never know)! YAY US! To commemorate this happy occasion we decided to spend the weekend in San Francisco doing the normal touristy stuff as well as see a musical that Rick has been dying to see.

We left Friday afternoon, a little later than originally planned – however traffic was super light and we made it in record time. After a recent bachelor party Rick had attended in Reno he’s become interested in Horse Racing so we decided, for our first night to go to Bay Meadows horse track since they had live racing. I was skeptical to start – I figured it would be SUPER boring! Once we got there though – it was a whole different story! First it was college night and Rick just happens to be wearing a San Diego State sweatshirt so we got in for $1! Then it was $1 hot dog/$2 beers – what could be better than cheap beer and hot dogs? Let me tell you – WINNING, WINNING is better!! Our first race we bet $3 to win on horse 4 (Riverun Thruit – named after Brad Pitt of course) – he was slow out of the gate, but blew the competition away on the final stretch! I was so jazzed up, I was jumping up and down and screaming and grabbing Ricks arm (spilling his beer on the chair of the cranky lady in front of him - opps)! For a $3 bet, we won $26!!! We only placed bets on 2 more races, neither of which won, but we still had a ton of fun. And our winnings from the first race paid for our drinks, snacks and bets!

After horse racing we went and found our cute little boutique hotel in Union Square, Hotel Metropolis. Super cute décor and amazingly friend staff made this hotel one of my favorites. Also they had a great internet special where we got free valet parking with in and out privileges as well as a $10 gas card every night we stayed. In addition to this great special every afternoon from 4-6 they offered free wine in their “library” – it wasn’t the best we’ve had, but it was worth its freeness! The only down fall to this hotel was it location, which wasn’t the best neighborhood ever but aside from that, it was a lovely place to stay.

On Saturday we woke up bright and early and headed out, we had full days ahead of us! Our first stop was breakfast. We have a tradition of always going to Ti Coupe on Valencia whenever we go to the city – they have the best Hungarian crepes and TO DIE for blood mary’s and hard cider! We got there about 9:45 – only to realize that we forgot we were on SF time and that nothing was open yet! We walked around until they opened at 10, when we were able to enjoy our mushroom, cheese and sautéed onion crepe, cheese plate, berry crepe, cider and blood mary. We left feeling full and ready to conquer touristy SF.

We took our car back to our hotel and left it, then walked the 2 blocks to the trolley car station. In all the times I’ve been to San Francisco I’ve never ridden a trolley car – we bought all day passes and took off with our first destination being China town. When we jumped off the trolley in China town we didn’t know what to expect – in the past when going there, it’s usually closed down – this time was so different. The streets were packed with shoppers buying fresh fruits and veggies from corner merchants that had lined the sidewalks of their stores with all different varieties of produce. Some items I’ve never seen in its natural state before – like water chestnuts - I always just thought they grew in a can pre sliced! We went to the fresh fish markets where people pick the fish they want from HUGE tanks. They also had frogs and turtles – which were HUGE and super cute. As long as I didn’t think about what was going to end up happening to them, I was okay. We walked around and bought a few things – some cute slipper shoes and different trinkets. Then on our way out, Rick saw something that caught his eye, he stopped and was enthralled by it. Not positive he was seeing it correctly he asked the merchant what it was, to which the response was “Paper shirt”. A paper shirt you say – what could be more entertaining to Rick than a paper shirt and tie – the next thing that was going thru his mind was ‘who could I buy this for?’ To make sure he’d heard correctly he said “I am sorry did you say ‘a paper shirt””. Apparently the merchant thought this rude because she then yelled “YES! Paper shirt to burn for the dead!!!” Startled by the yelling and amazed at the thought of a paper shirt being burned for dead folks, we quickly left the store and thus ended our trip to China town.

Next stop on the street car trolley was of course Pier 39. Our plan was to go to Alcatraz. When we got there it was a little later in the day than we’d planned so we decided to put Alcatraz off until Sunday and we caught the F line back to our hotel where we partook in the afternoon wine drinking! We met a delightful lady and discussed SF and the Haight street fair that was going on the next day. Since we wanted to catch a comedy show at the small comedy club across the street we headed to our room and changed for the evening. We headed across the street to the 50Mason Lounge where we saw 6 different comedians. The funniest by far was Ali Wong . She reminded us a lot of Margaret Cho who has been our favorite comedienne for a long time.

After the show the night was still young so we grabbed the trolley and head out to find some food. We ended up in Del Monte square – where we saw a marquis that had Kyle Dunnigan as the headliner (for those who are crazy and don’t watch Reno 911 – Kyle Dunnigan plays Trudy Wiegels’ serial killer boyfriend, he is also the guy in the Carls Jr commercials who shakes the cow to make milkshakes). We decided to see if we were too late to catch the show luckily we weren’t and we got there just before he took the stage. Let me just say – he’s hilarious. He did an amazing job of cracking up the audience and not going blue while doing it; both Rick and I were very entertained and left the show feeling like we’d gotten our monies worth.

Sunday was our last day in the city by the Bay and we ended up going to Ghirardelli square as well as the Maritime museum and Ripley’s believe it or not. The highlight of the day however was our evening plans where we had tickets to see the Broadway musical “25th annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”. If you haven’t heard of this musical, it’s about a group of kids in the finals for their counties spelling bees. The plot of the story does a great job of attaching you quickly to the competitors and fast paced and humor full songs make the musical a delight, it is definitely something we’ll go see again.

And fair reader that wraps up our anniversary trip to San Francisco. The last thought I want to leave you with is this: I now want to move to SF. Rick and I have always been big fans of the city. However this deal sealed it for me. Its so amazing there, I love the hustle and bustle of the streets, the diversity of the people and the fact that even at 10pm on a Sunday the streets have people everywhere. I was born to live in an urban city I think. And if I could afford it, I’d move in a heartbeat – so I am saving my pennies and nickels and hopefully . . . .