the bay (cont.)

The suspense has been killing you, hasn't it? My mission this morning is to break down the rest of our bay area trip.

DAY FOUR

I was so glad to leave our Holiday Inn motel. Housekeeping moves at break neck speeds over there. Every day they came early, but on Monday they were there before 9:30. Ummmm, I'm still in the shower? lol. As soon as we closed our room door she was in there takin care of business. I aint mad at cha, but can I get the rest of my stuff? haha.

And off they go...2nd McDonald's breakfast in one week? Check. We went there =] Dang, I've been missing that top 'o the mornin goodness since I've been working the night shift. This was definitely a welcomed vacation treat.

Our best memories of Great Mall? The massage chairs, lol. We're not marathon shoppers when it involves actual physical contact with the merchandise. We're big online consumers, but it was nice to get into a few stores and check out what Northern California malls have to offer.

PIER 39 - There are some cool stores and hecka expensive food, but the view of the San Francisco Bay is the true draw for me. There were other fans of the view, but a certain Indian couple had me chuckling under my breath. They have these boat tie downs all over the pier. Me and Nahdia kept walking by them wondering what they heck they were. There were some pretty close to the street too. Anyway, I was doing my tourist thing, taking a million shots of the same scenery, and I see this couple walk up to the boat tie downs near me.

The guy tells his girl to pose for a picture and she assumes the position. This *ahem* aspiring photographer was unhappy with her first few attempts and everyone around them could hear ... or maybe I'm just "far-eared" lol, okay so my eavesdropping skills are pretty impressive.

Him: no not like that ... you already did that, do something different.

Her: how about this? ... is this okay?

Oh my gosh, I was super laughing at them. Then they switch places and he starts vogue-ing...well, not really, but he posed and she shot. I wonder if she was imagining a gun instead of a camera, lol. jk jk.

Another interesting find...LEFTY'S, a store dedicated to left-handed people. Nahdia is left-handed so we decided to check it out. Apparently lefty's like poopoo paper? lol. JK, but we did find this ode to going green. This is reduce, reuse, recycle to the extreeeeeeme. We didn't buy it.

Nahdia's gonna take care of the Alcatraz details so, on to...

DAY FIVE

Oh no, it's almost over!! Did I mention I enjoy sightseeing? In editing the video all I've been hearing is me gasping, whispering in awe, and I can't forget about my many outbursts of appreciation for the wonder of God's beautiful creations. Oh I didn't mention the subject of such adoration?

Meet today's bay area wonder...the Tongan Mustang. We laughed forever about this one. He couldn't get away from us, we were on the Golden Gate Bridge so his options were limited. We weren't stalking or anything, but we were able to get several angles of his unique automobile.

Okay, but on the real, I was actually talking about the Redwood trees five hours north of San Francisco (two hours south of Oregon). Kitty worked hard that day, we drove through some winding roads, highs and lows aaaaaand through the base of a live tree!! I have a deep appreciation for the miracle of this world. It's not a coincidence, this is all intelligent/divine design. Nahdia and I had fun running through our "my size" playground. We climbed *cough cough* Nahdia climbed, on top of tree stumps, through fallen trees and got up close and personal with nature. The pics in the teaser post are some of the many we took that day, but they are typical of what you can find there. I absolutely recommend this drive to people who enjoy pretending to be professional drivers and to nature-lovers. I don't recommend the drive to people who get car sick. The twists and turns are no joke and you will start to hate yourself for making the trip before you even get to the 31-mile Avenue of the Giants drive. Also, the drive thru tree is kinda small and Kitty only had a few inches of empty space on each side. Don't try to do it with an SUV or truck.

"You better get some napkins, wipe the blood off yo' face sucka. - Walmart Shopper"

We made a trip to Walmart before calling it a night and as we're standing in line a man behind us interrupts the convo of a few employees emptying cash registers. At one point he told one of the workers, "if my wife tells me to whip you I will". His wife was not with him. We laughed and decided we needed to be tucked into our hotel room as soon as possible.

DAY SIX

Zachyboy! We spent time with one of our favorite Bay Area people --the only one we know-- Zach. After picking this guy up we headed over to his hook-up spot, HOMETOWN, but Blanca hadn't opened the restaurant yet, so we DUN DUN DUN ate breakfast at McDonalds...lol, 3rd time, same meal, still delish, hahaha. Hey, I don't get McDonald's breakfast at home, remember? I'm asleep til 11:30 am. Was it the third time? I think so, *information deemed reliable, but not guaranteed* lol.

We took a scenic drive through Concord, saw some hybrid horse/cows hows? lol and then went to a dog park...and had no dog. After following the ducks around the pond we took a house tour of Zach's digs. Awesome apartmento!!

The San Francisco Creamery Co. is actually in Walnut Creek, but they have the creamiest, amazingest, wonderfulest ice cream. Nahdia got this humongous brownie thing and I had the best mango ice cream I've ever tasted.

This is considered a "small". I am an ice cream fiend. I love it, I eat it when it's cold, when I'm not even hungry *but that happens with all kindsa food so idk if it applies here, lol*, but I couldn't finish this. I had about 65-70% of it and a few bites of Nahdia's, half a basket of french fries and I was done. Okay, that sounds like a lot, and ding ding ding, it was.

Yayayayaya CHINATOWN! JAPANTOWN! Cheap stuff!

I bugged Nahdia about going to Chinatown pretty much since we landed. We had so much fun checking out the souvenirs in the first store, but started to lose interest when we realized that just like the swap meet, everyone pretty much had the same merchandise. After scouring Chinatown for the perfect postcards, lol, we hiked back to our car, and I do mean hiked. Driving up and down the hills of San Francisco was fun, but walking up and down (cuz we only did one hill) was a workout. It would've been a great time to have a Lark, lol. Awesome things we saw in Chinatown? Alley dining. There's something about people living on top of each other that inspires the human mind to use every inch of space. Enter restaurants located in the middle of an alley. It's definitely a new concept. We stepped into another alley way and got to see windows of different apartments filled with hanging laundry, plants, dirt, etc. [steady creeping on the world]

*phew* We were exhausted after our drive through Japantown so we fought traffic to SFO and then recharged all our electronics and ate the best airport pizza ever while we waited for our plane.

Our family was excited to have us back and appreciative of the goods we brought home. It was nice to hang out with everybody here and share a few laughs and stories from our travels. I hope you've enjoyed this brief recap Uila. I can't wait to see ya in Lithuania!!