San Francisco!!!

This last weekend was our 13th anniversary (!!) and we went on a great trip to San Francisco!! We both love this city, and I was lucky to experience a lot of it when I was in college at Santa Cruz, but it had been a long time since we had both been there together. It was a short trip (it would have been nice to have about 4 more days), but we made the best of our time there. Unfortunately, there was also a sad reason for the trip, which is that Em’s brother, Mikey, is in rehab at a hospital up there, so we wanted to see him, and hopefully cheer him up a little. So we packed A LOT into 2 fast days!

I hate to say it, but one nice thing about the trip (sorry guys if you ever read this) is that we had no kids! We looooooove doing things with our guys, but we haven’t had a childless trip in almost six years (!!!), so it really was kind of a treat. Huge thanks to a whole crew of people who made this possible including Julie, Scarlet, Rachel, Michelle, Panna, my mom Kathy, Amy, Jamie, and Felix, and of course Finn and Jack for being such good guys!! This feels like the Academy Awards : )
We stayed in a really nice hotel in the downtown business district (our hotel is on the left), which is a little strange for us since we usually like staying in little bed and breakfast type places, but it was really fun to be in the middle of so many things. Whenever we went outside, there were a ton of people walking around, which made it feel like a “Big City” movie set!

We even had trolley cars passing by our hotel! One nice thing is that you can just jump on and off of them whenever you want (and sing the Rice-a-Ronie song if you want to annoy people). San Francisco is definitely not a cheap city, but it makes up for it by having so many great things that are totally free. We loved the trolley cars, the beautiful artwork and murals everywhere, window shopping, and being able to walk to a few places!

Of course, another great free thing about SF is the people watching! It was especially entertaining this trip, because it was Gay Pride weekend! There were soooo many people ready to party in rainbow-colored outfits!! It did make the driving a little more difficult, but we really enjoyed the energy of the celebration.

Mikey's hospital - we were so happy to find it in super-confusing San Fransisco that we had to take a picture.

Of course, it was nice, but tough to see Mikey in bad shape. Em can write more about it if she wants, but I’m glad that we got to take him out for a while.

I was also glad that Mikey wanted to go to the Haight-Ashbury district! That's where my heart is in San Francisco : ) Everyone knows that it’s very touristy now, but I totally enjoy all of the hippie stuff, and I’m really happy that they’re still keeping some of that spirit alive there!

How many places can you go where the restaurant is playing live Grateful Dead the whole time?! I think it was Hampton 1989 - a great show!

After we brought Mikey back, we had more of our anniversary part of the trip (here's Em getting ready). First we had a great dinner at a restaurant close to our hotel, and Em suggested that we try to find a club afterward. Luckily, there was one right down the street from our hotel (although there is probably one close to every hotel there!) I think we were both a little nervous about going clubbing after not having gone in (ahem) a little while, but it turned out so great! They actually let us in really quickly – after we thought for sure the bouncers would just laugh at us! It must have been because Em looked so teriffic!!

Club kids! That's Em's scarf - I'm not trying to be euro-trash.

It’s true that we may have been the oldest people there, but we had a really great time! We danced for hours, and I was surprised that I actually recognized some of the music! Of course, they had to play Michael Jackson, and I think that everyone was waiting for it, but the DJ did a really cool thing. After starting off with some (kind of boring) club music, he started playing more hip-hop, which everyone liked, and then he started mixing in the “mama say mamma sa mamacusa” from Michael’s “Wanna be Startin’ Somethin’”, which really got people going. Then he mixed it in to “Welcome to Atlanta” by Ludacris, which, strangely, I really like. He kept mixing in the Michael through a couple of other songs, and then finally played “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough”, and the crowd loved it! It’s easy to forget how fun it can be to go club dancing and just remember the hassle, but I’m so glad that we made the effort!!

This self-took picture didn't come out too bad (Em looks great!) It was so funny because most people there were more focused on taking more cell-phone pictures of themselves than they were dancing!

We had a nice breakfast at our hotel and then headed back to L.A. tired but happy. It was a great aniversary!