Our San Francisco adventure actually began on Friday night, when we arrived at our hotel in Santa Clara, in the heart of Silicon Valley. We had planned on staying the night in Monterey, but didn’t realize until it was too late that weekends in that area were w-a-y out of our price range.
We relied on our trusty Fodor’s guide for dinner options. It was an easy choice once we saw that there was a recommended Moroccan restaurant only 4 miles from our hotel. There is no Moroccan food anywhere near our home in Massachusetts. We arrived at Menara just in time for the show: two belly dancers that engaged the audience and the made the evening a lot of fun. The girls were great about trying all of the different foods.
We woke up Saturday morning and explored the city of San Francisco. The girls squealed as we drove up and down the steep hills of the city, likening it to a roller coaster ride.
We then crossed the Golden Gate bridge, bound for Muir Woods. This is one of the last remaining stands of giant redwoods in the San Francisco area. It was cool and lovely, and we all enjoyed hiking in the giant forest.
Next, we went back into San Francisco to the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum geared to kids, located at the gorgeous Palace of Fine Arts.
We could have spent all day playing with the various exhibits. One of the most, um, unsettling: a (clean, unused) toilet transformed into a drinking fountain (“bubbler” for you New Englanders) to illustrate how locked in our brains are to using things in the same old ways.
Sunday we headed back into San Francisco for dim sum at Yank Sing. This is one of the most memorable meals I think I will ever have. Dim sum is a Chinese brunch tradition, and San Francisco has many dim sum restaurants, but our research told us that this restaurant was the best. I have to believe that it is.
Dim Sum is kind of like a Chinese buffet that is brought to the table. The waitresses push around carts loaded with assorted goodies, and you choose the ones that you want. The ladies put a stamp on your bill, and at the end of your meal, it is added up and you pay the total amount. The food was fantastic. At every bite, Nora exclaimed, “this is wonderful,” and oohed and aahed. Ellie wasn’t quite as enthusiastic, but she ate well. The food was amazing, and I don’t have the time or space to describe it, but I could go on for hours. It was a bit of a splurge, but totally worth it.
After breakfast, we had to explore Chinatown. Ellie and Nora both loved Chinatown, the sounds and the colors and looking in the shop windows.
Tomorrow we’re off to Yosemite, so we’ll be ‘unplugged’ for a couple of days. We’ll check in when we have internet access again.
Our Radical Sabbatical 