May 4, 2021—San Francisco
As the trip developed (or morphed from a trip to Ireland to a trip to California), each child had a request. Glo’s was obviously to visit her mission, Ethan wanted to visit Yosemite and attend an A’s game, Johannah wanted to visit King’s Canyon and Sequoia National parks, John and I wanted to visit Alcatraz, but Mark wasn’t sure until he bought his ticket and was truly invested. He asked me if we could spend a day in San Francisco, doing some of the hip and cool things San Francisco is famous for. I was all for it…as long as he told me exactly what those things were so I could plan accordingly ;-)
First on his list was Chinatown, a place that I knew nothing about. Minutes later after a Google search, Mark found The Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory, and I was sold on the idea. He also wanted to try some of the crazy California pizza. Those ideas were a good start.
Mark flew in Monday night, and we were off bright and early Tuesday morning. Actually, John was scheduled to take an exam on minimally invasive surgery in a nearby town so I got up with him and drove him to it, and then went back and picked up Mark, Hannah and Glo. Glo definitely has lived in California, because she knew exactly how to dress...and she looked like a million dollars. Really, I sometimes look at her and can't believe she's MY daughter. We drove straight up to Chinatown, found a super cheap parking structure where, to be honest, I could hardly understand the worker, and headed out. We went to the fortune cookie factory first. I had done some research on it beforehand which gave us some background. The “factory” (it’s really just a large room) was opened years and a generation ago by a husband and wife. The husband died five years ago, so the son took over operations. They were basically breaking even or losing money on the enterprise, so the son decided to bring the factory into the 21st century with hip marketing strategies while maintaining the tradition set up by his father. The mother still sat at one of the two machines, handmaking the cookies. It was as hot as hades in there, but they didn’t seem bothered by the air temperature or by the scalding hot cookies they were forming. We were able to write our own fortunes and put them in cookies which we did round robin with each of us writing two specifically for someone else. And from the machine came many reject cookies that the two workers didn’t even bother folding, but the clerk grabbed by the handful and dumped into bags for us. They were the most delicious things, hot and fresh and we gobbled them down.
After that, we were kind of unplanned, so we started walking towards the Dragon Gate which is an iconic feature of Chinatown. Along the way, we found a tea shop that had herbal options (don’t think we didn’t drool over some of the black, green and oolong possibilities), as well as a beautiful souvenir shop which held lots of Asian art which both Mark and Glo love. It also had Chinese cats which of course John bought for Hannie. We also bought some moon cakes which were quite delicious.
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| Hannah is our year of the rat child ;-) |
Along the way, we noticed a lot of signs for Dim Sum. Thank goodness Hannah knew exactly what Dim Sum is, because I think we would have skipped it otherwise. (At this point, John joined us, having finished his exam and having run eight and half miles through scary parts of San Francisco). Dim Sum is basically family style eating, or Chinese style tapas—a whole bunch of cool little things that everyone eats from the same plate and can sample. I can’t think of a better way to feed our entire family, and it astounds me that we’ve gone 30 years without knowing about this. John walked up to the counter, and before he could get the words out “we’ve never eaten this and don’t know what it is”, the girl was loading up heaping plates of various delicacies. I think in the end, we had five or six plates of deliciousness. We walked about five feet to our table outside and dug in. I’ve never seen Mark eat so fast—in three minutes, and before I had tasted much of anything, he was full.
In the end, we walked away with several leftover containers which came in VERY handy the next day in Yosemite when we finished a three hour hike and didn’t have any food in the car…except the Dim Sum!
A beautiful thing about the whole experience Glo captured in one sentence to me while there: I feel completely safe here. So much of San Francisco is made up of homeless people. And they are aggressive too. We saw so many of them digging through garbage cans, pulling out food and eating it. They would even walk into restaurants and do this. Or they would approach us. Or they were sitting on street corners, or walking by, talking to themselves. There are even signs from businesses asking people not to feed them. It got exhausting, feeling like we always had to be on the lookout. But in Chinatown, there were none, and there was no fear of being pickpocketed. I don’t know why we didn’t see more Caucasian people there, because it really was a highlight of the trip for me personally.
We then hopped back in our car and drove to Pier 33 for our Alcatraz tour! I have ALWAYS wanted to go to Alcatraz, and I knew John would love it. You guys, it was AMAZING! The ferry over was easy, and we waited until the crowds all moved forward and then basically had the island to ourselves. It was so interesting to see how it moved from military fort (protecting the gold from attack) to prison (for over 30 years) to protest site for the Native Americans. And it’s so much more than just the prison cell (although that’s certainly the most interesting part of the island): it’s a series of gardens planted by the wives of prison wardens, a lighthouse, barracks/apartments for wardens and their families, a morgue, a BX/commissary, and the head warden’s house. There were pictures of the children who lived on the island with their warden fathers and who took a boat to school each day!
But the prison. Wow! We did the only tour available during COVID which was the audio tour, and I can’t imagine a better tour because it was terrific. It walked us through the entire jail house with narrators who used to be wardens or inmates. It spoke of escape attempts, solitary confinement, rewards of library time or recreation time for good behavior, dining, and what the inmates actually thought of the prison. One thought that John shared which I had been feeling as well: the inmates THEN had more respect for authority than young people have for anything now. It definitely took me back to a time when people were polite and rational…and this is ALCATRAZ! We were pretty excited to find just about the coolest gift store at the end—not something we always find in the National Park System. We went all out, buying some really incredible stuff, but Glo got the best deal with her child size XL baseball jacket ;-)
The views of San Francisco were amazing from the island as well. Besides the homeless population, I really like San Francisco. It’s an easy city to navigate, and the people are very friendly. Yes, we stuck out like sore thumbs with our Midwest ways, but nobody ever made us feel funny about that. Too, I expected traffic like New York City or Philadelphia, but we have yet to hit any real traffic.
The last thing on Mark’s list rounded out our day. San Francisco style pizza. Ethan was flying in that night, so I found a place only ten minutes from the airport, but it may as well have been two hours away. It was in the middle of this darling little town with clean streets and beautiful sidewalks and stores. Pizzeria Delfina. Artisan pizzas that tasted fresher than fresh. Mark kinda chickened out at the last minute and didn’t order anything weird (there were some definite options), but we were so happy with our cheese and sausage pizzas. I mean, what restaurant has multiplecheese pizzas? I’ve never tasted anything like them before. And I wanted to order meatballs, and they were out of this world, even better than my cast iron skillet Christmas meatballs ;-) I had promised Ethan some leftovers, but we didn’t end up with more than three pieces of pizza out of all of it…which he promptly ate as we pulled away from baggage claim ;-)
I hate to say it, but once again we have fulfilled the Kennedy family trip prophecy—our memories always boil down to the food ;-)
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