Brett's Birthday: San Francisco

This is a very late post, but better late than never right? Brett's birthday was on October 19 and we just so happened to not have school on that day, which was a Monday. It was Harvest Holiday (also known as the opening weekend of the deer hunt).

We still had to work for part of the weekend so it was another quick trip. We flew out of Cedar City Sunday afternoon and arrived in Oakland late that night. We caught a shuttle to our hotel and promptly fell asleep. Our original plane had a mechanical problem, so we had to switch planes, and arrived much later that night than planned. Monday morning we got up and toured a fortune cookie factory. We had planned to tour a couple of factories, but one of them was no longer open (there was an eviction notice on the door!). They wouldn't allow us to take pictures inside, but it was very interesting to see how the cookies are made. Did you know they put the fortunes inside the cookies and fold them by hand!?! There were only 5 workers and they make 50,000 cookies a day. I can't imagine folding cookies full time.

After the fortune cookie tours we found a few thrift shops for Brett where he found some more ties to add to his collection. From here, we headed on over to San Francisco to have lunch and enjoy the city. We had lunch on Pier 39 again. Brett had crab chowder in a Boudin sourdough bread bowl, and I had a roast beef sandwich on Boudin sourdough. We picked up a box of sourdough loaves from the Boudin Factory to bring home for Ray and headed on our way.

The old arcade on Pier 39

We went down Lombard Street, visited the Coi Tower and went to the new park below the bridge. At this point we were out on a fishing pier and it began to sprinkle, then rain, then pour, then down pour, and then it was just a sheet of water coming down. Brett and I ran to the nearest building, attempting to jump over the huge puddles along the way and shield our faces from the water, but by the time we got to the building we were soaked to the bone. There wasn't an inch of clothing on us that wasn't completely soaked. We laughed and browsed the store while waiting for the rain to blow over. It just kept coming so we decided to make a break for the car anyway. The streets were flooding all over, and they blocked off a lot of roads because there was too much water. It was really neat to see San Francisco in the rain, and to see all the water pour down the steep roads. We had a blast. I so love the rain and this particular rain was really fun!

We went to Japanese Town to try and go somewhere we could walk inside for awhile since the weather wasn't cooperating. We found Mochi Ice Cream for me, since it is my very favorite. We found a couple more thrift stores and headed back over the bridge to Oakland where we stayed. It took us 3 times as long to get home as it took us to get to San Francisco because of the unanticipated traffic over the bridge. We forgot to take that into account. When we finally made it back to Oakland we had dinner at a Korean Barbecue and it was delicious. We told them it was Brett's birthday and they said they would bring out his free dessert. We expected the usual one serving size piece of cake or something, but what Brett got was much different from expected. The owner brought out this humongous dessert with fried bananas, fruit, ice cream, fudge, etc... that could easily be for 5 people. We were shocked!

The birthday boy with his dessert. (The flash ruined the detail of the dessert!)

We slept in and flew home Tuesday morning around 11am. It was such a fun time and perfect timing in the middle of the semester to get away for a couple days.