back from california

Happy New Year to everyone! I'm back from my trip out to California. Spent a lot of time with my sister and the boys (Cade, Evan and Tanner) and also had the chance to stay with my mom and Mike for a couple of days. Gosh, those boys are getting so big! Cade is now up to my shoulders and Evan declares that he'll be taller than me when he turns 5. Tanner is just too cute for words! He warmed up to me quickly this time and so babysitting him was much easier.

Mom, Mike, Linda and I went out to San Francisco last Saturday to do some shopping and a little bit of sightseeing. It has been a while since I've actually been out to the city during one of my west coast visits. It was fun walking up Powell Street to Union Square and reminiscing a little bit here and there about the days when I used to work in the city. We went through the newer side of the San Francisco Shopping Centre (where there are seven floors - the top four belong to Nordstrom), up Powell Street to Union Square, through the Macy's, and then back down Stockton Street to take BART back to Dublin.


One thing that I miss most about the city is the diversity of people. You have people from all over the world (i.e. tourists) traveling around, people from all sorts of different financial backgrounds, and then locals who come to the city once in a while to roam around. I guess we have that here in Boston, too, but San Francisco is so much bigger than Boston on so many levels so I feel like I notice it more when I'm there.

We passed by this homeless man that had a box of rats on his lap collecting money. It was quite depressing actually.


We saw this man with his children on the street playing the drums for money, too. I made a little video of them because the boy that seemed to be the youngest was quite talented at the drums, and the kids looked like they were having a good time.



One of the newer things in the city is the Bloomingdales side of the San Francisco Shopping Centre. We had lunch in the Food Emporium there and it was just amazing. I mean, talk about a vast selection of stuff to eat! Mom, Mike, and I got some food from a little seafood restaurant there. Mike had the fish and chips, mom had the seafood stew, and I had the mussels with fries. Linda got the Korean beef dish with some kimchee. It was all delicious and reasonably priced.

I flew home on a red-eye flight on New Year's Eve night. Yeah, believe me, I'll never do that again. My flight got delayed 2.5 hours so we didn't end up taking off until about 11:45 pm. Talk about a sucky way to spend NYE. Alone and stranded at an airport. Ugh. Here's a picture of my NYE dinner at the Chilis Too. Not the grandest experience.

Luckily, nobody sat in the two seats next to me on the plane so I was able to lie down and sleep the whole way home. Woo hoo!

Hope you all had a fun time bringing in the New Year! I would go on about this year's resolutions but I still have yet to unpack. TTFN!