Tourist in My Own Town -- Part I

This weekend, my good friend Chrissy came up to the Bay Area for a visit and for some long overdue girl time. I was excited to spend some time with her, not only because we're great friends and it's been too long, but also because Chrissy and I have traveled together in Europe (a couple of times now) and it's always just so easy and so much fun. We are born travel buddies for sure.

I took Friday off from work and here's how our day panned out:

-- After a last minute conference call in the morning, we struck out for the city and even managed to find our destination parkade without too much fanfare. We trekked up Grant Avenue through Chinatown, poking around in various little shops and making our way to North Beach and Telegraph Hill.

-- Get a Facebook notice from Chet that he will be in town "for one night only!" and are we free to grab a drink in the evening. Yay! Another long lost friend descends upon the Bay Area! We make tentative plans to meet up and agree to update each other via FB or texts as the day unfolds.

-- Grab lunch at North Beach Pizza (yes, again!), this time having the vegetarian special. Just as good as the carnivore extravaganza from a few weeks ago.

-- Set off again, up over the hill and down towards Bay Street where we can cut over to Pier 33 where we can...

-- Visit Alcatraz! Chrissy had the foresight to book us tickets in advance (see, I told you I love traveling with this girl!) and we spent a good chunk of the afternoon cruising around a formal federal penitentiary. If you go to Alcatraz, I highly recommend the audio tour. It takes about 45 minutes and it's done extremely well with the voices of old inmates and guards telling the story of The Rock. At one point, the audio guide invites you to step into one of the isolation cells ("The Hole") and close your eyes in the darkness while he explains the feeling of living in darkness and solitary confinement for days on end. Creepy-dot-org for sure.

-- After Alcatraz, we walked down The Embarcadero to the Ferry Building where we indulged in some incredible gelato. (When Chrissy and I travel, we ALWAYS get ice cream or something sweet at some point in the day -- It is our Golden Rule of International Roaming and shall never be broken.)

-- Next stop, shopping! We poked around in a bunch of stores in the Westfield Mall and elsewhere until we worked up an appetite and then ended up at Cafe de la Presse for a glass of wine and filling french dinner.

-- I text messaged Chet and let him know we were running behind and that we were still in the city. He was running behind, too, so we agreed to meet at Lavande in Palo Alto around 11:00 or so for a quick drink and for the opportunity to hear Chet's fun (but sometimes rather gross) stories about what latest "delicacy" he had to eat on a business trip to Taiwan. (Cow eyeballs, anyone? Careful with your fork, they're slippery little suckers!)

-- We said our good-byes, headed home and fell into bed, happily tired from a fun-filled and busy day.