Leaving on a jet plane...(Day 1)

So I spent day one of my vacation with absolutly no sleep for 24 hours or so. I had to work until midnight on Thursday night and had to leave at four in the morning Friday. So there simply was no time for sleep. Not with driving home from work, last minute packing, and all that.

I caught my plane to San Francisco from Cincinnatti and all went well. Jacob was right, the take off and landing were the most fun but I did get a few nice pictures from the window of the five hour flight. Flying is a nice way to put things into perspective...it gives you a bird's eye view of the world (or God's view, if you would rather look at it like that). I still prefer to drive, but flying has its advantages.

We landed at the San Francisco International Airport and picked up the rental car then drove towards Haight-Ashbury. Ahhh...Haight-Ashbury, that famous hippie hangout. Now its just a place for teenagers to hang out and tourist to get t-shirts, photos, and smoking gear from the head shops. We just drove through it. No pictures or anything. I mean, it was an interesting place and I really wanted to stop and get some Ben & Jerry's and have a look around, but I couldn't find parking. We drove around for what seemed like forever and looked down every street for parking but none was to be found. This was my first lesson about San Francisco...parking is scarce. As in virtually nonexistant.

Lesson number two is that traffic is horrendous. Never in my life have I ever experienced traffic like that. Cars, buses, cabs, and trolley cars everywhere. Riding right on your butt too. And R-U-D-E. Now granted I'm from a one stoplight town and not very used to city drivers, but this was ridiculous. Maybe it was rush hour, maybe it was Friday, maybe it was just something in the air, I don't know, but never in my life have I ever seen such rude drivers. In truth, a lot of the people in San Francisco were a bit rude. Not mean...most were quite nice, but not friendly. I'm from the South, ya'll. I like friendly people. I hate to judge the whole city based on a bad day, but just from that one bad day, I don't have a lot of good things to say about San Francisco.

What I will say is that it is an absolutely beautiful city. The homes, the businesses, the landscape...all of it is beautiful. Its windy too. And chilly...at least in May. I wore a skirt too, so you can only imagine. And no flowers in my hair because my hair was blowing all over the place (sorry Thing Two and Kayla). We stayed on Fisherman's Wharf and so we spent quite a bit of time on Pier 39. We saw the sea lions, the street performers, the boats, the trollies, and all that jazz. I took pictures, I bought souveniers. Typical tourist stuff and even for the off season (May is the tail end of California's version of Winter), there were quite a few tourists.

That night we went on a tour of Alcatraz. Now THAT was more up my alley, especially being a History major and loving historic sites. Alcatraz was beautiful, even if it was a former prison. The view from Alcatraz was nice as well, especially as the sun began to set.

Mom and I finished up our first night in California back at the hotel trying to recover from jetlag. Otherwise it was a nice day, even if it was a bit disappointing.