San Francisco Vacation, Part 1 by Debbie Mascot
(for pictures of this trip, visit Pictures and choose the San Francisco Pictures)
What a great weekend! It was like two weekends, really. Okay. It WAS two weekends, but still... After leaving work on Thursday afternoon, I went home and took a bath and packed and then we left for San Francisco. I'd already printed out directions on how to get from home to the hotel and then how to walk from the hotel to the seminar that we were going there for and then from the hotel to the Fortune Cookie factory in Chinatown and then from there to the Cheesecake Factory (a restaurant). Those were the things I really, really, really wanted to do. Other than that, we had nothing we had to do other than be tourists in our own town.
So we drove to the hotel and I fretted because I'd forgotten a coat. San Francisco is notorious for being foggy and cold even when it's hot and disgusting in the rest of the Bay Area. And I am notorious for always being cold. So I was worried. I'll just tell you now that we saw no fog and I never, ever got chilly. I was comfortable the whole time. It was clear blue skies like I've never seen there before. And it was like that for the whole 2 days we were there.
We checked into our hotel and it was just our kind of place. An old hotel filled with history and the scars of time. With its 37,000 coats of thick paint and beautifully ornate doorframes, it had an old Victorian feel to it. Very San Francisco. Also, very cheap for a hotel in a great part of town central to everything. I highly recommend it. It was called the Cartwright Hotel and I kept calling it the Bonanza Hotel and then we wouldn't find it. After unpacking and changing into our fancy duds (not really), we went downstairs.
They have a 5pm wine thing where they serve wine, but Marc and I wanted coffee, so we sat in the library downstairs and had our free coffee from that place that I don't ever name by name (nor do I use there size names- small, medium and large work well enough for me- no need to learn another language). It was served all day, everyday in the lobby. We like coffee. We like coffee even more when it's free.
We drank our coffee in the beautiful library filled with amazing things like comfy sofas perched on beautiful Oriental rugs, and a chess table for those smart enough to play chess. Marc and I were gonna play checkers with the chess men, but then realized we'd need duct tape to hold the one guy on top of the other when we got kinged. So we didn't. We eventually had our fill of coffee and tourists from Wisconsin and we left and decided to walk very leisurely to our seminar. I'll tell about the seminar later.
During our walk, we stopped in a couple of art galleries that were near our hotel. I forgot that I like to look at art. I'm no art connoisseur, but I know what I like right when I see it. I can't tell you why I like it, but certain things just grab me. And I know I really really liked it when I still think about it a few days/weeks/months later. The pieces I saw this trip (we stopped at other galleries on Friday, also) were a painting of a regular old house with a porch. It was a realistic painting- you know, looked almost like a photograph. On the porch was a brilliantly white angel with a cat next to her. She had her back to me, but it was an awesome painting. And I'm not one of those people that likes angels much at all. In fact, they usually really irritate me, but this one was stunning. Inside the gallery, they had another by that same artist of the same scene, but from the opposite angle- facing her and the cat. I didn't like that one as much, but it would be cool to have both.
The other pieces I liked were a still-life of a carton of brown eggs (it was just quirky enough to be cool) and then the triumph of art to me. I truly almost bought it, but it was $300. Let's see if I can describe it. It was like a wooden box with the bottom of the box against the wall. There were four wires hanging from the bottom with sculpted clay cat paws hanging from them. There was a tail hanging and then at the top, between glass was an actual picture of a cat's head with wire ears and a halo above. There were wire wings, too, somewhere. Inside the box, adhered to the back was a piece of paper with a few lines of beauty. Something about how when the cat came to us, it had no home. Then it got love and a home and grew wings, but it didn't want to use them because it was happy right where it was.
The words sounded much prettier the way someone else wrote them.