San Francisco Vacation, Part 2 by Debbie Mascot
(for pictures of this trip, visit Pictures and choose the San Francisco Pictures)
A little more vacation stuff… We got to the seminar way early and across the street was the Grace Cathedral.WOW. I'm not a church person, but it was the most amazing thing I've seen. It was six o'clock on the dot and the tower bells went off. They were loud, but not alarming. Soothing, actually. We took some pictures on the steps going up and then admired the outside of the building for a bit. Then we went inside and it was just stunning. I don't know the history of the cathedral, but I could still feel the history of it. The stained glass, the wooden pews, the old carpeting. It was beautiful. In the front, they had a labyrinth rug. It had mazes to the center and then back out. You were to take your shoes off and contemplate your life as it is on your journey to the center. Then stand in the center and let the bad junk (the plaque thing didn't say "junk"; that's just my interpretation) go out of your mind. On your walk out you were to think of the happy future you were going to have. We skipped the walking of the labyrinth because we'd walked enough by that point to take care of an entire year of our normal walking quota.
The seminar was a John Edward talk/reading thingy and was at the Masonic Center, another beautiful building, but in a modern way. John Edward is that guy from that show called, "Crossing Over" on the SciFi channel. Marc and I watch it every night and not in a John-Edward-is-God-we-should-stalk-him-and-make-him-love-us kind of way. We watch him like a circus freak show. It's hugely entertaining and, also like a magic show, we can't figure out how he does this stuff if it's not real. So I found tickets and we went.
The seminar itself was like watching the show only more intense and with about 5,000 people (all quite large) in our living room. He laid out the agenda: he'd speak and tell about himself and what he does, then do some questions and then get to the readings. In the middle of the first part, maybe 10 minutes into the whole seminar, he actually said, "Oh, to hell with it. Someone's relative named Robert is yelling at me. I'm coming over here…" And the readings began. "Who has the dog named Penny?" "Why are they showing me a gym teacher?" (the guy's name was Jim and he is a teacher).
So it was way cool. But the people were way more hilarious. I don't know how to be gentle about this, so I'm just going to go for it. The women adored him! Like the sun rises and sets over him. They brought him flowers and cried when they'd just get to talk to him, even if it was just a question they were asking and no reading. The people-watching was worth the price of admission alone.
We did not get a reading, but we enjoyed ourselves immensely none-the-less.
The walk back to the hotel was so nice (downhill instead of uphill!) and then we were hungry for a late-night meal. The concierge pointed out a cool diner a half of a block away and so we went and had old-fashioned onion rings, chili cheese fries and a burger. It was fun sitting in a 1950's style diner eating 1950's style food and discussing something totally new agey. There were others there discussing the same thing, so it must be a pretty popular place.
In the morning, they were serving breakfast downstairs in the breakfast room, but for $7.50, I require meat and they did not have bacon or eggs. Just a continental type thing. So we hiked down to Union Square and found a little place for me to have my protein. mmmmm bacon and eggs. Across the street from our breakfast place was a steak house that was the home of the Maltese Falcon. Dashiell Hammett, the author of the Thin Man series and of the Maltese Falcon, etc., was from San Francisco and there is a tour of the places that appeared in the movies and that he wrote about. We are going to go on that someday, as we are HUGE fans of the Thin Man movies. Asta rules, for a small dog.
We checked out of the hotel, but left our car in the lot all day. That's the key; don't drive around when you are a tourist. Walk. When you drive, you miss tons of things because you don't want to have to find a parking place. We walked and cable car-ed all day. We walked down to the financial district to take pictures of the buildings and also went into the Wells Fargo museum. I'd been there before with my dad, but it's cool everytime to see all the old stuff that isn't so old you can't picture your great-grandpa doing it.
Then we walked up to Chinatown to find the fortune cookie factory. That's another
story altogether!