I think I had swine flu...

At least, I hope I did. Otherwise, I'm probably going to be sick *AGAIN* and I ain't lookin' forward to that :P Anyway, I had a fever (highest point was 103.6°F), nausea, sore throat, cough, stuffy nose, body aches, head ache, etc. I got it from Adrian (thought he had a milder case than me), and we think he got it from boxing. I even went to the doctor - but that was a few days before it started making the news, so she didn't test me for it, and she didn't even prescribe me any medicine. Which is kinda what I expected. I wouldn't have even gone except that since I took a couple days off work, they wanted a doctors note. Not that I minded skipping work, but I was really worried about getting well in time to go to... San Francisco!!! I had never been to the West Coast before, or to CA before, so I was really excited about it, and it would've been just my luck if I was sick for that!

So, basically, Adrian's company sent him there for a GPS conference, so we decided to make a vacation out of it. We left on Monday, Adrian's parents drove us to the Denver airport. We didn't get to sit together on the plane because Adrian's company bought his ticket, and we bought mine separately, so we ended up not sitting together. Oh well, at least we got the same flight :D From Monday through mid-Wednesday, Adrian attended the conference, and I rested up in our room. I still haven't finished The Federalist Papers, and now I REALLY don't have an excuse (not that I had one before), but at least I'm within 75 pages of finishing now. It was a REALLY nice room, which was to be expected, considering that it was a 4-star hotel! However, the hotel restaurant was overpriced and the food wasn't even that great. Adrian's conference was catered, but I mostly ended up surviving on Starbuck's mochas and bananas that I "stole" from the hotel gym.

Wednesday afternoon, we checked out of that hotel, and took the shuttle back to the airport where we hooked up with our rental car which was part of a deal that Adrian got with a Best Western room online. It was a PT Cruiser! Which seemed really cool at first, but kinda went downhill from there (not hard to do in SF). It took about 15 minutes just trying to figure out how to control the windows (the controls are in the middle of the dash, instead of on the doors), and I don't think an interior trunk lever even exists! The seats are NOT comfortable, and the car is noisy, and the handling isn't great. Combine that fact with Adrian's driving style, SF streets, and the fact that I was just getting over the flu, and car sickness was rather inevitable. Speaking of crazy SF streets, Wednesday afternoon we parked on a sidestreet in some neighborhood near a park to go for a walk... and a taxi came around the corner, headed down one of the crazy inclines, and smashed into a parked car there. The car started smoking, and a woman tried to get the taxi driver to get out of the car, but he didn't want to. Another man standing around said he thought the taxi driver was trying to commit suicide. The taxi burst into flames - Adrian called 911 on his cell, but apparently others had called first. The firetrucks arrived while Adrian was describing the scene to operators.

It was a really nice trip, and we both enjoyed it alot, but neither of us would ever really want to live there. We looked in a real estate magazine and saw a 2BD/2BA/2CA townhouse for $500k! Most of the houses/townhouses don't even have garages, and they are all *SO* close together, and tourists park on the streets too - so I almost don't know how you can park in front of your house there! During the conference, I watched a real estate show in our room - they have one skyscraper there that has all the services of a 5 star hotel (spas, and a 24/7 butler service), and a condo in that building costs a couple million! There was one really nice, really big house, with gorgeous views and indoor pools, and beautiful landscaping... but, it was only on *ONE ACRE* and it cost *65 MILLION*!!!!! They said the landscaping alone costs about 8 million!!!!! Anyway, at least there is fairly good public transportation, but that also means that homeless people and beggars are all over the place. Our hotel required us to have a meal tickets for our complimentary hot breakfast because if they didn't, homeless people would eat there too. Downtown streets are really weird too, there are metal tracks all over the streets for the trolleys, and wires along the top for the electric buses, and bus-only lanes, and bus stops everywhere, and taxis everywhere, and crosswalks everywhere, and the stop lights aren't hung overhead, but are usually just single column displays on the corners, and left turns aren't allowed during most of the day because they don't have left turn lanes. We usually tried to park along the street, where the meters cost about $1.50/hr. But, the city parking garage was $7/hr! There are also many private parking lots/garages which charge a flat daily rate (I saw prices anywhere from $10-$48), and some which have a special arrangement with nearby restaurants to give a couple free hours of parking if you eat there.

The weather wasn't even that great. I guess it's kinda cool that it never freezes, and you can grow tropical plants year-round, but that's not saying it's actually nice. It was COLD! The day after Adrian's conference got out, it got really foggy and rainy, and stayed that way the rest of our time there. We did get to see the botanical gardens there before it got bad, and even when it was not so nice we spent some time at different beaches and wharfs, and in Golden Gate National Park, and walked around in Sausalito (the island town accross the bridge). One cool thing on the wharfs were the sea lions! They just sleep under the wharfs, and even when it's too foggy to see anything, they just bark away at each other!

Fortunately, there were also some nice museums. We saw the Conservatorium of Flowers, which was basically a rainforest type environment with all kinds of vines and orchids and ferns. We went to the aquarium down on Pier 39, which was overpriced, IMHO, but it was still cool. I got to touch a star fish, and a sting ray! I don't know if he could've stung me or not, I just touched his "wing." They had a moving "walkway" that went through a tunnel aquarium, and that was really different. We also went to the California Academy of Sciences - it was the most expensive, but definitely well worth it!  They had a really nice planetarium, and a rainforest display that was supposed to be a representation of Madagascar! You walk around a circular ramp for about three stories, taking you all the way from the "forest floor" to the top of the "canopy," and there are tons of huge butterflies everywhere that will just land on people! They have a "living roof" covered with native plants, which is a cool concept - but we didn't get too good of a look at it because of the rain. One day we drove down to San Jose. We got there fairly early in the morning and it was really foggy, but there was an amusement park right on the beach (which was closed at the time), and you could walk down the wharf to see sea lions, and there were fresh seafood restaurants lining the whole walk! We liked this beach/wharf area much better than Pier 99, which is crowded and has crazy parking!

We also went to an Egyptian museum down there; they also had a planetarium, but it was old and the presentation was a bit underwhelming. Still, they had lots of nice displays, including several real mummies! They had some nice gardens around there too - apparently, they had a competition a few years back with a $5k prize, and lots of landscaping and Egyptology students entered, and the results were really nice. Just accross the stree was the San Jose city rose garden, and the sun came out long enough for us to enjoy a brief stroll through that park. I still don't particularly like roses, but if you are going to see roses, that is the place to see them!

There are so many Asian people in SF! Of course, there is Chinatown, but even outside of that small part of downtown, there are many, many Asian shops and restaurants! I saw Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Philipino, Middle Eastern, and even Peruvian restarurants! We went to one Chinese restaurant where I got a Duck Soup with Mustard Greens (and it also had fresh ginger, mushrooms, and broccoli), and that was really good! At a Thai restaurant in Chinatown, I had a Duck Curry, which I didn't appreciate as much. It was made with spicy basil, various veggies, and pineapple, and I think it was in coconut milk. Kinda weird. At a small Chinese in Chinatown, we got a great deal: a big plate of rice with heary helpings of your choice of three items for only $3.80!

I need to go rate all these places on Google maps now!

Anyway, it was a nice trip, and it would've been nice to have a few more days, and some good weather - but I wouldn't want to live there, and I wouldn't even have wanted to stay more than a few days more. Adrian and I have been finding that while we *ENJOY* our vacations, we always end up appreciating home more than before. Colorado Springs probably is one of the best climates in the world (though I'm still holding out to find somewhere just a bit better), plus jobs, and housing that make everything else possible. I enjoy seeing botanic gardens, and nature preserves, and rain forests, but in the end *MY* flowers are always my favorite - and half of them wouldn't even grow in the SF climate (many temperate plants actually need the winter dormancy period). I still think winter here is a bit too long, but even in California, it's not warm yet, so I might as well ejoy the dry air and sunshine that we can often enjoy here despite winter! The hotels were nice, but *our* bed is nicer! It was great to try new restaurants, but constantly eating out would get really expensive, and probably fattening! And, of course, we missed Luna, and she missed us! :D

So: enjoy my pics, and if you get a chance someday, enjoy SF - but mostly - just try to enjoy what you have, where you are. Oh, and don't get sick if you can help it.