Our 2nd Anniversary

Wow, apparently it's been FAR too long since I have logged into blogger...I feel like it's a brand new site. And I also feel like this text window is straight outta 1994, MS-DOS style. Minimalist, much?

So Clint and I just celebrated our 2 year anniversary last weekend! How crazy is that?! I can't believe it's been 2 whole years since we got married! Honestly, it feels like it was just 6 months ago...most of the time. Until we're in a knock-down, drag-out, blow-up fight and it becomes "OH MY GOD I HAVE TO ENDURE 50 MORE YEARS OF THIS!????? JUST CLEAN OUT THE DAMN SINK!"

Just kidding. I always clean out the sink.

We spent the weekend in San Francisco, the place that holds 1/3 of my heart. Clint hasn't spent too much time there, and since I have an unnatural love for the city, we decided that would be a fabulous way to spend our anniversary. Also, since Clint had never been to AT&T Park (that's "Pac Bell Park" to all us old-school, pre-World Series championship fans), we bought A-MAY-ZING tickets to the Giants game on Memorial Day! I realized halfway down the valley that Clint and I had never actually BEEN to San Francisco together. We did a whirlwind weekend 3 years ago between Berkeley and a quick drive through the city to cross the Golden Gate Bridge, but we didn't really spend time there. So this trip, we decided to cram as much as possible into our 3 1/2 days!

We stayed at the Grand Hyatt on Union Square, and I highly recommend this place. They had a great "Park and Stay" rate that made them quite a bit cheaper than anywhere else around downtown. We also had a super fantastic view of downtown from our room on the 21st floor!

Saturday was our day of walking everywhere. When I was a kid and my oldest brother, Cole, was going to school at San Francisco State, we took many trips in the summertime to visit him and watch Giants games. Some of my fondest memories are of my aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and I traipsing around the city with Cole as our tour guide, catching all the fun sights that only my family finds fascinating enough to include on a walking tour. We like churches and cathedrals, apparently, because those tend to be the sights we seek out wherever we go! Anyway, because of these trips, I wanted to take Clint around to these places that hold fond memories for me. It's been 13 years, but they did not disappoint! We walked up from Union Square through Chinatown and North Beach, across Washington Square up to Coit Tower, down to the Embarcadero, through Fisherman's Wharf, back up through North Beach, up Nob Hill, and back down to Union Square. About 5 miles, with lots of little stops along the way (including lunch at a very yummy pizza place that sold Coke out of a super old machine in glass bottles. Adorable). We had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with the best waiter ever, who totally appealed to my interest in random murder-mystery morbidness, and was somehow able to slide the suicide of someone in his high-rise apartment building into our dinner conversation without making it awkward or disgusting. With photos. Someone earned himself a good tip!

Sunday morning, we drove over to Golden Gate Park to check out the California Academy of Sciences. Since we got there approximately 2 hours before it opened (in case you didn't guess, we are never late for anything), we hopped over to the Great Highway and stopped off at Land's End. If you have never been there, it is amazing and you should go right now. I'm a sucker for views of the ocean off the California coast, especially views that include the Golden Gate Bridge. Just to the south east of Land's End is Cliff House, a very cool place that would be way cooler if it still looked like the photo from 1900. Regardless, it's still pretty cool. So, Land's End has this walking trail along the coastline that overlooks the water and is really, very awesome. Turns out, this trail used to be used for both street cars AND a railroad! Say what!? Back in the day, they had a freaking RAILROAD line that came up from the last street car stop in the city and wound around the coast down to Cliff House. How amazing is that? (Sidenote: Remember how I said my family tends to like sights that normal people probably don't find interesting? This is probably one of those things) The railroad line lasted for like 20 years until the landslides and other accidents just became too difficult to deal with, so then it turned into a street car-only line. STILL FASCINATING.

Anyway, after we spent 2 hours at Land's End, we went back up to the Cal Academy of Sciences, which, I will admit, was kind of a let down. We expected more. We still spent 4 or 5 hours in the place, but it felt like they tried to do too much with not enough space, so everything was kind of jammed together and spread too thin. Definitely worth a visit, especially if you have kids, just don't expect too much.

Dinner on Sunday night? The Stinking Rose. Go there. Immediately, if you can. If you can't go right now, plan a trip to San Francisco JUST SO YOU CAN EAT AT THIS PLACE. Definitely lived up to the hype, great service, the food was delicious, and it was reasonably priced. GO. Make sure you have reservations, and bring me back a doggie bag, please.

Monday we walked down to AT&T Park to watch the Giants vs. Diamondbacks at 2:05 PM. We realized it was Memorial Day, of course, but we were not prepared for the observance of the holiday planned at the baseball park. Geico had planes writing "We Salute Our Military Men And Women" above the park and there were service men and women from all branches of the military in attendance. They also had a pre-game ceremony for a triple amputee veteran (whose family and friends were in the rows in front of us...a very emotional experience), they asked every veteran in the park to stand for recognition, and two F-15s did a flyover after the National Anthem. There was not a dry eye in the house!

I'm going to overlook our dinner experience from that night, since it involved a reputable-looking place in Chinatown that led to about 5 agonizing hours of food poisoning for me.

The next morning we drove home. Clint took on the city traffic, successfully leading us out of downtown and across the Golden Gate Bridge. Since we wanted to take the scenic route, we came across the Richmond Bridge, which offers a lovely view of San Quentin on the western shore. All in all, it was a fantastic trip and pretty surreal to come back to "real life" after 4 days in the big city. Believe it or not, life in Montague just seems a little slow after that.