I was going to title this “I left my calves in San Francisco.” When I Googled that, I found that another blogger had already used those words as a title to describe her family’s SF trip. 🙂 (Not that those words are copyrighted – I just wanted to be original.) We’re staying in a tiny, walkout basement in the Twin Peaks neighborhood near the Castro. It was a very steep, 1.1-mile walk to Whole Foods this morning. We enjoyed the view and the quick, downhill jaunt; but we dreaded walking up those same streets with groceries. Indeed, the return trip was quite difficult. We had to stop more than once to slow our hearts, put down the bags, and take a drink. One block in particular seems to almost need handholds. I told Laurel I thought it would be a lot of fun to ride down those streets on a skateboard wrapped in bubble wrap or foam and then crash into a wall of fluff. The young men who live upstairs and own this house said we could take a bus almost door-to-door, so I guess we’ll do that next time. We also took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train downtown today and saw the Christmas decor in Union Square like we did two years ago when we were in SF for Thanksgiving. It’s a 1.7-mile walk from our house to the nearest train station so we got some good exercise today. I asked Laurel to throw the laundry from the washer into the dryer (in the garage) this evening because I didn’t think my thighs could handle the journey. Unfortunately she couldn’t figure out the weird dryer, so I had to be brave and use my legs to walk the few feet to the garage.
There’s no dishwasher (other than me) here, and I already have a sink full of dishes. I REALLY don’t want to wash them. I’m pretty sure Tomorrow Guy (Jerry Seinfeld term) will love to do the job though.
Tomorrow we’ll climb up the Twin Peaks and look out over the city and then…I don’t know. We’ll probably take the ferry to Sausalito next week. There’s so much to do, and the weather is perfect with more perfect weather predicted for the next ten days.

Rachel sports the wool hat that Laurel made for her.

Our friends Sandy & Phil met us for dinner in CS. We were able to get together with lots of friends for lots of restaurant meals when we were in Colorado.

Ming

Our bedroom is VERY close to the street – separated only by the sidewalk.

View on our walk today

The bottlebrush bush right outside our door

The Macy’s tree in Union Square

Laurel said, “You know you’re in the Castro when…”

The rotunda and stained glass dome in Neiman Marcus are from a store called City of Paris that was in the same location.