Day 101 – 12/9 San Francisco Wharf, Pier 39 and Ghirardelli Square

Today is our last full day here.  It was a very nice day, and we got to see the few things downtown we had missed before due to being too full.

Our morning routine was good, Bella was very determined to finish school early, and even took a quick shower before her live ELA class.  Bia was done early again, but Bella had to leave stuff for later as she took a few more breaks than usual. 

She got some gifts from Calinas and was all excited opening them and talking to Vi while playing.  We wanted to leave and enjoy a final day in town, so we told Bella she’d have to finish her work later.

I had a work call and had to do some work early morning, I’m still quote behind of some work stuff, and just barely keeping up with posting. 

I also went for a run mid morning, and went towards the beach and pier in Pacifica.  When I got to the beach area the street was closed, and the actual street was wet.  It looks like the massive waves from yesterday, and some today still, were breaking and water was covering the street, so they closed it.  Closer to the pier was the same, and further down near the beach entrance, the path was covered in sand.  Wow… must have been crazy to watch this from that area.  I guess the story with the person that was in the water and the helicopters were trying to rescue is that the person was walking on the beach, just after the pier, and a “sneaker wave” came in and swept the person  into the water, and that was it.  Yikes.  Crazy stuff. 

After I got back from my run I showered and got lunch ready for the girls and I.  Carol went shopping.  I grilled some steaks Carol bought in the morning.  When I showed the steaks to the girls they first said yeah… then they were a bit worried that there was some blue color on the meat.  I didn’t see it… but, we ate 5 out of 7 steaks… and I’ll finish the other two later tonight or tomorrow.

Carol went to the grocery store and post office.  She got some stuff for our lunch, and got boxes from the Calinas at the post office.  After I got back from my run, she went shopping at a nearby mall and was back just before 1.

While Carol had lunch and got a few last things ready for us to go, I packed some of our stuff ahead of our move to another place tomorrow.  Got the chairs in the truck, bikes hosed down and on the racks, etc.  And we were all ready and out by 1:30pm, not bad.

The plan was to start at Golden Gate Park so the girls could go on the slide.  They had saved some boxes the last few days, and were very anxious to try the boxes on the concrete slides.  So we went right to it, traffic was light, and the park was pretty empty, which was great.  Once we got there, the girls got their boxes and went to the place.  The boxes worked out really well, especially for Bia.  They loved it and went down a bunch of times in a row, and played right there for at least 30 minutes non stop.  Then they moved around and started playing in other places.  Bella got hurt while climbing a tree, and wanted to leave, so we let Bia go down the slide a few more times and we moved on to our next stop.

From there we went to Fishermans Wharf, Carol wanted to see the California Sea Lions they have at Pier 39, so we parked at the same place we parked last time and walked there.  This time, the town was empty, streets were empty, places were empty or closed, it was great! :). We were able to walk to Pier 39, take our time, and not worry about anything. 

We walked to the end of the pier and there were the Sea Lions.  Carol and the girls were very excited to see those big noisy beasts hahahaha.. They are funny weird animals…. They were all piled on top of each other on docks, some would go on and off onto other docks, they’d fight… push each other out of the dock… it’s actually fun to watch them interact.  Most were sleeping.  There was one that kept trying to lay between two, and each time that lasted a few minutes, then he looked for two other ones and same thing.. hahaha. Lonely dude.  

From there we wanted to get Sushi at Flying Ninja again so we walked that way, and on the way, Carol got some bread a Boudin bakery.  That’s a really cool place with their animal sourdough breads, all kinds of breads, etc.  When we got to the sushi place…. It was closed.  We were bummed but at the same time it’s good to see that many places are actually closed as part of the lock down. 

We were not too far from Ghirardelli Square, so we kept walking towards there.  As we got to the square, most of the places were closed as well.  It was quite empty so we were able to walk around easily.  We checked if the brewery there was open, but it was not, so as we were leaving the second floor we saw an open sign flashing at The Palete, which is right on the second floor as you walk in.  We checked it out and decided to eat there. 

They were setup for take out only, but there were a few tables setup outside, so we picked one, Carol got the menu and we ordered an assortment of Dim Sum, rice noodles, etc.   There was a group from some gym working out right near where we were, so we had some entertainment while we waited for the food to be ready.  Carol also got us some beers and a ginger beer Isoda) for the girls.  They didn’t care for the ginger beer much, it had a strong ginger finish, which I loved… but it was not right for them, so I ended up just getting a water for them later. 

The girls ended up not eating too much, they are getting picky.  Bia said she wanted soup, so we found one she was ok with and ordered… in the end, she had like 4 spoons and didn’t want anymore. 

Dang it… that’s one of the things I dislike, getting food and not eating it.  We took the soup home, but it does annoy me.  I don’t mind buying it if you’ll eat it, but I do not like to buy it when it’s not, especially if it ends up thrown away.  Anyway, food for her for tomorrow. 

When we were done eating, we went to the Ghirardelli store.  Bia chose an Iceam called Ocean Beach… It’s sea salt caramel and vanilla ice cream, with chocolate fudge.  OMG, it was amazing!  Bella chose a bag of chocolate squares that we would all share later, it was like 1.5 lb of chocolate… I didn’t check prices and we went to pay, then the bill came… $50!  Holy s**t!  Ok, 1.5lbs of Ghirardelli chocolate does it, but that ice cream was almost 15 bucks as well, yikes.  We have chocolate for a long time now.

We had a nice walk back to the truck, it was pretty dark, streets were still empty.  By time we got to the truck, there were only 2 other cars in the parking garage.  It was 7:30pm or so, so driving back was also easy, not much traffic.  We stopped to fill up so we don’t have to stop tomorrow.

Once we arrived, the girls got ready for bed.  This time, Bia wanted to sleep in my bed, so I ended up sleeping in the bottom bunk.  That one is a bit harder, so it was not as comfortable, but it was fine.  I went to bed right after I finished the publishing the post for the day, which took a while as the internet was not great today.

It was a nice day checking out Pier 39, the Wharf, and Ghirardelli Square.

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