Hello San Francisco!
I'm back again in the San Francisco Bay area of California. It's been two years since I was here last. Or at least two years. i don't think I have ever been so happy to see a place. It always feels like home when I visit here. Someday, I hope to really call it home. It's February and everything here is green. In Minnesota, everything is a variation of brown, while all vegetation hibernates, or white, where the snow has managed to cling to the ground.
I'm here in California on business, but I had about an hour an a half to myself today. I drove from the airport to Fisherman's Wharf. I knew if I went there I would see a lot of things all at one time. I had visited there nearly 12 years ago with my son, my friend Cathie and her son Jay. When the four of us visited, we saw the sea lions sunbathing on the docks, the double decker carousel, and ate at the Boudin sourdough bread place. This time around, Boudin was closed, so I ate fish and chips at a place on Pier 39. Even if it wasn't the best fish in chips in the world, it sorta was because I was in San Francisco. I did see - and hear - the sea lions and stopped by the carousel as we did so long ago. The pier was much more crowded than it was then, but so many things were still the same, or at least familiar. It was rather comforting.
The picture below is of the Bay Bridge as I was stopped at a traffic light along the Embarcadero. Notice the palm tree in the foreground? Don't see those in MN unless you are at the Como Park Conservatory.