our old, familiar place.: California Adventure

As you all know Tony and I spent about 9 days covering 7 or 8 cities in California, starting at the northern end and working our way south. The first three days were spent in San Francisco, Sonoma and then Napa, with activities consisting of city-exploring, picture-taking, wine-drinking, vineyard-hopping, and just plain luxury-lapping. We spent our entire day in San Francisco off of the Embarcadero at Pier 39. Lucky for us the weather was GLORIOUS and the scene complete with sail boats, music and a Farmer's Market with the juiciest strawberries we had ever tasted. After much exploration of the food and shops we decided it was absolutely necessary to take a ride on The Rocket Boat - which goes 50 miles/hour and really pumps up the jams from the "Rock of Ages" era. I have to say, despite poor Tony catching a cold due to the splashing and the high, chilly-despite-the-blazing-sun winds, this was one of the coolest, most-thrilling things I have ever experienced! I couldn't stop laughing at the man next to us dropping the F bomb every 10 seconds and the constant "Wooooooooo!" from the crowd (mostly from yours truly, of course). I'm telling you, it's worth the cheese for this half hour of joy. Once we made our way back to land we headed back to the hotel to get changed for dinner with friends who also happened to be in town. After a delicious dinner complete with local brews, white wine, oysters, calamari and what I'll refer to as chorizo roll-up thingies (yeah i wasn't paying attention...) we walked the Embarcadero and admired the Bay Bridge all lit up as well as the other city lights. Though we had only less than 24 hours in the city it was an amazing time. Hope to be able to explore San Fran a ~~little~~ LOT more next time!