A couple weeks ago my sister Annette and my 12 year old nephew flew into town for a visit. We saw them over Thanksgiving, but that was at the townhouse in Philadelphia so it had been a full five years since they last came to our place in California. So much has changed! The family room they stayed in last time is now fully furnished and full of toys, so this time they stayed in my home office, which doubles as a guest room.
We went on a lot of adventures. Possibly too many. The first day they were here we spent a lot of time on public transit making our way around San Francisco. We took BART up in the late morning and then immediately took a historic street car over to Fisherman’s Wharf where we finally got to ride the SkyStar Wheel (Ferris wheel). From there they did a little tourist shopping before we headed up to Ghirardelli Square.
Someone remind me never to go to Ghirardelli Square for ice cream on a summer weekend again. It was never a calm experience, but now it’s pure chaos. It’s loud, you hover over a table to find seating, and it’s quite the opposite of relaxing. We did eventually find a table to enjoy our ice cream, but I think Aaron was a little tired at this point so I had to sit with him for a while to calm down after he had a huge tantrum over not getting to finish the brownie on the sundae (it was offered to him multiple times!). Honestly, next time I might just take visiting friends and family to the Factory Store in San Leandro, it has a lovely little ice cream cafe that is enjoyable to eat in.
Once Aaron had calmed down and everyone used the restrooms the next thing on our agenda was riding on a cable car. We hopped on a bus and made our way down Van Ness to pick up the California Street cable car at the end. Unfortunately that’s when we learned that the cable cars had shut down for the day due to the Vice President visiting for a campaign fundraiser that happened to be taking place at a hotel located on the cable car lines. Thanks, Secret Service. Taking a peek at the time, we made a diversion to a nearby Grubstake Diner that MJ had heard good things about. It didn’t disappoint! The bus ride to Civic Center there did disappoint though. It’s not the best part of town, the bus was late, and I think that particular adventure was a lot for my sheltered Maine relatives, hah! Still, it got us safely to BART and all three of the kids fell asleep on the train ride home.
Sunday I wanted to be a bit more chill since everyone was tired, so we had a quiet morning at home together, and then decided to head up to Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland to finally visit the Chabot Space & Science Center. It was amazing!
The gems of the center are definitely the telescopes, and we’ll be back for some of their telescope events in the near future. It was fun checking out the exhibits, and there was a lot of interactive and play stuff there too, which will be nice to take more time with when we go there with just the boys.
They also have a planetarium that does shows all day, and I love planetariums. It’s also a gentle introduction to a theater environment for our rambunctious kiddos, and just like our planetarium experiment in Philadelphia back in July, this one went pretty well.
On Monday I worked from the San Francisco office and then Gaby was kind enough to shepherd everyone from Castro Valley into San Francisco on BART before concluding her day with the boys and heading home. This was when we fixed our missed cable car opportunity! We waited at the Powell Street turnaround for a while, and then caught a cable car back down to Fisherman’s Wharf. We had a nice walk and discovered the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park Visitor Center that has a surprisingly extensive exhibit about the history of the area, and everyone really seemed to enjoy it. From there my sister picked up some more tourist goodies and then we got on a street car to head home. Mission accomplished!
On Tuesday afternoon once Adam finished school I packed up my work laptop and we made our way over to the Oakland Zoo. I settled in near the bison paddock for a couple hours to finish work while Gaby and Annette took the boys around the zoo. I met up with them around closing to go on some rides in the area just outside the zoo.
We let everyone have a chill, local Wednesday and Thursday while I worked from my home office, and then took Friday off for some final adventures! In the course of the week, I discovered that going swimming was on their California list, but the beaches are far and not really swim-friendly, so I asked a local friend what she recommended and that’s how we ended up spending the afternoon at the Don Castro Swim Lagoon. It was perfect! I can’t believe we hadn’t been before! Admission for the six of us was a total of $15 and they have life guards and a very clean facility. It’s still beach-like, but it’s all man-made and effectively a big pool, which you notice when you swim out to the deeper parts since you can touch the concrete bottom of the “pool” out there. We had snacks at the beach and wrapped up around 4PM to clean up and eventually meet MJ for dinner. MJ was picking up the family car in Dublin, so we all hopped on BART and then caught a bus to meet him at Lazy Dog right on time to eat.
Our final adventure was on Saturday, to a railway museum that I’ll write about soon. They headed out on an overnight flight back to Maine on Saturday night. It was nice having them visit and seeing the boys bond over adventures, video games, and even chill TV time. I also enjoyed having some quiet time with my sister to catch up on family stuff and how she’s doing in general. We live such different lives so far apart, it can be tricky to stay connected, but these visits every year or so certainly help.