San Francisco

The next day we dropped off the girls at a birthday party and an uncle's house and headed for a short hike in the mountains. It was pretty hot (for only the second time on our trip) and a bit hazy, so the view wasn't that great. The shady forest was nice and full of laurel trees from which Meg swiped some bay leaves for cooking.

In the afternoon we headed to San Francisco to have dinner with some other people. We arrived too late to visit any museums, but the Japanese Tea Garden was open (and free!) so we spend about an hour there, enjoying the many paths and bridges.

We were supposed to meet for dinner at Betel Nut, a hip Asian-fusion (whatever that is) restaurant. They told us that it would take two hours for our party of nine, so we decided to kill some time window shopping.

As it happened, next door to the restaurant is Terra Mia, one of those places where you paint pottery and they glaze and fire it for you. This would be the perfect place--Meg and the girls could decorate a tea pot and cup and saucer for Meg's sister, and Jfer and I would make a neat souvenir. We decided on decorating a dip-bowl with marine animals to commemorate our trip to the Aquarium. The studio has great examples and simple instructions. We were going to use bright colors for the fish, mask them with latex, sponge blue and blue green water over them and scratch bubbles in the water.

Just as we were finishing the base color, the restaurant called that the table would be ready in 15 minutes--ack! Then the studio person told us they were out of latex paint and we'd have to use a different approach--double ack! So Meg stalled the restaurant for some additional time and they quickly finished their tea combo and left to meet up with the rest of the group. Jfer and I were frantically simplifying the design, masked out the sea creatures using contact paper, and eventually ended up with our bowl. The studio is going to glaze it and fire it, at which point the colors are supposedly going to become deep and bright--I'm curious how it's going to turn out and when we'll finally receive our bowl.

The dinner itself was really good. Of the other people, I only knew Linda but the whole group was fun--and one of the guys picked up the tab, for which we were grateful. If you ever make it there, their oven-smoked sea bass with cucumber namasu is to die for. Their pork ribs were a close second favorite.

After dinner it was a long ride back to Cupertino. Next day, we got up early, loaded the car, said our goodbyes and headed for the airport. There is construction going on around the San Jose airport and the signage is pretty much non-existent--Austin has much better directions to its airport. We made it in plenty time, and Jfer made it on the planes despite her dubiously issued tickets.

Arriving in hot, muggy Austin after northern California is always a bit of a downer. But we got to pick up Homer, so that pretty much made up for it.