San Francisco

Last week, my dad decided to plan a little day trip up to San Francisco. I always forget about the fact that I live so close to the city, and every time I go I'm amazed at how much I have yet to see and do there. As a kid, whenever French family friends would come by, I would get dragged along for the obligatory, hospitable tour, but it was never a thing I found fun. My memories of these excursions are colored by a disagreeable, blase pride in my familiarity with the place. Now that I realize how foolish I was, it'd be nice to spend more time there and go adventuring from time to time, and not just for concerts.

We started off by eating lunch in the most delicious of all Thai restaurants. Pad thai. I die. The place was a little hole in the wall in the very asian part of Irving Street. The music -- a solo of some twangy asian instrument playing a slightly out of tune, tuneless melody -- was on infinite loop and made me a little nauseous. Our waitress stared vacantly off into space as she scribbled furiously and assertively on her notepad. But again, ridiculously delicious.

After lunch we drove to a trail head at some beach south of the Golden Gate (I'm doing amazingly at specifics, aren't I?) and took a *short* (read: unexpectedly long) hike around that part of the cost. My father thought it was foolish for us to bring water, so we of course ended up spending 8ish dollars on two bottles of water at a touristy snack shop at the base of the Golden Gate. Dehydration is to be mightily feared, I remind myself often! The hike would've have been beautiful, and I could've almost imagined myself in some type of wilderness, except for the constant drone of traffic always not too far off. 

I fell asleep on the car ride back trying to read my book. 

The picture: I really like taking pictures of flowers. Although I took a bunch of pictures of the bridge, and although this isn't the best of them, I thought it was the least stereotypical. We were lucky to catch clear skies.