Everyone was up by 6 a.m. to take the youngest to Oakland Airport with plenty of time to spare to make it through check-in and security. Thrilled he was to be flying Jet Blue because it meant he could watch the football games in-flight.

After we dropped him off, we drove back to San Francisco, intending (as long as we had the car out of the leased parking space) to stop off at the Trader Joe's near Fisherman's Wharf to pick up milk and single malt and other supplies.

We got to the store around 8:30 a.m. to discover that the store didn't open until 9 a.m. We had more than just a few minutes to wait, so we decided to drive down to the Marina and walk around and kill some time.

Today was beautiful, a perfect day, the sort of day you wish for tourists.

We walked along the edge of the Bay and over toward the yacht harbor, with me taking lots of pictures of boats and boats and crab traps and boats with the Palace of Fine Arts in the background and scullers and sea gulls, more boats and a guy rowing (not in a scull, in a rowboat!), and the GGB.





We spotted a huge boat anchored over by the Saint Francis and wandered over to check it out. The boat was the Sirenuse out of Kingstown. We continued walking past the Saint Francis YC, past the Golden Gate YC, where friends recently got married, and on to the Wave Organ, taking pictures of boats, the Wave Organ and Alcatraz.





We walked back, taking pictures along the way, and drove back to Trader Joe's. After we'd finished shopping at Trader Joe's and schlepped everything down from Montgomery, I was ready to take a couple pictures of the East Bay view and sit back and relax, read a bit or faff around on the 'net ... but his nibs was having none of it. The day was stunning, beautiful, so fine. His nibs wanted to be out and about.

We decided that the day's destination would be to walk down the Steps to the Embarcadero, then around past Fisherman's Wharf and over to Fort Mason and the Friends of the Library used bookstore, Book Bay, about two miles each way.

On the way, we stopped for lunch at Pompei's Grotto, one of my favorite, relaxing places to eat at the Wharf. His nibs had fettucine with crab and I had a hot crab sandwich -- open faced, tons of crab, delicious mornay sauce -- and fries. We split a bottle of chardonnay.

I bought a big bag of used books at Book Bay which we, of course, then had to carry home. I carried it most of the way before handing it over to his nibs before we started up the Steps.

Pictures!

   posted by Sal Towse at  8:13 PM|| |