December Countdown

Yesterday I read a blog that encourages a December countdown of favorites from 2009. Since I'm so far behind on blogging, I thought this may be the thing to spice things up around here.


December 1: Obviously the best trip of the year was the San Francisco adventure. It was so good that I'm still writing about it. Four. Months. Later.

Let me sum up our last day in the city with this piece of advice: DO NOT take a trolley ride (even if it's freeeeee! with your city pass) while parked in two hour parking.

Dan and I had never rode a trolley (horrors!). Neither had the kids. Since boys love all things vehicular, we decided it would be the perfect end to our vacation (the promise of an ice cream sundae for lunch at Ghiradelli Square was also persuasive). We felt decidedly urban when we parked the massive Yukon two blocks up from Ghiradelli and walked down to the nearby trolley turnaround.

We didn't panic while waiting in line for 45 minutes, even though Nate ate all the teddy grahams I was doling out singularly to Pete to keep him happy in the stroller (a nice lady sacrificed her emergency graham cracker packet from her backpack for Pete).

We also didn't panic as we went up, up, and up and over the city to Union Square. However, when we got to Union Square and were told, not once, but thrice, that this was the end of the line, we started to panic. See, a turnaround trolley stop doesn't mean that one can simply ride through the turnaround.

(Dan is starting to panic.)

Every one must exit and reboard. Duh. And the line at Union Square was at least an hour long. Add three hungry kids and an overtired baby to a two hour parking space and you get UGH.

Had we been truly urban, we would have gotten off the trolley at any one of the dozen stops along the way and simply boarded the next trolley heading back where we came from.

Since we weren't, we hiked a couple blocks up, hoping to get six people and a stroller loaded onto the next packed trolley. I wasn't too keen on the boys hanging onto the outside poles (trust me, they were), so we accepted the offer of a limo driver with a Slavic(?) accent, who may or may not have had a legitimate license, to drive us all back to Ghiradelli Square for $20. I use the term limo loosely, for although that's what the automobile was, it had definitely seen better days some thirty years ago. On the bright side, the boys were completely impressed with "THE LIMO!!"

Our snazzy ride was punctuated:
1) by Pete's screaming until he fell asleep (and yes, it was one of those times I was more than okay with letting the baby scream),
2) by the driver stopping every two minutes to solicit more passengers, and
3) by the driver offending a heavier-set African American woman by telling her to "Squeeze over! I can fit four Asians in your spot!"

Of course he thought we cheated him when we handed him the twenty.

But the bright side is that Dan sprinted up to our parking space and discovered . . . wait for it . . . NO TICKET! He moved the car, and we thoroughly enjoyed our sundaes.

We left the city via the Bay Bridge (another cheap thrill for the boys) and Oakland. For some reason, Jake was fascinated with Oakland and couldn't wait to see it. I'm sure we saw its best parts on our way by.

December 2: Best meal in a restaurant . . . The Training Table in Salt Lake City. So it's not the classiest joint, but for artery clogging goodness you can't beat a Blue Bacon Burger with Cheese Fries and the Ultimate Dipping Sauce and a gallon-sized Diet Coke. Plus it brought back so many memories from our college days: to-go orders as a freshman, the night we got engaged before watching BYU men's volleyball beat Stanford, and the lunch with all my law school friends after our last final exam. And once every couple years shouldn't kill me, right?



Still working on the linky-loo to the best of 2009 blog. Thursday morning--wahoo! I got the link hooked up. Now onto the button.