Adventure Recap

Flavio, Angie, Jake, Mattia

Well though my bags and packed and I've no where to go I haven't let that MINOR detail stop me from enjoying my week off work. Not really sure how that ended up being my schedule but I'll take it! I did manage to fill up most days with fun things at least.
I had my usually 3 day camping trip last Thursday which ended Saturday night. Sunday I did a wine country tour with a bunch of weirdos and one really cool Aussie guy who's on a whirlwind tour of the US before he heads back to Oz, so I gave him all the advise I could think of (poor guy) but that was to be the highlight, my group was really quiet and not in the mood to drink wine so much as learn about the wine...hmmm nothing wrong with that but it changes the mood in my van.

Cannoli's at Mara's

Monday I had arranged to meet up with 4 people from my camping trip (this group got along so well! They hung out Sunday together and had great adventures and made silly movies about speaking each others languages. They were a Taiwanese couple and 2 Italians.

Oh so delicious!

Monday I met them in Union Square and then took over the tour guiding again and walked them along my favorite route through SF. Jake the guy from Taiwan had found a place to have as close to authentic Chinese food as there is and so that was our only objective. Otherwise I walked them through tourist Chinatown and then up to Stockton where the Chinese people live and work and shop, we wandered up to my favorite pastry shop Mara's and had a cannoli. A Sicilian pastry it turns out. The Italians were from Milan.
That was fun at any rate. We walked back to Chinatown and had our Chinese lunch. Jake and Angie made us each learn a dish in Chinese and order it from the waiter, it was really fun. The food was really good too!
After that I took them to Belden Place, the alley I found in the financial district. I have always wanted to try it out and so we went there and had a coffee and relaxed for a bit.

From there I took them back through North Beach, we took a snooze in Washington Square and then continued on to Fishermans Wharf. That place was insanely busy as usual, I about lost it by that point. I was hungry and had turned into grouchy "feed me now" Karen. She's never fun. :)

The group wanted to try sourdough so we went to Boudins for a chowder bowl and then I coaxed them into the Musee Mecanique. They were all reluctant at first, its hard to describe the antique arcade idea to people. Once I got them in there and they got some quarters into some games they all perked up and we ended up spending at least an hour in there. It was hilarious!

Dueling Robots

We ended our day by having seafood at a restaurant at Fisherman's Wharf. Its a tough choice when there are so many places there!! We found one that had everything we wanted on the menu and ate a good meal.
It was late by this time and  time to find our way back over the hill to where they were all staying. After much wandering and debate about paying for a cable car and trying to find a non existent taxi (why on earth are there no taxi's in Fisherman's??)
We finally caught the #30 bus through Chinatown to Union Square where we parted ways. I walked Mattia and Flavio to their hostel since they were turned around by then. And we discussed my going with them on their next leg of the journey. They were headed to Monterrey and I suggested Santa Cruz and Carmel too, they took me with them! Tuesday they came and picked me up in their rental car and drove me to the beach! It was the first time I wasn't driving! It was really nice to just hang out and take in the scenery!

We laid on the beach for a while and walked around and then drove to Carmel. The beach there was so cold! It was foggy and windy, not like sunny Santa Cruz! We didn't stay long and then went to Monterrey to find the hotel and go get dinner. I got a room in Monterrey (thank goodness for internet on my phone) and we all went to dinner on Cannery Row.
The whole trip was a lot of fun. I took a shuttle van back to SFO and caught BART back to the city. I miss those guys already, they were so fun!

Oh the places I'll go....again

Once again I find my bags packed and I'm sitting here thinking, where to next?! Not so much in a grand way but my next few weeks or months will be up in the air (where I like it?!!)
My sublet is over now, Charlotte comes home this week. I have back to back camping trips so I'll at least know where I'm going to be sleeping for a few days :) then its anyones guess. For the time being I've booked a hostel bed so I know I have some where to go at least.
My plan as it stands right now is to sleep on the office floor the night before my camping trip (don't feel too bad, I sleep really good there for some reason) 2 nights camping in Yosemite then another night on the office floor and then a hostel for 3 nights. Why not?! It can be done!! And if I can manage it for about 6 weeks then I'll be home free because my time will be up and I can move on.
The thing about staying, when people ask, is that I have to set so many things in motion to make it happen and I'm not really in love with this place. I'd rather get moving and maybe find that place I'd like to make an effort to settle on down the road.
In order to stay I'll be signing a lease which is scary when I have a mortgage back home to potentially cover should my renter move out. I would need to start looking for a second job to supplement the guide work if I had that through the winter and then there is actually finding a place! That is the hardest part and the rents in SF went up. Weird how that works. Rooms and sublets got 1/3 more expensive since I looked in May/June. Why on earth!?
So all those things swirling around my brain makes me want to just pack light and keep it simple and try out my money saving scheme for a while. What have I got to lose anyways?! Well besides sanity but who needs that! Ha!
I am really going to miss my roommates right now though. They are such a great bunch of people and I get along well with them for sure. It will be harder to see them once I go because we all have different schedules. I hope to come over for the occasional game night and things, that will be fun!

Looking forward, my list of things I'd like to be doing this fall is ever growing. Really when do I NOT have a list of places I'd like to be visiting?! Thailand, USA, Europe (UK, Mallorca and now Italy) Oz, New Zealand.

Well, I want to recap some adventures I've had this week but I'll put that into another blog. This one got long and is my usually rambling.

How to impress visitors!

Being the amazing tour guide that I am...after my last 3 day tour a few of the younger people wanted to go out on the town, they wanted me to show them where! Ha! Me! A person who is usually sleepy by 9pm because I work early in the mornings and 6 days a week! I wish I knew how to help them. I didn't really say any of that. I just told them I'd drop off the van and get caught up with them as soon as I could.

2 hours later I finally made it into the city. The neighborhood where I live is so up and coming (yeah right) you have to call a cab and hope it doesn't get stolen before it gets to you. Then on a Saturday night trains headed into downtown are 20-40 minutes apart. So my journey was a bit frustrating. At CalTrain where the T line takes a long slow turn (its always slow...) I decided to try my luck, jump off the train and run up to catch the #30 bus that heads past Union Square. So I see the bus coming (as per my usual) and have to run as fast as I can to get to it because at that time of night the drivers could care less.
Needless to say I make it into town, pull myself together and find my group. What I hadn't realized in all that time was that they had invited one of the younger kids along with them. He was 20 and he looked younger. They (all being Europeans/ Aussies) thought he could go everywhere and just not drink, since that is the way of it outside the US. But they had discovered that is not the case. So we had to figure out where to go where he could come in. Yeah right, on a Saturday night in San Francisco.
I didn't know where to go. They didn't seem to understand I never go out at night. I've never been to a nightclub (yet) and I usually like dive bars and I make my own party so its never that the place is really "happening" so they are not with the greatest bar guide in the world at this point.

I took them into dark empty Chinatown to the Buddha bar and we were the only ones in there oops, it was hilarious. So we had one drink and chatted up a storm and then moved on. They really wanted to go dancing and it was getting late. The bars close at 2 am, I knew there had to be after hours places in the city so I got on the phone to some of the people I know and we were sent a couple of suggestions.
One person said Ruby Skye and the other said "oh no, don't go there its douche-y" so he suggested The Endup in SOMA. Sure, why not. Supposed to be good dancing, open really late/early. We hopped into a cab and went down to see what was up at the Endup.
This is where it gets good.

The cab driver knew right where it was because everybody ends up at the Endup. We pull up and there are no white people at all. Only African American people. Lots of them. So I say "huh?" maybe that's how it is, lets go check it out anyways. So out we go to get in line for the security pat down and ID check. We still have the young guy with us don't forget. So one by one we get nearer the door, get ourselves searched, our purses and pockets searched and then make it to the cover charge lady. We did it. All of us ended up inside. I couldn't believe it!

We were the only white people there. It was a huge place and totally packed with people. No joke, you couldn't even walk around in there. I texted my friend and asked him if the club being for black people only was normal, he said "no way!" ha! So we'd just walked into an event that was not designed for us, music is universal so who can really say its not for one type of person versus another, I know that!
But what the heck! In we went! It was absolutely the most entertaining night. I haven't laughed that much in a long time.

We got a drink and decided to go have a look. It was so packed you couldn't get through the crowd without full body contact. Once we got further into the place we got seperated and Michael and I were standing near the dance floor taking it all in when I suddenly got thrown against him and the wall. There had been a huge bar fight brewing right behind me and I hadn't heard it. So Michael catches me and we move out of the way best we can and watch the drama unfold.
By the time I could turn around and get further away from the fists of fury the security guards were on top of the scene. The man attacked the woman and she was fighting back with some serious energy and the security guards had to work pretty hard to get them out. It was really something! Michael and I just looked at each other and started laughing. Oh my gosh! It was so funny. Not sure why it was but we just couldn't help laughing about this place we'd walked in to!

We managed to gather the whole group again and made our way to the dance floor and the outside patio area which was really cool. I had to go to the bathroom and I'd seen the line on my way by, it wasn't short. I knew I'd better get into that line before I really had to go so off I wandered to fight my way back to that side of the place.

Wow! This was the next funniest thing I've ever seen at a bar. The women in line for the bathroom were absolutely hilarious and we all had to go really bad and we were all trying the broken stall door, just in case and then as we got really close the ladies just started undoing their clothes to be totally ready to go. The gal behind me says "just don't even flush, just run out" it was great!

So we danced the night away and watch the scene unfold and had a bunch of laughs. Oh what a night! My poor young English lad Felix was completely out of his element the whole time. It was really funny. Michael was from Australia and pretty much up for anything so he and I were really enjoying ourselves.

The whole night was great. These poor folks had no idea what a night out with their trusty tour guide Karen would be! Goes to show, you never know what will happen, the party is where you make it and never turn down new things! And just see how that turned out! :)