Happy Valentine's Day, Belatedly, Everyone!

I had a most enjoyable weekend with my step-dad, who was in town from Thursday to Sunday morning. After 2-Dad spent the day walking through Golden Gate Park and Haight-Ashbury (I'm sure the liberal in him was intuitively drawn to the biggest hotbed of hippie-dom in the city!!) I met up with him Friday evening at his hotel -- the Marine Memorial hotel, a very classy building dedicated to Veterans, located at Sutter and Mason (a block over from Union Square and a 5 blocks up from Market Street). We then met up with my 2 out of 3 housemates and hit Scoma's on the wharf, where I enticed 2-Dad to try the whole cracked Dungeness crab and the lobster bisque I'd so messily delighted in back in July. I believe his response was somewhere along the lines of quintessential 2-Dad: "That hit the spot!" We then filled in the cracks with a genuine Ghirardelli sundae. Having been to the city once or twice already, he'd hit all the major (kid) tourist spots -- the Exploratorium, Ghirardelli Square, etc. -- so I tried to drum up some new stuff (I can't quite lay claim to knowing actual insider stuff, so I'm just going with calling it new-to-him stuff!). Saturday morning we hit the Farmer's Market -- talk about a kid in a candy store! -- where he bought his very own farmer's market tote to carry all of his impulse buys -- 2 kinds of cheeses, one Welsh, one French, a sampler of olive oils, some California Laurel soap (for his girlfriend), and a Lavender sachet which reminded him of the smell of his mother's house. We then tromped a ways down to figure just exactly what that huge bow and arrow sculpture is -- darned if we learned anything except that a Dutch (?) couple gifted it to the city in 2002, but it's one of the few clear spots along the piers and the sky was a perfect blue, making for some great photo ops. His last visit was in the late 80's, so I of course took him to see the Sea Lions on Pier 39, who'd shown up in the early 90's. I then proceeded to tell him all the facts I'd learned from the last time when Mom and Steve were here, only to find that I was standing next to that day's Sea Lion expert from the place in Sausalito! Fortunately I'd remembered the facts right. He lasted longer than Freddie did -- about 10 minutes -- so Mom still holds the record for sea lion fascination (two visits, one at least an hour long). To save time, we'd hopped a street car from Pier 1 to Pier 39, which brought back memories for Dad of his childhood days in Washington, when he'd catch a street car for 50 cents with his young buddies to a local amusement park. We took another one back to Washington & Embarcadero, and then walked several blocks up Washington to Chinatown, which was at last less crowded (after several weekends of Chinese New Year's celebrations). My goal was to take him to good old fashioned Dim Sum, but we got there late in the afternoon on a Saturday, so rather than crowds and carts being wheeled about and lots of pointing, I actually had to check off a few choice dishes on a Dim Sum checklist. Not quite the ambience I'd hoped to share, but still delicious.

We split up then for an afternoon Siesta and remet a couple hours later for a Valentine's impromptu dinner, which I brought James to. We managed to find a place with room available on the most over-booked restaurant holiday of the year (I'd wager) and with that in mind, it was still pretty good! Afterwards we hit the main event, a production of "Noises Off!" being held in the Marine Memorial Theater (yup, he had a theater in his hotel) which was hysterically funny and amazingly well-choreographed. It was a great way to spend the evening. The next morning I drove Dad to the airport and spent much of that day and yesterday hanging out (one of my friends was in town) or napping, both well-deserved!

This weekend was a triumph of navigation -- getting from Fishermen's Wharf to Chinatown to Dad's hotel, and getting from my house to Dad's hotel, to the 101 the airport -- and quite a lot of fun. Hope yours was as good!