NYE in San Fran

So I wanted to do a quick recap of our San Francisco trip so I could remember what a fun New Years it was. To me a good New Years is full of fun and awkward moments. One of our BG friends Dave recently moved from KY to San Francisco and is living with his brother and his brother’s girlfriend. They have a nice big house about 25 minutes south of San Fran so we decided to take a trip up and stay with Dave to celebrate New Years. Luckily they have an extra guest bedroom so we had a comfortable place to sleep. John flew in from KY Friday night and so after I got off work I headed up to pick him up from LAX and then we drove about 4 of the 6 hours to Dave’s. We pulled in to a local Holiday Inn to stay and John noticed that across the street was one of the famous Anderson’s Pea Soup restaurants so he insisted that we would stop there for breakfast the next day before we left town. I am not a fan of pea soup especially early in the morning so I secretly hoped they didn’t serve breakfast. To my chagrin they were open. My breakfast was actually pretty good and involved no pea soup. John on the other hand ordered a combo breakfast that came with a side of pea soup. Needless to say he only ate like 10 bites of his scalding hot pea soup.
We got to Dave’s on the 31st and picked him up and headed in to San Fran because we had tickets to go on the Alcatraz tour. When we came 5 years ago to San Fran tickets were sold out so I was interested to see what all the fuss was about. We were lucky in the it was actually a clear day in SF and even though it was windy and a little chilly it felt pretty warm for December. We took the ferry over to the island and I took a lot of pictures along the way. The island was pretty cool as far as historical things go and after completing most of the audio tour we jumped on the ferry back.

We had lunch at Fisherman’s Warf and drove around to some other scenic parts of town but had to get back home to get ready for New Years.

They do fireworks on the bay near the Golden Gate for New Year’s so his brother had worked it out that we had 10 PM dinner reservations on the North side of the bay and after we wrapped up dinner it was time for the show. On the way to dinner we crossed the Golden Gate which was fun and then we had a couple drinks at a local tavern near the restaurant. This place was perfect for awkward NYE moments. It was mainly very old people, I am talking walkers and canes old, who had too much to drink and were feeling rowdy. One older lady and gentlemen broke out dancing near the bar and the even older bartender told them no dancing, he said it was too crowded for that. Which was not the case at all but we kept joking that it was just like we were in footloose. There was also a suspicious looking gentlemen that sat quietly in the corner creepy eyeing us all night. The bartender was a no nonsense kind of guy and when you ordered a drink it better not involve anything fancy like sweet and sour or a blender. Don’t worry they did have a microwave on the counter at the bar though. The name of the bar was actually called the “No Name” bar. Charming huh. For dinner we sat in a glassed dining room right on the water and had an amazing seafood meal. John probably wouldn’t say this was his idea of a wild NYE but it was perfect for me and I have done enough NYEs his way. After dinner we sat on the water and watched the fireworks. Of course some drunk lady with balloons sat right next to me with her balloons flying inches from my head the whole time, John thought it was hilarious.
I am going to skip the part of the story where it took us an hour and a half to get home for reasons I can’t understand and just say after a very long drive home we were lucky to have a free sober right so we can’t complain.
The next day John and I said goodbye to our hostess Dave and headed out to do a little more exploring. We did another run through of downtown SF and then had lunch at a little spot on Haight and Ashbury. John tried to explain the significance of the area to me but I only caught something about hippies. We decided to take Highway 1 home through Big Sur, an extremely beautiful part of the California coast. We had never been on the 1 that far North so it was great driving through Pacifica and Moro Bay. We had great weather driving through Big Sur but it got dark about 2 hours before we finished the drive, we covered most of the good stuff though. A crazy fog cloud surrounded us right as it got dark and I felt like I was in the movie The Mist. We stayed at another lovely Holiday Inn south of Big Sur and after a struggle to find some food for dinner, I get grouchy when I am hungry, we were so ready for bed. We got up the next day and headed home, all in all a great New Years trip.