That's the sound of the men, workin' on the chain gang

And more Chinatown, too.

I promise I'll write some more deep, insightful posts later...right now, if I don't get it all down, I'll forget what I did--and it was too good a trip to forget!

(The first of the "postcard" entries is back here--I'd written it while away, so it was locked.)

Sunday morning, elgecko joined up with us again for a jaunt to Fisherman's Wharf. The cablecars are pricy, bloody noisy, and not much faster than walking, but it beats walking up and down all those hills--besides, it's San Francisco, you have to ride the cable cars. I think it might be compulsory.

At the pier, I rolled up my jeans and dabbled my toes in the bay, screeking at the cold. Then, of course, my feet were far too sandy to don my socks and shoes again--as Aaron put it, I was paying the wages of sand. Luckily elgecko came to the rescue with some handy baby wipes (it helps to have a dad around).

Ghirardelli Square for ice cream, then lunch of Dungeness crab and shrimp, were followed by a peek at the unfortunately somnolent sea lions and then a long walk down to Pier 33 to board the ferry to Alcatraz. Here we parted ways with the resourceful elgecko and met up with the lovely danea and her very real husband ellric. We'd never met him before, and he'd been too unwell to join us for the New Year parade as planned, so we were starting to figure she'd just made him up--but no, there he was, in the flesh...unless he was a hired actor...nah, probably not. ;)

Alcatraz shall be the subject of one of those deep, insightful future posts--for now I'll just say, if you ever go, take the night tour. It's creepy as all hell as the sun starts to go down and everything gets very, very quiet...until you hear the slam of a cell door. (Oh, and elgecko, you were right the first time--Alcatraz does indeed come from the word for pelicans.)

Dinner was more seafood, back at Pier 39, the main drag of Fisherman's Wharf...and although the restaurant had a tempting array of desserts available, we saved ourselves for the crêperie we'd noticed on the way to the back of the pier. San Francisco, while it doesn't seem to be known for a strong French presence, neverthless has a plethora of French restaurants--I had crêpes three times on this trip!

ellric and danea took the cable car back downtown with us, and we hugged them goodbye at the stop nearest our hotel--they continued on to the end of the line to get closer to the BART station that would get them home. (Yet another reason to fall in love with San Francisco--God, but I love a city with good public transit. Don't get me started on how badly MARTA sucks.)