Visit to Chinatown

The kiddos and I took BART into San Francisco one morning this week and then walked over to Chinatown to explore.  We ate some dim sum, visited the fortune cookie factory (tiny and very labor intensive), shopped around at various stores and bought a pair of purple pig chopsticks and a dragon chopstick rest.

Chrissy Field

The kiddos and I spent some time at Chrissy Field today on our way to pick up Livia, who will be visiting us for a bit...yay!  We enjoyed the sand, the view of the Golden Gate Bridge and a nice sunny day.  Plenty of windsurfers and kite surfers, as well as dogs and people to watch while we were there.

Fun With Grandma!

Alex has been having alot of fun this week with Grandma Elaine, who is visiting from Minnesota. He and I have taken her to some fun baby places like Jordan Park, and Tumble and Tea, and we tried to take her with us to swimming class yesterday, but were disappointed to find that it was cancelled due to the holiday weekend. Oh well, maybe next time.

Today we all went to The Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, which was a good rainy day activity. The flowers there are always beautiful and since Alex is a big fan of flowers, it was quite a hit. They had a special exhibit, The Golden Gate Express Garden Railway, which was quite cool. There were replicas of a variety of San Francisco landmarks which were made from recycled materials and there were a few train track loops running through it. You can see the Chinatown Gate, the Transamerica Tower, the Ferry Building, The Golden Gate Bridge and the Conservatory of Flowers in the photos above. It was a fun exhibit and Alex enjoyed walking around. Afterwards, we went to the Park Chalet by Ocean Beach for lunch, where Alex found a dog statue which was particularly interesting to him. He seemed to recognize that it was a doggy, just like his Sis-Sis. Quite cute!

It has been fun having Grandma here. Just a couple more days of fun left, before she heads back to the snow.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Happy Chinese New Year! Hope that the year of the ox is a good one for you. It's hard to believe that last Chinese New Year's Eve we were in the hospital and Alex arrived on that night. Luckily, Esmond and Tessa had hosted the Chinese New Year dinner the weekend before, just in case that happened! What good foresight. In just two weeks, we will be celebrating Alex's 1st birthday....wow, time flies!

We had a good weekend here. Saturday was quite laid back with a trip to the Farmer's Market, a stop at Arizmendi for pizza and then a trip to the Emeryville Public Market in the evening for dinner. Lots of eating going on, now that I think of it. (We do cook, I swear!) The public market is basically a hawker's market, with cuisine from many different countries, ranging from India, to Vietnam, to Persia. We had some yummy samosas from the Indian stall, some tasty chicken curry from the Persian vendor and some Greek offerings as well. Alex had fun people watching and tasting our food.

Today we took Alex to the Aquarium by the Bay, which was a good outing. They had a neat tunnel basically under the aquarium, where you could see many fish, including tuna, halibut, skate, huge sturgeon and sardines, as well as a few types of sharks, starfish, and rays. Alex enjoyed tracking the fish and touching a starfish in the pools afterward. Water is one of his favorites, so aquariums are always a hit. We went out for lunch at Butterfly afterwards and had a tasty fish sandwich and a duo of clam chowder, which was rather ironic, since we had just visited the aquarium. The little monkey really liked the New England style clam chowder, as well as the fish from the fish sandwich. He is quite adventurous when it comes to food, which is great!

We plan to celebrate Chinese New Year with friends next weekend, since our original plan was to head up to Tahoe this weekend. The forecast had called for snow as of Friday, so we canceled the trip, thinking that the roads may be bad. In the end, it turned out to be a nice weekend here anyway. Hopefully we will get up to Tahoe soon. Happy New Year!