Spring Break 2024 – Life Off Headset

Berkeley/ San Francisco Spring Break 2024 Day 9 and 10: Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Emergency Room and home

Finishing out our Spring Break Trip recaps… Because, you know, summer vacation starts next week.

Day 9 of our trip was perhaps the most stereotypical San Francisco Tourist day. I wanted to ride the cable cars and see Chinatown. Fisherman’s Wharf was a close walk from there, so we decided to see that as well. On this day, my brother, sister-in-law, and niece came along and we met up with the Husband’s friend R and my sister-in-law’s mother came for part of the day as well.

We left Berkeley around 9:30am in the morning and got off at Embarcadero where we caught the cable car to Chinatown. I’ve always loved the cable cars – I worked in San Francisco, one of my first stage management gigs in the early 2000s, and from the theatre you could walk a few blocks and catch the cable car which would take me to the apartment where I was staying. There was something so magical about jumping on the cable car and riding with the San Francisco air and hum around me, this very slow and aged method of transport. Also, at the time, that particular line was free. It was all so romantic. The cable cars are no longer free, but they are still really fascinating to ride.

We took the California line to Chinatown where we got off, and slowly meandered through the streets, with their paper lanterns strewn above and steep hills and colourful murals. I stopped in at a wok shop – it was filled with all sorts of kitchen implements that I remember my mom having in our kitchen when I was growing up. Reminding myself that it would be very impractical, I refrained from buying a wok, but I did pick up a ginger grater, just like the one my mom used.

We made a walk through stop at the Fortune Cookie Factory, which was really one room where you could see them making fortune cookies, taking the freshly baked cookie off the mold and quickly folding a slip of paper inside before it hardened. To be honest, I wouldn’t say it’s a “must see” of Chinatown, even though it’s on a lot of lists – it was kind of a cramped, rushed experience and took all of 20 minutes, 15 of which were standing in line.

After the Fortune Cookie Factory, we walked to the San Francisco Cable Car Museum. This museum is housed in the powerhouse and cable car barn, and inside you can see the gears turning, winding the cables through the series of wheels, pulling the cable cars. It was really neat to think about how the cable cars we were just earlier riding on were powered by the machines we were looking at. There was all sorts of displays and artifacts that told the history of cable cars, as well as a collection of antique cable cars. My favorite was the display they had which showed how they detected frays in the cable. It was remarkably low tech – involving sensors that went off when a stray bit of cable filament was detected. I thought this museum was really interesting – definitely recommend it. AND it was free! I love me a free museum.

Just think -those are the very cables that pulled us to Chinatown!

After the cable car museum we decided to go back to Chinatown for lunch and ended up at a Pho restaurant – pho is one of my favorite dishes and this pho was amazing, so flavorful and rich. I also made a quick pit stop at a bakery in Chinatown to pick up some egg tarts, one of the 12 year old’s favorite desserts.

Following lunch, we walked to Fisherman’s Wharf, about a 30 minute walk, though North Beach. Fisherman’s Wharf is definitely touristy and part of the fun of going there is to people watch and soak in the bustling atmosphere. We were (probably) scammed into giving some guy $10, which felt icky to me, but the Husband said that we should think of the fast talker as entertainment, and he was hugely entertaining, with his swagger and confidence. So maybe not worth the whole $10, but at least worth something – it made me think about how maybe I shouldn’t be snobbish about how people decide to work hard for their money – because the guy was clearly working hard and probably not making much money. We also visited the Musee Mechanique, a huge collection of coin operated amusements and games. The place was fascinating – so many games to play and little dioramas that came to life at the drop of a coin – and some not so little dioramas too. Everything was so loud and bling-y and almost overwhelming. We gave the kids $5 each and let them play games until their money ran out.

After about an hour, our money spent, our ears ringing and our minds spinning from all the over stimulation, we decided to walk down the Embarcadero, taking the long way back to the BART station. On the way, we stopped at Pier 39 for ice cream (I got lychee- one of my favorites!) and to see the sea lions.

We got home around 6:15pm, and made pizzas for dinner and finished the evening by watching Mitchells vs. the Machines, which was a lovely movie.

The next day was Easter Sunday. We found a church in Berkeley and went to Mass. It was a lovely modest church and, maybe it was because we went to the 8:00am Mass, the pews were on the empty side. Nonetheless, the service was quite lovely. The homily was centered around the question of “Who will move the boulder?” – meaning we often worry about tasks that seem impossible (who will move the huge boulder from the tomb of Christ so that Mary may see to the body), but perhaps they are not as impossible as we think (the boulder being already moved when they arrive.) I’m not Catholic, not particularly religious, but I do often find things to ponder when I listen to homilies. Afterwards we went to breakfast – at first we tried to go to a local diner, but it was closed, so we ended up at IHOP, which actually was quite nice – we have an off and on family tradition of eating at IHOP on Easter Sunday.

We went back to my brother’s house where we had an Easter Egg hunt. We were on the fence as to whether or not to do Easter eggs, but then decided that the kids would like it, so we bought and filled a bunch of eggs and my sister in law had hid the eggs while we were at church. Now my SIL is Jewish, but fully appreciates the fun of looking for candy in plastic eggs. Even their neighbors came over for a little while.

After the easter egg hunt, we decided to go on a nice little walk around Berkeley. We went to a really tasty Mexican restaurant for lunch – I had tacos and nachos and plantains and horchata.

Then we headed to the middle school, by way of a pretzel store (Squabisch Pretzels, above), to play a game of pick up basketball – kids against grown up. So funny story – my brother was a HUGE basketball fan/player when we were growing up. But, being a short Asian boy, his dreams of playing in the NBA weren’t entirely realistic. When we decided to go shoot hoops, he pulled a pair of basketball shoes out of the attic that must have been at least 15 years old. Anyhow, as we were playing basketball with the kids, he shoe FELL APART! Like the sole came off. Only not all the way because the sole was stitched at the toe. He walked around the rest of the day with his sole flap flap flapping awkwardly. Well that pretty much put an end to the basketball game, so we decided to walk to coffee and Indian Rock Park, where there was a nice rocky scramble. My kids LOVE a rocky scramble. Indian Rock is a popular local spot for urban rock climbers. We saw a couple groups that had brought their own crash pads and were bouldering across the rock faces.

At the summit of the Indian Rock was a spectacular view of Berkeley and Oakland and across the Bay. We hung out there and let the kids play for a little bit, but soon it was time to go home and pack as we were leaving the next morning. I went to rally the kids, taking this photo of the fearless 4 year old before telling her to come down so we could leave.

Then things went south. I turned to look for the other kids, and then I heard a cry. I looked back and couldn’t see the 4 year old. Running over to the rocks, i saw that she had fallen down between two rocks and was crying. She very rarely cries, so I knew she was in trouble, so I reached in a pulled her out, giving her big hugs and cuddles and trying to comfort her as I carried her back to the exit. Then this is where it got scary. Someone, I can’t remember who, but I think the 12 year old started frantically saying, “BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD!!!” It took me a while to register, but there was blood running down my hand, the hand that was cradling the back of the 4 year old’s head. Then my brain kind of just froze.

Things I am grateful for:
1) My brother, who is a physician. Took a look at the gash on the back of the 4 year old’s head, and rinsed it with water and decided that we should go to the children’s hospital and he came with me.
2) All the bystanders who offered help, including:
-the preschool teacher who came up and said, “I just completed my 1st aid training for school. Can I help?”
– the rock climber, who came up and just handed us a big wad of gauze. Okay, I guess it makes sense for people who are engaged in highly dangerous activities to carry gauze with them.
3) The Uber driver who took us there, offered us water and didn’t even blink that we were dripping blood in his car.
4) The Husband and my sister-in-law who got the rest of the kids home and fed them dinner. And the Husband who packed us up to leave while I was at the Hospital.
5) Bluey.
6) Insurance.

So we get to the ER at Oakland Children’s Hospital and check in. The lady at reception was so funny. First of all, a few minutes after we arrived, the power went out – I’m not sure what that was about, but then the generators kicked in. As the lady took my information, I asked how she was, and she said, “It’s Easter and the power keeps going out, so I think I’ve been better.” Then, as she was entering my personal information into the system – I give her my birthday, and she types it in, then looks at me and says, “That’s your birthday? You look good!”
“Thank you,” I say, laughing. “I’m sure you see lots of people in here.”
“I’m not kidding,” she says, “Sometimes people come in and give me their birthday and I’m really surprised.”

We were in the waiting room for about two hours initially. Frankly by the time we got to the ER, the 4 year old was a lot better. “It doesn’t hurt as much anymore,” she said as we entered the hospital. Further proof – Paw Patrol was playing on the TV in the waiting room and as soon as we checked in, she walked over, pulled a chair in front of the TV and was glued to the screen. At some point, after the power went out, the TV turned off, so we switched to watching Bluey on one of our phones.

Finally it was our turn to go back and be seen by the doctor.

So this is one of the great things about having my physician brother with me – Oakland Children’s is a teaching hospital, and the first people we saw was a nurse and a resident. “How are we doing?” one of them asked.
“She fell off a rock and hit her head,” I said.
Then my brother added, “There’s a two centimeter laceration on the base of her cranium. No loss of consciousness. She might need stitches.” Cool. Glad he was with me. The doctors and the nurse made murmurs of agreement. Then they went away to figure out the next steps. Before they went away, however, my brother said, pointing to his shoe (do you remember the broken shoe?), “Do you have scissors? I need to cut this sole off.” And the next thing we knew, this happened:

The resident said the he didn’t want my brother tripping and have to make a second trip to the ER.

And then a little while later, the attending physician came and looked at the wound. And she said, “You know there’s a technique we like to use on the head that is pretty un-invasive where we use the hair to close the wound. I think we should try that.”

People – this is what they did – and it’s probably one of the most amazing things I’ve ever encountered. They take tiny sections of hair on either side of the wound and twist them together tightly so that the wound closes. Then they GLUE THE HAIR TWIST so that it doesn’t untwist. They literally glued my baby girl’s head back together!!!!! Mind blown. And I didn’t need to worry about stiches (when I was five I fell and had to get stitches and there was a lot of screaming involved) or going home with a staple remover or anything. Here’s a picture (warning if you’re not into pictures of wounds, scroll down.):

All patched up and then we called the Husband to come pick us up and we were on our way. The 4 year old was in amazing spirits – I mean she got to watch endless Bluey, what’s not to love? All told, we spent about 3 hours in the emergency room. Which, actually doesn’t feel bad.

And, okay, one other fun fact – in our 12 years of being parents, this was our VERY FIRST emergency room visit. I think that’s pretty good streak. Also – if I had to guess which kid would send us to the emergency room, it would definitely have been this one. The other two kids are pretty risk adverse.

I feel as if the rest of the trip was pretty anti-climactic after that. The next morning we left at 4am for the airport to catch our 6:10am flight. We got to the airport at 4:50am and we still only made our flight by the skin of our teeth – Oakland is a very busy airport and the security lines were long. We seriously thought we were going to miss our flight. But then in the end – our plane pulled out and then sat on the runway and then returned to the gate because of a transponder malfunction and we had to deplane and get another plane two hours later. Which was just as well because we originally would have had an awfully long layover in St. Louis, but as it was our layover was pleasantly long enough to grab lunch (fried ravioli!!!!) and a beer (Schlafly!). Then we were home – we took the shuttle to the hotel where we had parked, got in our car and went home, where, thank goodness for eggs, we had dinner then went to bed.

Whew that was our whole Spring Break Trip! Next year, I’m working over spring break, so if there is a trip, I probably won’t be able to go. I’m really glad we took the time and effort and money to make this trip happen!

Oh and postscript- because of the delay leaving Oakland, Southwest sent each of us $150 towards a future flight. Not as lucrative as how Elisabeth made out on her trip to Barcelona, but it’s enough to make another trip more affordable. So – here is a list of airports that are a non-stop flight from Washington DC – where should we go next?

Albany, NY
Albuquerque, NM
Aruba, Aruba
Atlanta, GA
Austin, TX
Belize
Birmingham, AL
Boston, MA
Buffalo, NY
Cancun, Mexico
Charleston SC
Charlotte, NC
Chicago, IL
Cincinnati, OH
Cleveland, OH
Colorado Springs, CO
Columbus, OH
Dallas, TX
Denver, CO
Destin/Fort Walton Beach, FL
Detroit, MI
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Fort Myers, FL
Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
Grand Rapids, MI
Greenville, SC
Hartford, CT
Houston, TX
Indianapolis, IN
Jackson, MS
Jacksonville, FL
Kansas City, MO
Las Vegas, NV
Liberia, Costa Rica
Long Island, NY
Los Angeles, CA
Los Cabos, MX
Louisville, KY
Manchester, NH
Memphis, TN
Miami, FL
Milwaukee, WI
Minneapolis, MN
Montego Bay, Jamaica
Myrtle Beach, SC
Nashville, TN
Nassau, Bahamas,
New Orleans, LA
Norfolk, VA
Oakland, CA
Omaha, NE
Orlando, FL
Panama City Beach, FL
Phoenix, ZA
Pittsburgh, PA
Portland, ME
Providence, RI
Turks and Caicos
Punta Cana, DO
Raleigh/Durham, NC
Richmond, VA
Rochester, NY
Salt Lake City, UT
San Antoni0, TX
San Diego, CA
San Jose, Costa Rica
San Juan, PR
Sarasota, FL
Savannah, Hilton Head, GA
Seattle, WA
St. Louis, MO
Syracuse, NY
Tampa, FL
West Palm Beach, FL

Berkeley/ San Francisco Spring Break 2024 Day 7 and 8: California Academy of Sciences and Rock Climbing and Good Food

Continuing on recaps from our Spring Break trip to Berkeley and San Francisco….

One of our other goals for visiting the Bay Area was to visit our friend R who lived in San Francisco. He used to live in DC, but moved to San Francisco five years ago or so. Even though R doesn’t have kids, he’s always really liked hanging out with ours and whenever we see him, he always suggests family friendly excursions, which I appreciate. This times, he suggested that we visit the California Academy of Sciences, an aquarium, planetarium, and natural history museum all rolled into one. We took the BART and then the bus from Berkeley there and met our friend outside the museum. There was so much to see there, but here are some highlights –

Stingray tank:

There was a great outdoor space where on one end there was a huge water table set up and a station with lots of corks and sticks and you could experiment and build a boat/raft to send down the waterways of the water table. On the other end was a play area with huge insects and sticks and structures to climb. We liked this part of the museum so much we came here twice!

There was a whole exhibit about colour in nature and all the ways that animals and plants use colour. It reminded me of the rainbow game I play with the kids, and would surely have been cheating to play it in the exhibit. I particularly liked this display on beetles, and this other case on sea life. What a beautifully vibrant colour!

Lunch – probably the best meal I’ve had in a museum – roasted brussel sprouts and tortilla soup:

The Rainforest Exhibit, steamy and warm and full of lush greenery, butterflies, and birds:

Then we wandered down into the Aquarium where there were Jellyfish –

Sea horses – so cool because I had never seen a seahorse before:

And I did play the rainbow game with the kids while at the aquarium:

That evening we headed back to Berkeley for dinner, while the Husband stayed in San Francisco to go to dinner with his friend. My brother’s family, my parents, and the kids and I ended up at this very tasty Thai restaurant called The Funky Elephant. The restaurant was teeny tiny and we ended up sitting outside, even thought the evening had gotten chilly. The restaurant rolled out some heat lamps for us, whic helped a little. The food was unlike any other Thai restaurant we’d ever been to – spicy and flavorful and not too sweet. We ordered lots of food to share and I particularly liked the crispy rice salad with tofu and the Fried Brussel sprouts. (Yes! I had fried brussel sprouts TWICE in one day! That was exciting.) And for dessert we all shared a mango sticky rice, which is one of my favorite deserts ever. Highly recommend this place if you are ever in Berkeley.

95% of the time, when I see mango and sticky rice on a menu, I will order it.

Incidentally, the Husband texted while I was at dinner and said that his friend had an extra ticket to the Bruce Springsteen concert and would it be okay if he went? Of course I said yes! I myself have never been to any kind of rock concert – and honestly, I don’t know if it’s my thing what with the noise and crowds – but I was super excited that he got a chance to go.

The next day was Friday, and my brother took the day off to hang out with us. We had planned to go hiking, but it turned out to be a rainy rainy day, so he suggested that we go to the rock climbing gym instead. Going to a climbing gym as a family had long been on my “Family Fun Wish List”, so I was excited to go. The Husband did not go with us – he wasn’t interested in climbing and wanted to have a day to himself instead. He told me afterwards that he had gone to Telegraph Road, which is one of the major streets in Berkeley, and had just walked around. I had told him that he should check out Amoeba Records. Twenty years ago, I lived in Berkeley while working one of my first stage management gigs at an outdoor Shakespeare company in Marin County. On my days off, I would spend a lot of time at Amoeba Records and also Rasputin Records. Anyhow, the Husband found the two music stores and we had this text exchange:

It’s funny in our age of streaming media to think the huge percentage of my paycheck that I poured into record stores, only to now not really have any convenient way to play those CDs.

Meanwhile, back to the climbing gym … My brother is super active and outdoorsy- he is the guy that goes on five day back country camping trips, and goes to the climbing gym at least twice a week. He had child sized climbing belts and shoes for the two little kids to wear- gear that used to belong to my niece but she had outgrown. He had actually passed the climbing gear along to his neighbor’s kids, so he called them to see if we could borrow it back. The climbing gym, Pacific Pipe in Oakland, was a huge facility. I think it’s one of the biggest in the area, and also one of the oldest. We bought day passes and rented shoes for the 12 year old and me.

We started out with some bouldering:

Then we moved on to top roping – my brother belayed. This gym had a space dedicated for kids to top rope, but it was under construction – I think they were changing up the routes – so the kids just climbed on the easier grown up walls. I was really impressed by how well the kids did and how high they went, and how even though there were many handholds, they tried really hard to follow the colour of each route, even though it wasn’t always easy. I didn’t feel like renting a climbing belt, so I just stuck to bouldering myself. It is SUCH a workout.

For lunch we went to Ikea then the kids wanted to climb some more, so we went back to the gym for another hour or so.

Around 3pm, we headed home. The two little kids and I walked down with my sister in law to pick up my niece from school.

Since it was a Friday in Lent, we wanted some tasty vegetarian food for dinner, so my brother took us to Vik’s Chaat. I had come here years ago, when it was just a restaurant in a big warehouse. Now it also has an Indian grocery story attached, which was very exciting to me and I made a note to check it out later.

We ordered lassis; the kids had mango, and I had a rose lassi. I don’t often see rose lassis on a menu, but it is one of my favorite lassi flavors so I always order it when I see it.

Dinner itself was very tasty, but somewhat of an ordeal. Vik’s is not like Indian restaurants at home where you order a bunch of dishes – basically everything come in a Thali so you get whatever your order – saag panner, dosa, samosa, along with chutney, dal, and rice. The idea being that your order is your meal. Well one child, likes to eat family style and try a bunch of different things, and also wasn’t familiar with the menu, and thought the cheese dosa would have paneer in it, but it just had American Cheese. And said child was probably hangry and tired and then had a meltdown in the restaurant and had to be taken aside to calm down. The whole thing made me realize how, even in America there are places that can be bewilderingly different from what we are used to in our own city.

After dinner, I checked out the grocery store. Because I didn’t want to bring a lot of things home with us in our suitcases, I exerted great restraint and did not buy all the dals and spices and snacks that were there. I did, however buy a 16 oz container of cardamom pods and 16 oz cloves and a bag of Assam tea because it all was about 1/2 the price as what I usually get at home, and I can’t usually find Assam tea at home. It is soon going to be iced chai season and I am really excited.

After that we headed home, the kids went to bed, I chatted a little with my brother and sister-in-law before going back to our apartment and turning in for the night. We had two more days left in our trip and they would be filled with planned and unplanned adventures.

Berkeley/San Francisco 2024, Days 4-6: Sutro Baths, Golden Gate Park, Muir Woods, and Berkeley Botanical Gardens

Continuing our Spring Break recaps. Since my brother and sister in law had to work and my niece had school, we had several days with my parents to see the sights of San Francisco and Berkeley.

One place I really wanted to visit was the Sutro Baths. They are what are left of a public bathouses that were built on the coast of the Pacific Ocean by millionaire Adolph Sutro in the 1890s. It was a huge complex with seven swimming pools, water slides, diving boards and the like. But then the place became too expensive and eventually in the 1960s it was sold to developers who started to demolish the site. Then in 1966 there was a fire and the developers collected the insurance money and abandoned the project. The site is now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Such splendor! Photo from the National Parks Website.

Back in the early 2000s when I worked in San Francisco, the Sutro Baths was one of my favorite places to go on a free day- I would take the bus all the way to the end of the line and walk down to the ruins of the Baths where I would spend an afternoon at the there, enjoying the brisk windy air, gazing at the ocean, and wandering among the ruins, imagining what it must have been like to come here on vacation over a century ago.

On Monday morning, we left the house around 10am and took the BART into San Francisco and I re-lived those youthful summers, once again taking the bus all the way to the end of the line. Google maps actually told us to get off a couple blocks before the ocean, but the bus driver asked, “Are you guys going to the ocean?”

“Yes!” we said.

“Don’t get off at this stop. Get off at the next stop. I don’t know why Google always tells people to get off at 44t street.”

We got off at the recommended stop – the driver even giving us directions on how to get the right bus back – and then headed towards the ocean and the Baths. I’ve always loved approaching the ocean – hearing the surf and feeling the wind even before that endless sky in front of you coalesces into the ocean. I will never not find the ocean breathtaking.

The Sutro Baths were just as romantic as I remember, perhaps a little more graffiti on the walls than twenty years ago. It is easy to imagine that these ruins are older than they are, that these last standing remnants of walls and crumbling concrete are the product of centuries of decay a la Rome. Of course the reality is that it’s just a 1960s destruction project that had been abandoned. We wandered around the runs, walked around the paths, watched the ocean waves. We spent two hours there, then headed on foot to our next destination.

Another view of the Golden Gate Bridge. You can see it everywhere!

Taking a page out of Elisabeth’s book, I had googled “Hidden Gems San Francisco” to find places to visit. One of the things that came up on several searches was the Queen Wilhelmina Gardens where we could find an authentic Dutch windmill. The gardens were about a mile away from the Sutro Baths, so we headed there on foot walking down the Great Highway, parallel to Ocean Beach, and some amazing clouds. We stopped at a hippie little coffee shop/surf shop called Andytown Roasters for hot chocolate (the kids), a matcha latte (me) and a mocha (the Husband). Then we went to the Safeway across the street to pick up some food for lunch.

Lunch in hand, we made our way to the Gardens and it was like stepping across the pond to the Netherlands. A huge windmill loomed and all around there were beds of tulips. Tulip season had already peaked so the flowers were a mix of poppies and tulips, but still very beautiful. We sat on a benches and ate our lunch while basking in the sunshine. After they were done eating, the 12 year old ran around the garden taking pictures and the little kids just ran around. There were large grassy areas perfect for frolicking. I thought the whole things was a little ironic because even though we were in Amsterdam last Spring Break, we didn’t see any tulips or windmills, even though it was peak tulip season. It would have required booking either a tour or a rental car to have gone to see the tulip fields. And yet here we were, a year later, in San Francisco, among tulips, under the shade of a windmill. We took pictures and sent them to my sister-in-law in Amsterdam to see if she also enjoyed the irony.

Our next stop after the garden was to a bison paddock, which was also in Golden Gate Park. I had a colleague who had spent ten years working for the opera in San Francisco and she had sent me a list of things to see while we were there and the Bison Paddock was one of those things. We wandered to the Paddock via some unpaved trails. One thing I thought was amazing were the calla lilies growing wildly along the trail, some of them taller than the four year old. I’ve always thought of calla lilies as a hot house flower, so it was very surprising to see them out in the wild.

The Husband loves bison, so the Bison Paddock in Golden Gate Park was an obvious stop for us. Bison were first brought to Golden Gate Park in 1891, and in the early days, the Golden Gate bison were part of a breeding program to grow America’s dwindling Bison population. All the bison currently in the paddock are female – apparently females are less aggressive, and they were certainly a very calm bunch. I sat on a bench and just watched them going about with life and it was very calming.

Soon it got to be 3pm and we started heading back to Berkeley, via bus and BART. We got back around 5:00pm and spent the next ninety minutes relaxing around the house. I might even have taken a nap. We had dinner plans that evening with friends so headed in that direction around 6pm. One of the 12 year old’s friends from preschool had moved to Berkeley two years ago and we were super excited for a chance to visit her and her family and catch up. (Fun coincidence – they are renting a house that belongs to the good friend of my sister-in-law a house that I visited with her in 20013. Small world.) We met our preschool friends at a Chinese restaurant in the same plaza as the Ranch 99, which is a huge Chinese supermarket chain.

The restaurant itself was a little disappointing because we thought they would serve the dim sum menu, even though it was a weekday night, but they didn’t. They literally gave us the dim sum menu then pointed at one page of it and said that was all we could order off of that menu. Otherwise we could order from the main menu. I had been all psyched up to have my favorite dim sum dishes like chang fen and egg tarts, and my hopes were dashed. Oh well, it’s not like we starved – we ended up ordering a bunch of dumplings and shu mai as well as dumplings, Chinese broccoli, kung pao chicken, noodles… so much food!

After dinner we went to get some boba. There were something like THREE boba places in this little strip mall. THREE! At home, I only have one in a two mile radius. The one the kids went to was called Dessert Lab and was chosen because it had the best cups. Go figure. I neglected to get a pictures of these cups, but they were pretty cute. Dessert Lab also had a row of those claw machines – you know where you put in money and you get a chance to use the claw to win a prize. The 12 year old managed to win a prize, and then it caused a bit of a meltdown because the 7 year old got jealous and mad that he couldn’t figure it out and used his tokens to no avail. I had to explain to all the kids that the game is rigged and the 12 year old is not more skilled at the claw game than the 7 year old. (Okay in my googling it appears that some jurisdictions consider claw machines a form of gambling… I find that so interesting!) Everyone got some form of boba, which made it a very lovely, albeit late evening by the time everyone got their drinks and were sitting down. Nonetheless it was great to catch up and see old friends again. Before we parted ways for the evening, they invited us over to hang out later in the week.

Tuesday was our day to go to Muir Woods and see the giant Redwood trees. This was the only activity for which I got reservations advance because my brother had warned me that the Muir Woods parking lot often fills up early in the day, so best to get parking reservations in advance. (We didn’t actually pay for the park because we had a National Parks Pass – yay for using that!). The drive from Berkeley is about an hour, and we stopped at a grocery store and got sandwiches and snacks to eat for lunch while in Muir Woods.

At the park, just by the visitor’s station there was a park ranger with a little display about Redwoods. We learned some cool things about redwood trees – like Muir woods has Coastal Redwoods (vs. Sequoias at Yosemite. I didn’t realize that Sequoias are redwoods), redwood trees are conifers (which I don’t think I had realized, but they are so tall, it’s hard to tell), they grow through both seedlings and through sprouting from their base, and though there aren’t that many left, they are not protected and the ranger often sees truckloads of cut down redwood trees on the highway and it makes her sad. We then took off down the trail. The hike through the park is initially quite easy- there is a boardwalk through the forest that takes one on a two mile loop. The trees were much skinnier than I had expected, yet they were so so so so tall. An improbable feat of nature and physics.

The trail ran alongside a river and there were lots of placards to read along the way. I love a good placard. The placard at this group of trees explained how the trees grow by sprouting from the base of the original tree and can even keep growing if the original tree is damaged. It’s a little hard to make out, but you can see the stump of the original tree within the circle of growing trees:

One of my favorite places was Cathedral Grove where there are signs asking people to be quiet so visitors can savor all the sounds of the forest. It was magical – the tall tall trees reaching up up up and the sounds of the stream and the birds.

I thought this was funny – the 12 year old got a camera for Christmas and she brought it on this trip and took lots of pictures:

And then for scale – you can see how tall the tree are compared to the people on the bridge:

There are also trails that branch off the loop to Ben Johnson Trail. We took Ben Johnson Trail, hoping that it would connect to Dipsea Trail which would have a good view of the San Francisco Bay. Ben Johnson Trail was a little steeper and more challenging since the path was skinnier and there were a couple times we crossed over the river via a footbridge. Before we got to the spur to the Dipsea Trail however, I saw online that that the bridge at the end of the trail that would take us back to the parking lot was closed for salmon spawning, and there was an additional mile detour to take. Normally an mile is not a big deal, but sometimes when hiking it can take up to 40 minutes to walk a mile with the kids and since we had to be back to Berkeley by 5:00pm, we didn’t really have time for an additional mile detour. So we found a spot on the side of the trail to sit and eat our lunch and then headed back to my brother’s place. We had at one point thought about finding a park nearby, but the one park we found was near a school and when we drove there, it was dismissal time and there was no where to park. So we just skipped it and went home. For dinner, my sister in law made a really tasty frittata with eggs from her chickens! Then we had another chill evening at home.

Wednesday we stayed in Berkeley since my niece gets out of school early on Wednesdays. To pass the morning, we decided to go to the Berkeley Botanical Gardens. Because we had a membership at a museum with reciprocal privileges, we got to go to the Botanical Gardens for free.

(We have a membership at the Walker Museum in Minneapolis. We don’t live in Minneapolis, but the Husband was there last September to visit the Minnesota State Fair and visited the Walker while there. Turns out, a membership there would cover the cost of going to the museum with his friends, and becauase the Walker is part of NARM (North American Reciprocal Museum Association), it gives us admissions at a bunch of other museums and botanical gardens around the country. Some of the museums are even here in DC! It makes it worth keeping our Walker subscription in the future even though we don’t plan to be back any time soon.)

Anyhow, at the Botanical Gardens, my favorite things were the South African Garden which was a riot of colour, being in full bloom, the Japanese Pond, and the Succulent green houses. I thought the Arid House was cool because there was a cool room and a hot room and you could really tell how cool weather cacti were different form warm weather cacti.

There were newts in the Japanese pond, in various stages and sizes of metamorphosis, seimming through the water with their paddle like tails. The kids liked looking for newts in the murky water and jumping from rock to rock. And then, of course, the four year old missed a rick and ended up shin deep in the pond. I might have let out a panicked squawk/ shriek. At first we thought that we should just go home at that point, but then decided that, okay maybe having to walk around in wet shoes was sufficient punishment.

We played out Rainbow Game at the Bontanical Gardens too, the blooming Sough African garden making the game almost too easy – despite the grey and almost drizzly weather, there were so many colours to see around us. And I found something indigo!!! And even a passable blue.

After the Botanical Gardens, we decided to check of another of our “Must Do” items on our list and went to lunch at In-N-Out. For those who don’t know, In-N-Out is an iconic burger chain in California. Their menu is pretty much just burger, fries, soft drinks, milk shakes. There might also be a hot dog option. (My brother who is a vegetarian goes there too, and he basically gets the bun, with the special sauce, cheese, lettuce, grilled onions and tomatoes… lest you think there isn’t something for everyone. But this isn’t on the menu – there is a secret In-N-Out menu. Well, not so secret because you can just google it.)

There is no In=N-Out in Berkeley, so we drove about twenty minutes away to Alameda. When we pulled up, we saw that the drive through line was unbelievably long. It snaked out of the parking lot – there were actually In-N-Out workers walking down the drive through line taking orders. At first I was nervous that it was going to be a while, but inside, there was actually no line at all and we got our food pretty quickly. It was delicious.

After lunch we headed back to Berkeley where we relaxed at my brother’s house for an hour before heading over to our pre-school friend’s place. Since the kids got out of school early, we had been invited over to hang out for the afternoon. We brought our niece with us and it was a pretty chill afternoon. The little kids and I built Duplo train tracks around the dining room and the older kids played with my friend’s VR set. I thought it was pretty hilarious watching them swipe at air with that headset on.

Around six o’clock we headed out to get on the BART to meet my brother for dinner at a dumpling restaurant, New Dumpling. My brother is a huge foodie and this unassuming tiny restaurant has a Michelin star, and its Bib Gourmand designation, given to restaurants that have excellent food at a lower price point. In addition to dumplings, they had scallion pancakes, beef noodle soup, and a variety of salads/ side dishes. It was all really tasty; I really liked their shredded potato salad – kind of like spicy salt and vinegar chips in a salad form – and the beef noodle soup. The dumpling were tasty, though I still like our hometown favorite dumpling place better.

This is the only picture I took of dumpling dinner, I guess I was too busy eating the VERY tasty food.

Bellies full of dumplings, we headed back to my brother’s place – some folks with their car, and some on BART. It was hard to believe we were over halfway through our trip! But we still had some good adventures to come.

Side note – while hanging out at my brother’s house, I was looking at old issues of the New Yorker, and came across this cartoon, which I thought was hilarious – I laughed so so so hard. I’m going to leave it right here for you – does it make you laugh?