things to do in san francisco

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.