Back from SF

Sorry folks, this one will be image-heavy. Thing 1 and I enjoyed a beautiful Saturday in San Francisco. We stayed on the 8th floor of the Hotel Palomar, where this was our view:

We're looking over Market Street and up Stockton Street. After checking in, we had cream puffs at Beard Papa's.

Then we were off to SFMOMA, where we saw the Picasso exhibit, I tried to explain to Thing 1 why artists like to depict naked people so often, and then we hit the gift shop. I love museum gift shops.

After a brief rest at the hotel, we went shopping. One highlight was a visit to Art Fibers, one of my very, very favorite yarn stores.

We also visited San Francisco Centre, which I think may now be called Westfield Mall. Whatever it's called, it has a wonderful food court (including a Slanted Door outlet) and a Japanese stationery store. I have a confession to make: I adore stationery and office supply stores. I can spend a long, happy time in Staples. So you can only imagine I am in a shop that stocks all those incredibly cute and clever Japanese papers and pens and erasers and so on.

Knatolee, there's a fantastic store there called Lupicia that has over 400 kinds of tea!

Eventually, we collapsed back in our room, although we did later make a trip to the Container Store, which was conveniently located next door.

I've never ridden in one of these things--don't they look like fun?

Today, Sunday, was less fun. Thing 1 broke the magnifying mirror in the hotel bathroom and then had a tantrum (I thought she'd outgrown those!) so we just headed eastward without doing anything fun. But as soon as we got off the Bay Bridge, our eastward progress was stopped by this:

I'm just thankful I don't commute to SF, because that will be a mess for a very long time. Today, we had to take an unplanned detour through Berkeley in order to get home, adding an extra hour to our trip. Here's what really annoys me, though. The highway collapsed 7 hours before we got there, and there wasn't a single sign on the very long Bay Bridge to warn us that the highway was closed. Nobody had any idea until they got to the I-80/I-580 split, abruptly discovered 580 closed, and slammed on their brakes in confusion. Good job, Caltrans.