San Francisco Sightseeing

Good morning!

How are my three Devereaux darlings?

Today I thought I would start by showing you the view from the top of our hotel. Here is the view looking towards Coit Tower and the bay. Can you see that little tower in the distance? That is Coit tower, and where I decided to go yesterday.

Here is a close up picture of the tower, and I will show you some more later.

Here is another picture of San Francisco. This is only a small part of it, so you can see that it is a pretty big city!

Yesterday I got on the bus and headed to Coit Tower. On the way there I found a pretty church, which was called the Saints Paul and Peter church.

I decided to go check out the inside of the church. It looks a lot different from our church, don't you think?

There were lots of stained glass windows. They are made of little pieces of colored glass that make a picture.

They were very pretty.

I left the church and climbed up several HUNDRED stairs to get up to Coit Tower. This is what the tower looks like up close.

Sheldon thought it would be fun to climb up to the top of the tower, but I was too tired, so we went to look inside. The walls inside the building are covered with murals. There were pictures of people doing all sorts of different things.

The murals were really fun to look at. ALL the walls had pictures on them!

The tower was fun on the inside AND it had great views on the outside. Dolphy recognized the Golden Gate bridge even though it was pretty far away.

We could also see the Bay Bridge from the tower as well as the city. It was pretty cool!

I left the tower and got back on the bus and headed to the Place of Fine Arts. It is a really beautiful building!



While I was there I took lots of pictures of the cool statues and buildings. Here is a picture of the inside of the domed building.

While I was exploring the Palace, I decided to make a little video for you guys.



When I looked on my map I could see that I was pretty close to the ocean. So I walked over to a place called Crissy field. I took off my feet and walked along the beach. I even got my feet wet.

As you can see, the Golden Gate Bridge was a little bit away from me. You can also see that there was a lot of fog around the bottom of the bridge.

I could hear the foghorns of the ships, which was pretty loud. The ships couldn't see each other in the fog, so they were blowing their horns so they didn't hit each other. I tried to make a video for you, but it was a bit hard to hear the horns because of the wind whistling past my phone. But I thought I would share it with you anyway.


Crissy field is where they launch sailboats, so I saw quite a few of them. It was cool to watch them get launched and blow away in the breeze.

It was past lunchtime, so I decided I should go back to the hotel and have lunch. Then in the afternoon I took a quick trip out to Alamo Square. It is a park where you can see some beautiful houses in the front, with the city behind.

Isn't it beautiful?

From there I headed back towards the city. I stopped off at the city hall building. It is a pretty fancy bulding!

Sheldon was excited that we got to see another building that had a top shaped like his shell. Domes are cool! It was also very pretty on the inside.

I wanted to get a picture of the whole ceiling, so I actually lay down on the floor of the city hall to get this picture! You have a silly Mommy, right?

So that's is what I did yesterday. In the evening Daddy and I went to a Bon Jovi concert, which was fun too!

I get to come home tomorrow, and I am excited to see you! I have missed you all SO much and I can't wait for you to come get me at the airport. See you soon!

Love Mommy

Chinatown

Good morning!

How are you doing? I hear that the weather there has been pretty warm. Would you believe that most of the time here I am wearing pants and in the evening I need a jacket because it gets a bit cool. I thought California would be warm, but being so close to the ocean actually makes it cooler!

Well, I am going to tell you about my day yesterday so I can get going today! Yesterday I visited Chinatown.

Here is Dolphy at the Chinatown gate. It is only a couple of blocks from our hotel room, so I walked the whole way. I also walked up and down the streets of Chinatown.

Sheldon thought that the gates of Chinatown were a nice color (I think he likes green) and their shape kind of reminded him of a shell. On each side of the gate there are some statues. They look like this:

I am pretty sure they are dragons, don't you think?

The streets of Chinatown are very colorful and have lanterns strung across them. It looks very different from the rest of San Francisco!

The shops sell all kinds of different things. Some of them even sell colorful paper lanterns and have them hung up all over the shop.

The shops of Chinatown sell all sorts of little statues, parasols, chopsticks, dolls, swords, handheld fans, postcards, keychains, hats, shoes, and silk shirts. I had a lot of fun looking around. There is also some interesting paintings on the sides of some of the buildings. I liked this one:

Dragons are very important to the Chinese people. The shops even sell little dragon puppets and statues. Here is a dragon that was on display at one shop.

Pretty cool!

Since Chinatown is close to the cable car museum, I decided to go on over there and check it out. Inside the cable car museum they have some big wheels that are moving the cables for all the cable cars in the city.

None of the cable cars have motors or engines! They are pulled along these moving cables. Pretty cool, huh?

They also had a cable car on display at the museum. Dolphy wanted to play hide and seek with me. Can you see him?

Sheldon wanted to go for a ride on the cable car again! But I had to tell him that this cable car doesn't go anywhere!

Outside the cable car museum we watched the cable cars go up and down the street. It was pretty cool. There was a cable car stop right where I am standing, so the cable cars would stop to pick up passengers.

Some people sit inside the cable car, but if it is crowded you can also hang onto the side of the car. Just like you boys like to hang onto the shopping cart at home.

After I saw the cable car museum, I was getting hungry! So I decided to walk back to the hotel. I went back to Chinatown so I could walk down the other side of the street. I saw some more fun paintings on some buildings.

I also saw some more pretty buildings. A lot of places in Chinatown also played music, which was fun to listen to.

On my way back I found a place where they make fortune cookies. The cookies are flat and then the ladies fold them into shape.

I got to taste a flat cookie, and they were pretty good. Probably because I was hungry! So I kept walking toward the hotel.

I really liked all the pretty lanterns on this building!

On my way back through Chinatown I found this fun painting that I thought you boys would like. It is a red and green dragon.

I knew I was almost through with Chinatown when I came to this church. It is only a block or so from the entrance. Dolphy thought it was a pretty cool church.

Sheldon liked the Chinese building that was on the other corner. He thought it would be fun to climb up the fire escape.

So that is what I did yesterday. In the afternoon I mostly stayed at the hotel and wrote postcards. I met Daddy down at the conference center for a minute too. Later in the day we went out for dinner at Super Duper Burger. It was pretty fun. Then when we got back to the hotel Daddy had to work for a while. I am excited for tonight because I get to spend the evening with Daddy at the closing party of the conference. We get to go to a concert and see Bon Jovi sing. It will be tons of fun!

Be good boys! I am off to see Coit Tower and a few other places today. I will show you my adventures tomorrow!

Love ya!
Mommy

Back to the Golden Gate Bridge

Hello again from San Francisco!

How are my three kiddos? I love you and hope you are having tons of fun at home.

So yesterday was the first day of Daddy's conference. That means that he was at the conference session listening to people talk about virtual computing most of the day. So while Daddy was in classes, I decided to go back to the Golden Gate bridge. I hopped on the bus and headed over there.

Luckily for me, this time it was sunny- hooray! Doesn't the orange bridge look just fantastic against the blue sky? I love it!

This time as I crossed the bridge, I decided to show you just how big the cables are on the bridge. Check this out!

Wow! See? I can't even put my fingers together around the cable because it is so big. You can see the city in the background too. Here is a better picture of San Francisco!

This time I wanted to go all the way across the bridge. Look at how tall the bridge towers are!

There were not as many ships in the harbor because it is a work day. But I did see another HUGE cargo ship that I thought I would show you. Cool, huh?

Sheldon really enjoyed walking along the Golden Gate Bridge on such a nice sunny day.

Dolphy really wanted to play in the water, but I convinced him to stay on the bridge with me! I was afraid that he wouldn't be able to find me again if he went to play in the bay.

I think the Golden Gate bride is so pretty! I love the towers and the cables.

It took me a while, but I walked all the way across the bridge! I even made it up a big hill on the other side so I could take a REALLY great picture of the bridge.

When I got up the big hill I was afraid I might not get to take my picture because there was SO much fog. Sometimes I couldn't see the bridge at all!

Good thing I had Sheldon and Dolphy to keep me company. We were patient and waited until the fog blew away so I could get a nice picture. It was REALLY windy up on the hill.

Dolphy and Sheldon liked to see how small all the cars looked driving across the bridge. We pretended that they were giant and scared all the cars and pedestrians on the bridge! Haha.

The fog completely cleared out and I got the picture that I really wanted. Isn't it gorgeous!

I really liked that you could see the city behind the bridge. It was beautiful!

I was happy  to be able to see the Golden Gate Bridge again! It was awesome!

I was tired, but I had to climb down the big hill and walk across the bridge again! I was going to call you guys on the bridge, but it is SO noisy on there! There are lots of cars crossing the bridge, which made it noisy. So I rode the bus back to the hotel and called you when I got back.

It was great to talk to you and I am glad you are having so much fun. Last night Daddy and I got to go to a small party. It actually wasn't very exciting and we didn't stay too long. But there was another one of those cartoon artists at the party, so we had him draw our picture again.

Here is Mommy and Daddy!

It was a different artist who drew us this time, and I think I like this one too! What do you think? Does it look like us?

As Ephraim requested on the phone, here is the picture of the submarine that we saw over the weekend.

You can see the Liberty ship behind it in the back, but here is a picture of it up close.

It was HUGE!

Today I am going to go to Chinatown and look around. Daddy and I went together our first evening here, but I want to go look around during the day. Sheldon and Dolphy are excited to go see the sights with me!

Love you guys!
See you soon
Mommy