Alcatraz Schmalcatraz. I’m Not The Only One Who Keeps Accidentally Calling It “Azkaban”…. R-r-right?

Our fourth day in San Francisco was cold. And windy. And foggy. And, apparently, so is my memory, because I have absolutely no recollection whatsoever of where Scope and I had breakfast that morning. (????)

We bundled up in layers (no, we’re not sissies; there were people out in scarves and gloves, for chocolate’s sake!) and made our way through the fog to Pier 39….


….where we bought tickets for a boat tour around the bay.

While we waited for our tour to begin, we amused ourselves by frisking the statues….


….and getting our Tacky Tourist on by having our picture taken on a green screen….


….which is actually one of my favorite photos of the whole trip, fake-iness and all, because we, frankly, don’t have many pictures of the two of us together.

*sniff*

Once aboard our boat, we set off out into the bay, passing dozens of barking sea lions….


….including this cutie, who gave us a wink!….


(Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.)

I, of course, was armed with my camera and shot—ohhhhhhh—roughly 200 pictures on the boat that day….


No exaggeration. (It’s sad, isn’t it?) (I know.)

We passed Ghirardelli Square….


….and headed towards the Golden Gate Bridge, all cloaked mysteriously in a curtain of fog….


A seagull kept pace with us, right overhead for awhile….


….(ACK!!) but eventually he got bored with us and flew off to terrorize someone else. Thank God. I hate birds.

*shudder*

We cruised under the Golden Gate Bridge….










….and then we set off for Azkaban Alcatraz, which I have a hard time remembering is actually called Alcatraz and not Azkaban (true story), and which has caused me much ridicule in many a conversation.

*pout*

(JK Rowling, I am hereby suing you. My lawyer will be contacting you soon. So there)….












We didn’t get to actually go inside Azkaban Alcatraz or anything. We’ll have to save that adventure for a future trip. But it was still absolutely incredible taking the boat tour all the way around the island.

Wow.

After Azkaban Alcatraz, I had to sit down and stop taking pictures for awhile because I started feeling worryingly seasick. Weird. I’ve never been seasick in my life.

Never.

I blame the Dementors. Clearly.

I was most relieved as we headed back to the pier. I definitely needed to be anywhere but on a swaying boat on the sloshing water. Like right away!!

The sea lions welcomed us back. And so did a couple of pelicans….


After lugging my queasy self off that boat, Scope and I stopped in Biscoff Coffee Corner for some hot chocolate (which came with free cookies!! WOOT!!)….


I don’t know if it was the hot chocolate or the cookies (maybe both) but after our stop at Biscoff’s, I was feeling much, much better.

We looked around Pier 39 for awhile and bought a couple of souvenirs and I made friends with this fella….


….while Scope found someone who made him feel runty for once….


….and then there was an impromptu meeting of the redheads….



We saw the famous Fisherman’s Wharf sign, of course….


….and then we hopped a bus to Golden Gate Park, where we snagged one more quick look at the bridge….


….then took a walk through the beautiful park to get to the California Academy of Sciences Museum, where we had our picture taken on a green screen yet again….


Ha! You can still see the green screen through my hair. I look like I’m molding! Or like I’m Beetlejuice! But I don’t care. I plunked down the $30 for the picture anyway because it is a picture of the two of us, and so I love it, darn it!

We had lunch inside the museum, then we checked out their Living Roof….


….which soooooooo reminded me of the Teletubbies!

*gag*

We also checked out the Extreme Mammals exhibit, which was so extreme (almost-unending standing, walking and reading) that we were both thrashed by the end of it and decided to bail.

*yawn*

We went back to our hotel and had a much-needed nap. Then we hit Cheesecake Factory for dinner. Mm-mm-mmmmm....

© Coracabana

Dude, Where’s My Tour Bus?

The morning of our third day in San Francisco, I awoke feeling pretty darn gross and unhoneymoony. I felt lethargic and I was achy in—umm—a certain place one doesn’t particularly wish to feel achy and gross on one’s honeymoon (aka chocolatemoon) (and if you don’t know what the hell I mean by chocolatemoon, then go check out yesterday’s post, slacker!)

Skipping over all the rest of the icky TMI, let’s just cut to the chase and say that I had *dramatic pause* a bladder infection.

Well, color me sexy.

I wasn’t sure what to do about it. Should I dropkick all our day’s plans to the curb to go wait in a walk-in clinic or the ER alllllllllllll daaaaayyyyyy lonnnngggggggg so I could pee in a cup and beg for an antibiotic? Or should I just live on cranberry juice and Tylenol for a few days, suck it up, and hope for the best?

Tough call.

Of course, when I told Scope about my predicament, he immediately went all Superman on me and insisted we would find a doctor ASAP and that it would somehow magically NOT ruin our day’s plans.

*crickets*

Pfffffffft! Well, okaaaaaayyyyyyy, hubba-hubba-hubby, if you say so…. and can I have a pet unicorn which farts rainbows too????

*hand on hip, looking skeptical*

So, after breakfast, Scope led me to Walgreens where he said they sometimes have nurses there, sitting around, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for sickos to waltz on in in need of medical care. Cool. I did not know that. The Walgreens by our hotel didn’t have a nurse on staff, but the pharmacist gave us the address of Traveler Medical Group, which was just a couple of blocks away.

Scope and I raced over to the address we’d been given and found ourselves in a small clinic which had photos of dozens of celebrities shaking the doctor’s hand framed all over the walls.

Dang.

Dr. Savage sure gets around! I kept staring at a photo of the doctor with Will Smith. For some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. “I have the same doctor as Will Smith,” I kept thinking to myself.

“I HAVE THE SAME DOCTOR AS WILL SMITH!!!!”

I put my name down as a walk-in, and it only took about 30 minutes for me to be seen by the doctor, which stunned the heck out of me because I can’t even get service like that at my family doctor when I have an appointment in the book!

Dr. Savage was a funny, quirky fella, I must say. The first question he fired at me was “how long was your flight?,” followed by, “was your wedding dress tight?” when I mentioned I was on my honeymoon. He told me he sees honeymooning brides with bladder infections all the stinkin’ time because we brides tend to not drink enough water on our wedding day (because tight dresses are difficult to go to the bathroom in), so we get dehydrated, then we make it worse by not drinking enough water when we fly off on our honeymoons, and *POOF* we end up with bladder infections. He said it’s so common that he didn’t even need me to pee in a cup or anything. Nope. No test. He even had the pain meds and antibiotic I needed right there in the office, so I didn’t even have to go to a pharmacy.

Wow.

The whole thing took about an hour. Ish. I started taking my meds right away and was feeling totally fine just a few short hours later. Score! And because the doctor got me in so quickly, none of Scope’s and my plans were ruined.

Hmm.

Go figure.

My hubba-hubba-hubby was right!

:-)

But anyway…

Scope and I had purchased tickets to take a tour bus to San Jose to visit the Winchester Mystery House. We still had some time before our bus was scheduled to pick us up, so we walked around a little bit and took a look at a building Scope’s company has an office in….





Then we took a cable car ride. (Yeah, it says ‘no passengers’ but they were totally letting passengers on)….

We ogled this Fella *snicker*….

Then we boarded a bus and set off for the Super Sightseeing Tours ticket office where we joined about 9 or 10 other people on a tour bus which would take us to the Winchester Mystery House.

It was a long bus ride to San Jose, but the scenery was gorgeous. Eventually we made it to the mansion and our bus driver gave everyone in our small group a ticket and instructed us to meet him at the bus stop at 5:05pm.

Fine.

No problem.

We can do that.

(Ahem)

We weren’t allowed to take any pictures inside the mansion because, as our Miley Cyrus look-a-like tour guide so very wisely put it, “if there were pictures, there wouldn’t be a mystery and stuff.”

Amen, sistah.

So, since I have no pictures of the inside of the mansion to show you, I’ll just tell you that whatever you’ve heard about the mansion is probably true. It’s like crazy and money collided with a big ol’ KABOOM! There’s a staircase that goes all the way up to the ceiling, a room with three exits but only one entrance, a door on the second floor that opens to a sheer drop to the ground below, an obvious obsession with the number 13, and just a whole lot of what the heck was Mrs. Winchester thinking?!

Our tour guide said Sarah Winchester was afraid the spirits of those who had been killed by Winchester firearms were haunting her and she was convinced that if she kept building onto her house 24/7 and never ever completed construction, the spirits would be kept at bay.

Okidoki then.

The tour was really quite awesome! Once it was over, we had a little time to walk around the outside of the mansion, taking pictures before heading back to our bus.

Here we are outside the mansion….

This is the front of the house….

A lot of the windows looked like spider webs….

There’s Scope taking a picture of the door which opens up to a sheer drop to the ground below, “The Door To Nowhere”….

“The Door To Nowhere”….


Mmm. Interesting. No matter which way I turned, when I tried to get a picture of the fountain and the front doors, I kept getting a green orb in the picture. Funny, huh? But, better yet, at the same spot, Scope kept getting a purple orb in his pictures! He’s posting it today, and you can check it out HERE. SpooOOooOOky, no?….


We passed Scope’s camera off to two girls from our tour bus and they took this picture of us….


….then Scope and I headed off to the bathrooms, and I quickly bought four postcards in the gift shop, and at 5:06pm (only a mere 60 itty bitty seconds late) we rounded the corner to our bus stop. And our jaws hit the sidewalk.

Our bus was gone.

Gone!

We’d been left behind. Stranded.

We panicked for half a second, but then Scope whipped out his blackberry and by 5:09 he had placed a call to the tour bus company who had called the driver and ordered him to drive back and get us. And so we waited for our bus….

It took that dude about 15 minutes to get back to the mansion for us! And guess who didn’t get a tip when we got back to San Francisco?

Once back near our hotel, we went to Uncle Vito’s for dinner….

While we were waiting for our pizza, I took my camera outside onto the crowded sidewalk to try to get a sneaky picture in the front window of the restaurant at a couple of—uhhh—snazzy women who were eating there. Just as I started to get the ladies in focus and was ready to snap a picture that would have been bloggy gold, some grody, dirty, matted-haired bum who was passing by stopped right in front of the women in the window, totally blocking my shot and stared at me.

”How does that thing work?” he asked me.

”It’s a camera,” I replied, acidly.

”I know it’s a camera,” he said, “How does it work?”

*annoyed sigh*

Y’know, I like people. No, really. I do. But not when they’re asking me stupid questions. And especially not when they are guys asking me stupid questions when they think I’m alone, because I know where that road leads, okay? One minute a guy will ask me while I’m pumping gas at the gas station, “hey, whatcha doin’ there?” and then next he’ll be asking for my dang phone number!

(Does that really work on some girls? Really?)

I felt a poorly-aimed pick-up line a-comin’ my way, and I was not amused. “MOVE ON!” I snapped. Then he called me an @$$hole and I went glowering back into the pizza parlor, all full of venom.

Gah!

The one time I set foot on a San Francisco street without Scope, and a creep crawled out from under his rock just to talk to me! The one time! I was so mad! And, to add insult to injury, I didn’t even get the picture I wanted! But Scope did. And, fortunately, he shares with me. :-) So, here you go….


And on that note, I’m done.

(Whew, this was a long post, huh? Sorry about that! I hereby vow to be less yappy tomorrow.)

© Coracabana

Honeymoon? Pfffft! After Ghirardelli Square, It Shall Henceforth Be Known As Our Chocolatemoon. So Says I.

The second day of our honeymoon chocolatemoon in San Francisco was insanely busy. Scope and I were all over the city, here and there and there and here, devouring as many of the sights (and Ghirardelli chocolates) as we could.

*burp*

‘Scuse me.

At the end of the day I had a billion pictures on my cameras (yes, plural) documenting almost every move we made. ‘Cuz I’m Cora. And that’s what I do.

Now, obviously, I can’t show you ALL my pictures, but I can show you some of my favorites. Ready?…. ‘Kay:

We started off walking through Union Square, brandishing Scope’s ever-trusty map….


We posed with more heart-shaped sculptures….


….and stumbled upon some splendiferous Tim Burton-esque sculptures by Ugo Rondinone titled “Moonrise” (which celebrate the faces of the moon) on Mission Street….




This one is my favorite!….


After ogling the Moonrise sculptures for awhile, we made our way to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where we saw gems like this stunner, which made me realize I, too, could be an artist one day….


It’s like The Emperor’s New Clothes, but with paint, isn’t it? Seriously. It’s a white canvas. Nothing on it. Totally blank. And that dude was absorbing it like a freaking sponge!!!!

Wow.

Just wow.

Then again, I much preferred the blank canvas to this atrocity….


Yep. It’s Michael. And Bubbles. And up close it was really quite creepy….


*shudder*

*cringe*

*backing away*

I think we only took in one floor of SFMOMA before we’d had enough and bailed. After Mikey there, who could dare blame us, right?!

We took a street car to The Cannery, where we had lunch at Las Margaritas….




The food was superb, but the women’s bathroom left something to be desired. Like toilet paper. And it was urgent, people!!

*undignified potty dance*

So, with Scope standing guard outside the door, I used the men’s room. And I have never peed as fast in my life. In fact, I may have broken the Guinness World Record for pee speed, but I can’t be certain because I was too busy peeing as fast as I could to time it properly.

After peeing and fleeing the men’s room, trying not to look guilty, Scope and I walked to Ghirardelli Square….


….where I drooled all over the chocolate displays….


….and, in addition to all the many, many deliciously free chocolates (YAY!!!!) the shop keepers kept handing us every time we set food in a store there, I had the best brownie sundae I’ve ever tasted….


And. I. Was. Happy….


Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Feeling a little guilty about our gluttonous adventures in Ghirardelli Square (and in a valiant quest to make sure our pants would still fit us the next day! *fingers crossed*) Scope and I then hiked up Hyde Street, which was such a STEEEEEEEEP hill, it was almost vertical. But I loved it. It’s unnatural and satanic, I know, I know, but I like walking up hills for some odd reason. It’s walking downhill that kills me.

Once we were done scaling Mt. Hyde Street, we found ourselves standing atop the famous Lombard Street, which is “The Crookedest Street in the World,” according to—well—everyone. I stood up on a big cement block to try to get a good picture of the street winding down the hill….


We walked down Lombard Street, faster than the cars were driving it, and as I stood at the bottom of it taking pictures, my legs were shaking so hard that my knees were actually knocking together! I told you that walking downhill kills me….


Once my legs felt like legs again, we walked to Washington Square Park to get a look at Saints Peter and Paul Church….


….and after that, we took a bus up to Coit Tower. Or, almost up to Coit Tower, I should say. We made the slight booboo of getting off the bus a few stops prematurely, which meant we had to hike the rest of the way up the hill to the tower….


We didn’t bother going up in the tower. The line was long and we’d had enough climbing for one day anyway. So, instead, we hung around outside taking pictures with the brand spanking new sparkly glorious telephoto lens Scope got me for my birthday (SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!!)….




Then Scope and I waited at the bus stop for the bus to take us back down the hill….


….and while we waited, we happily entertained ourselves by quietly mocking various dudes who looks like ladies.

*snarky snicker*

Once down the hill, we walked our way through Chinatown….




….and frolicked with brass monkeys (those funky monkeys)….




And then we crashed in our hotel room, utterly exhausted. Scope took a nap, while I looked through the plethora of pictures I’d taken, and then had a phone call with my daughter who had been sentenced by court order to two weeks hard emotional labor in the company of someone she didn't want to be with and was NOT happy about it.

At.

All.

:-(

After calming my hysterically upset child down (and wrestling down my gargantuan guilt at living it up on vacation while my daughter was living in misery. *sniffle*), Scope and I walked over to Les Joulins Jazz Bistro for dinner….


I’m not sure what I had for dinner there. Possibly the kebabs. (????) I was so tired by this point that I have no idea what I even ate. I was in zombie mode. All I know for sure is that after dinner we were going to take a nighttime stroll around the block to get some good night shots with my camera, but it was sooooooooo cold and windy that my teeth were chattering.

BrrRRrrRRrr.

So, instead we went back to the hotel to get some sleep. Only, sleep was evading me that night. I just wasn’t feeling quite right.

In fact, I was feeling quite…. wrong.

Uh-oh.

[….to be continued….]

© Coracabana