Round the West - Day 28

[deralte]

While I slept great today, I was sleepy all day for some reason. This meant that Dad drove in the morning cause I was nodding off where I sat. This was probably a good thing since highway 5 going south through California from Redding to San Francisco during this season is really boring. The land is ugly and dust clouds rise up to cover the roads. It was also very sunny which interfered with my reading. I was not impressed. We hit San Francisco a little after lunch and headed to Pier 39. Once parked, we walked around, both of us agreeing that we didn't want seafood which sort of limited our choices. It's Navy week there so there was a navy band playing when we got there and the Blue Angels did an air show for the two hours we were there so we got to see them doing tricks above Alcatraz and swooping past the Golden Gate Bridge. I loved seeing the huge number of sea lions they have living at the pier, plus I was very amused to watch them all duck and cover when one of the planes flew too low. Lunch was crepes with Dad and I splitting a savoury and a sweet one between us. They were a lot larger than I remember them being in France, though this is America, so what do you expect, ne? Tasty though. We wandered around, window shopping mostly (I got a new, authentic Swiss army knife since the cheap knock off I've been carrying around is on its last legs. (ps. Yes, I never leave home without a pocket knife). There's some impressive fudge and candy stores there.

It was my turn to drive, and after some manoeuvring through half of San Francisco (stopping and going on a street sitting at such a steep angle is a lost art), we got to the top of the twisty part of Lombard street. I had a great time driving down it with tourists gawking at me (we were the only ones on it at that point). It reminded me an awful lot of the K-turn test in the Japanese driving test, only a lot longer and with more room. (I don't have a pic of us since we drove down it and couldn't stop to take one, but you can see what it looks like here.) After that, we drove through Chinatown, though we decided not to stop since we were both tired and footsore. Instead, we stupidly told the GPS to take us to our hotel in San Jose by the shortest distance which put us in rush hour traffic for far too long. On the plus side, I spotted a Borders and got the next set of Miles Vorkosigan books at least. Also, our hotel is right across the street with a large second hand bookstore called Recycle Book store. It's awesome. I nearly let my shake melt I was so busy browsing. I wish I'd have more time there. Anyway, I managed to pick up the next two Miles books I'd yet to see hide nor hair of, so I'm very pleased. The feel of an old, yellowed, out of print scifi book always brings me back to my childhood reading through Issac Asimov and Fredrick Pohl and other more obscure authors.

The people around here have the same accent as me. This shouldn't be so surprising since I was born just outside of San Francisco, but it's weird to hear people speaking back to me with my own accent, especially since we moved to NJ when I was two so I'm not used to hearing my accent except on television.

Tomorrow, we hit the Winchester Mystery House in the morning, then head to Yosemite.

Comments

[alchemine.livejournal.com]

There's some impressive fudge and candy stores there.

I had the most delicious caramel apple in the world there. I don't know if it was so good because I was pregnant at the time, or because it just was, but I still remember it fondly more than 10 years later. *drool*

Also, I'm amazed that you have any recognizable accent at all after all the different places you've lived!

[deralte.livejournal.com]

I watched them make some of those today at the Fudge shop. They had crazy candy apples like caramel oreo cookie apples and chocolate mint ones. I can imagine they're delicious though we divided up a chocolate marshmellow creature called Road Kill from that place and ate it instead.

I seem to be very stubborn in regards to my accent. Namely, I pick up other peoples when I'm with them (you should hear me around Irish people) and four years in Edinburgh did wipe out my American accent for a time, but it was back as soon as I'd talked to some Americans again. By rights, I should have a New Jersey accent (well, the accent most New Jersyians have, not the one people make fun of), but for some reason it's never stuck and my friends thought it was hilarious to tease me about it growing up (like the fact that I pronounce both 't's in buttons). I do have some hangovers from other places I've lived but they're more in word usage than pronunciation. Go figure, ne?