A day at Stanford with an exciting evening

Dan and I decided to take the kids to see Stanford University in nearby Palo Alto, CA.  We enjoy seeing college campuses and like to start brainwashing our children about colleges at an early age.  It required two train rides for a total travel time of a little over an hour, one way.  Luckily, we discovered a free Stanford shuttle that runs from the train station to campus. Our first stop was Hoover Tower, named for President Herbert Hoover, who was a member of the first graduating class of Stanford.

Of course, we took the elevator ride to the top. The kids were afraid we would have to walk to the top, which is a fear they have had since the experience of the Arc de Triumph...The view was incredible!  This is a view of the Quad.

We also had to take a picture of the kids at the top for good measure.

We grabbed lunch at the Student Union.  It has a very impressive food court for a college.  Most of the places were closed because it was after 2:00 PM, but during peak hours their offerings include, Italian, sushi, a French boulangerie, Chinese, Subway, froyo, and Starbucks.  That is way more than the Taco Bell and KFC in the Wake Forest food court back in the day.  We headed to the bookstore and purchased t-shirts for everyone, which is a tradition of ours upon visiting a college campus.   Then, we made our way to the Quad, which is centered around the Memorial Church.  It is an exquisite non-denominational church that was built by Jane Stanford in memory of her husband, Leland Stanford, the founder of the University. The artwork that you see is all done in mosaics, which is incredible.  The detail is extraordinary.  

My pictures of the inside didn't turn out very well, due to the lighting, so I will post one picture that doesn't even begin to capture the beauty and majesty of the place.  Google Stanford Memorial Church, if you want to see better pics of the inside.  Again, the designs are all mosaic tiles.  

Mrs. Stanford collected many inspirational sayings over the years and inscribed them on the walls of the church.  I think this is one of my favorites:  "A noble ambition is among the most helpful influences of a student life, and the higher this ambition  is, the better.  No man can work well unless he can speak as the Great Master did of the joy set before Him.  And this leads to the greatest of all safeguards, and the most encouraging of all stimulating influences to a noble life, - that is, the power of personal religion.  We need something outside of and beyond ourselves."

After visiting the church, we walked around the Quad area, admiring the architecture.  The style of the campus is mainly Mission Revival, I think.  It is so different from what we see on the East Coast, but it is very beautiful.  Here is a picture of Dan and the kids in one of the colonnades (which may not be the proper architectural term).

We also discovered a totem pole as we were wandering around campus.  The kids liked the explanation about Boo Quilla.

Now, for the really exciting part of the evening.  We discovered that Stanford is hosting the Bank of the West Classic, a USTA women's tennis tournament.  The 7:00 match last night was Serena Williams vs. Ana Pliskova.  Yes, that Serena Williams -- the #1 ranked women's tennis player in the world.  There were still tickets available, so we couldn't pass up the chance to see Serena play in person.  

She won, of course.  At one point, the serve speed monitor showed that she served the ball at 117 miles per hour.  Wow!  We stuck around to see a bit of the doubles match before heading back to San Fran.

Unfortunately, the shuttle was no longer running to the train station, so we walked the mile through campus back to the station.  It is a great campus for walking and biking, as evidenced by the thousands of bikes we saw on our visit.  We felt like we were back in Amsterdam for a moment.  We caught both trains back to SF, which led to a late night, but very worth the experience.  

A quick trip to Asia

Dan and the kids humored me yesterday by beginning our day in the Japantown section of SF.  We took a bus to the Japan Center (we are beginning to figure out the mass transit here) and it felt like I stepped into Japan.  The street signs and store signage are written in both Japanese and English.  This is the Peace Plaza of the Japan Center.

I introduced the kids to Daiso, the Japanese version of the dollar store, where we bought entirely too many cute items at very cheap prices.  I stocked up on a few food items I hadn't seen in 20 years.  Shrimp chips, yum!  We had lunch at Mifune, a real Japanese restaurant.  I have never eaten such authentic Japanese food in the States. It was wonderful.  The kids' food even arrived in a bullet train.  

After lunch, we boarded a bus to Chinatown.  It was interesting to go to both Asian areas back-to-back so the kids could really see the differences between the two cultures. The gateway is beautiful.  There are statues of lions guarding the gate, which was interesting for Sidney and Lyndon to see.  Sidney read the book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon this summer, and Lyndon is currently reading it.  It is set in China and the lion statues guarding a city gate play a prominent role in the plot.  

After a little monkeying around...

we headed to the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie factory.  It was hard to find, as it is tucked into a tiny alleyway.  We anticipated an actual factory with lots of machines and people.  Instead, the factory was staffed by 5 people -- 2 taking orders and 3 operating one machine each. It was fascinating to watch them crank out fortune cookies so quickly with so few people in such a small space. 

After the factory, I had planned to take everyone to a Chinese temple, but discovered that it had just closed.  I am not having much luck with the church tours.  Instead, we wandered up a less touristy area and saw the food markets the residents use with many foreign ingredients to us.  We also happened upon another playground.  We let the kids play for a bit.  It was interesting that the kids never noticed that they were almost the only ones speaking English on the playground.  Jack made a friend, of course.  

We also found a pretty mural on the way home from the playground.

After our day of Asian exploration, we made a quick trip to Europe for dinner.  Le Central, the oldest French brasserie in SF, was our choice for dinner.  It felt like we had time-traveled back to last summer with very authentic food. There are several French cafes in a row and the waiter explained that the French Embassy was previously located a block or so from this section of town.  

Today, we may attempt a trip to Stanford.  We shall see...

Plan...what plan?

So, we began yesterday with a plan to visit Golden Gate park with the intention of seeing the Japanese Tea Garden and the Shakespeare Garden (Yes, I am writing this a day late, again. I will try to get my act together tonight.).  We rode the Metro (subway) to the park.  After we stepped through several groups of homeless people blatantly smoking pot in the park entrance and walked a few minutes, we discovered the Children's Playground...and FUN blew the plan to pieces.  It was the most incredible playground I have seen in the US.  It was a kids' version of the American Ninja Warriors Obstacle Course, which is Jack's favorite TV show.  While Jack and Hadley pretended to be ninja warriors, Sidney and Lyndon slid down this very steep concrete slide. Luckily, other people brought cardboard to share as a buffer for sliding.  

Then, the kids tackled the rope Eiffel Tower (as I like to call it).  They have something similar to this on their school playground, but this one was on steroids.  I am posting several pictures -- one to give you perspective of the height, several of Sid and Lyn on top (they conquered their fears after several attempts and reached the summit) and one of all 4 kids monkeying around.  

After over an hour of playground time, we decided that the kids wouldn't enjoy the extra 20 minute hike (each way) to the Tea Garden, so we will save that for another day.  We made our way out of the park and into the Haight Ashbury district.  The kids asked numerous times what the funny smell in the air was, so we explained marijuana to them.  Ah, life lessons...We took the kids into Amoeba Records, an honest-to-goodness record store (that also happens to adjoin a Medical Marijuana Clinic), so they could see real albums and we could prove to ourselves that we are really old.  

After lunch on Haight Street, we took the kids to the corner of Haight and Ashbury.  Dan explained the Summer of Love and the Be-Ins to them.  Here is a picture of our little hippies.

The next stop was the Grateful Dead house, a house in which the band actually lived on Ashbury Street.  It is a private residence, so we told the kids over and over "don't touch the gate!"  The kids listen to the Grateful Dead with us occasionally, so they understood the significance of the house.  

This was the part of the day when the plan really fell apart.  I wanted us to visit Mission Delores, which is the oldest building in SF.  It is the oldest established mission in the area.  I thought it would be a good history lesson about missions for the kids. Well, according to the map, you could walk about ten blocks to get there. It looked like you could walk through Buena Vista park and it would be a few blocks on the other side.  Did I mention that SF is hilly?  Extremely hilly?  Also, maps don't show hills.  We started up the steep hills to get to the park, which crests the top of a very steep hill.  Let's just say that I wasn't very popular at the moment.  As we reached the top (after 20 minutes of climbing), the view was spectacular.  I also discovered that Mission Delores would be closed by the time we made it down the hill.  We made the most of the hike and explored the residential areas.  There was a view of the Golden Gate bridge on one side, but my pictures didn't capture the detail.  Regardless, the views were incredible.  

We hiked down and caught the Metro back to the hotel.  The kids swam in the pool, which was their constant request all day.  You would not know that we go to the pool every day at home.  I know there is something extremely cool about an indoor hotel pool to kids, though.  I have a tentative plan for today, but I am not holding my breath...

   

A slow start to San Francisco, but a fun end to the day

Whew! What an early start to the day (yesterday) and a late finish!  We departed Lexington at 5:00 AM East Coast time (2:00 AM West Coast) and finished our day at 11:00 PM (2:00 AM in Lexington).  I think we may have avoided jet lag, though.  Our flight into SF actually landed thirty minutes early.  Unfortunately, it would be over 4 more hours until our hotel rooms were ready, thus cramping our plans to get a start on our day.  We tried to make the best of the down time (as they continued to promise the rooms would be ready "really soon" for several hours) with lunch at The Grove and a quick visit to the Yerba Buena Gardens.  In my best Cliff Clavin voice, "It is a little known fact that, uh, Yerba Buena was the original name of San Francisco." Luckily my family doesn't usually complain about my guidebook factoids.  I read that there was a cool playground in the gardens, but we never found it.  Here is a pic of the kids in the gardens.  I can foresee that the theme of this trip's pictures is probably going to be "Jack Makes Funny Faces and Poses".

After an ice cream outing (green tea ice cream was not nearly as good as I remembered it in Japan 25 years ago), we were finally able to check in and rest a bit to get rid of our grumpiness.  

As our first real SF experience, we decided to ride the cable cars to Fisherman's Wharf.  The line for the cars was long, so I took a waiting picture and a picture of Lyndon's excitement of the arrival of our cable car.

Fisherman's Wharf was interesting.  We were able to view Alcatraz, which was exciting.  Unfortunately, I did not plan well enough in advance to get tickets to actually tour Alcatraz on this trip.  Tickets sell out about a month in advance, so this is probably as close as we will get.  

We also viewed a few crazy street performers, including a duo of Michael Jackson impersonators.  They left their clothing changes on the street, unattended.  I really contemplating running away with one of their red MJ jackets like the one Dan frequently laments about his Mom throwing out.  We had dinner at Boudin Bakery, which is the famous sourdough bread manufacturer.  We ate upstairs with a bonus view of Alcatraz out of the windows.  The bread factory has baskets that run across the ceiling carrying bread from the manufacturing side to the bakery sales side.  The kids thought that was really cool.  Note the wire baskets suspended from the ceiling above Dan's head.  

Our return trip to the hotel was a little chaotic.  Apparently, the San Francisco marathon was held yesterday morning, so public transportation was more crowded than usual.  Let's just say that a crowded bus and a tired Jack don't mix very well.  We made it, though, and we all had a good night's sleep from exhaustion.  On to another day...