A week ago, my mom and I took a trip to San Francisco. I needed to go for a conference. So, we added on a few days and enjoyed the sites. We had a great time.

On our way down, we stopped in Napa. Although there wasn’t much time to enjoy Wine Country, we did LOVE our dinner at Aunt Jeanty - a quaint, wonderful restaurant.

The next day we took the Golden Gate bridge over to Sausalito and found Cavallo - a resort where Fort Baker used to be. The owners converted the Officer’s Quarters into lodging. It’s a wonderful place to relax outside the hustle and bustle, with a beautiful view in the distance. That night we took a chance on a wine tasting event at the Ferry Building. It was amazing! So much good food and wine. We loved it! Plus, I entered and won a $300 dinner at MarketBar! After that, we went to a comedy club and saw Anjelah Johnson. What a riot! If you haven’t seen her comedy act, search YouTube for Nail Shop. It’s hilarious!

Monday, we did some touristy stuff at the Wharf. Our favorite stop there was Boudin Bakery. We picked up some foodie treats and saw the bread being made. Then we drove around town and wound up at the best Chinese food restaurant ever! Did you know San Francisco has the biggest Chinatown outside of China?

Tuesday, everything we tried to do was closed. Who has heard of closing on Tuesdays?! But, we wound up at the deYoung Art Museum for a special exhibit. They commissioned floral designers to create arrangements that went with some of the paintings. It was cool. Look at the pictures. This was the night we ate the $300 MarketBar dinner. The prize was supposed to be for eight people. So, they threw in an $80 bottle of wine and spoiled the two of us rotten. We felt like queens.

Wednesday through Friday I was at the conference during the day. Mom visited the San Mateo County Museum. She learned about the founders of the bay area - folks like Amadeo Giannini (started Bank of Italy, a forerunner to Bank of America) who catered to immigrants and was the first to loan money based on character, rather than collateral.  He was interested in more than gaining personal wealth and wanted to make a contribution to helping society.  He was instrumental in initiating the true concept of credit cards.

On Thursday night, we had dinner at a great Greek restaurant where they wound up giving us a $50 bottle of wine for free because they recommended and searched for three different bottles that they didn’t have. Funny! We went to a one-woman show that night called “Everything the Traffic will Allow” chronicling Ethel Merman’s life on Broadway. It was interesting, fun and well-done. A real treat! Friday night we saw a musical, “Wicked.” We loved it! If you haven’t seen it, you should. It tells the story of the Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West.

Our final day in the city, we started the day at Dottie’s True Blue Cafe. There was a 40-minute line in a seedy neighborhood, but oh was the food worth it. We salivated as we waited and watched the lucky few ahead of us eat wonderful-looking food. They make everything from scratch there and apparently it’s always packed. Then we spent the rest of the day at the Walt Disney Family Museum. We both really like biographical historical stuff, and this museum gave lots of details about Disney, starting before he was born. It was fascinating and overwhelming. There was so much to look at and take in!

Here are some pictures. Be sure to read the descriptions on the detail views.

Sorry it took me so long to get this last day’s post done. I kept meaning to get back to it, but got caught up in getting back to real life activities.

On this final day of our trip we had brunch at a fascinating place called the O Mansion. It’s a private club, but opens to the public for Sunday brunch and certain other special events. First off, the brunch was incredibly good and so big that it was impossible to try everything. They cram lots of people into a tight space, but your table is yours for the entire day - a nice feature. Every room in the 40 room mansion is decorated with a different theme and everywhere is jammed with stuff to buy. Everything in the mansion is for sale - everything. This stop made for a nice event on our last day. We arrived when it opened at 11a and stayed close to when it closed around 2p. We ate a little, explored a little, ate a little, explored a little, for three hours. It was fun.

Then we took this final chance to loop back around to the monuments we missed early on because of the scare with Grandma and her fall. We explored the Lincoln Monument, the Vietnam Wall, and the Korean War Memorial. We enjoyed visiting all of them, but were particularly taken with the Korean War Memorial. Especially on this autumn day with beautiful leaves on the trees and the ground, this memorial was just spectacular. Each statue depicts a different very real human emotion - very moving.

Our flights home went fine, but felt incredibly long. We finally arrived at our house a little after midnight, yet both managed to make it in to work that day. Since then, we’ve been scrambling to catch up and get back to normal life, whatever that is.

Thanks to all who read this blog to learn about our trip. It was fun to share it with you.

No more car. We’re back in DC for the day. We started our morning with an absolutely wonderful breakfast experience at the Lafayette Room in the Hay Adams hotel, across from the White House. The decor is beautiful, the service is attentive, and the food was wonderful. We felt pampered.

Then we spent most of the day in the Newseum. This site was not on our original schedule, but we heard so many good things about it we decided to give it a try. Good thing we did. We both enjoyed it very much. Again, there were some wonderful video presentations at this museum, a common theme at attractions in this city. We saw movies on how news got it’s start, what makes news, sports news, Woodstock, the Holocaust, and more. There were exhibits on the FBI, Berlin Wall, sports & Pulitzer Prize winning photos, President’s dogs, 9/11, the evolution of news, and more.

We stayed in tonight to watch the Duck football game. We were sitting on the couch watching the pregame show when the game was about to start. Boom, the screen went black. We switched channels and all others seemed fine. We called for help and were told that ESPN2 always did that during a non-local game, whatever that means. I tried and tried to find it online and the closest I could get was listening to Jerry Allen. Then I found it! Did you know you can watch streaming live video of games from ESPN360? It worked and we were able to watch a great Duck football game. Go Ducks!

Today we drove the opposite direction to Gettysburg, PA. The Visitor’s Center is amazing. Honestly, there’s no need to leave the Visitor’s Center to get all of the information you could ever want about the Civil War. There are videos, interactive displays, artifacts and written information about every aspect. One highlight was a 360 degree painting that they used lighting and narration to help give perspective on how the battle took place.

We then took an audio tour in our car and drove through the sites where the fighting occurred. Somehow, I thought the space they fought in was quite small. That’s not the case. It’s fairly large, with lots of varied terrain. That make sense. I just hadn’t envisioned it that way.

It’s amazing to think about how the armies stayed organized - how the soldiers got to where they were supposed to go and did what they were supposed to do. And both sides fought with such passion - each thinking this particular battle was key to winning the war. As it turns out, they were right. The North was outnumbered, especially in the beginning. But, they held the high ground in a defensive position and it worked in their favor.

Nearly 30,000 people were killed or mortally wounded in that battle - ten times the population of the city of Gettysburg at that time. Can you imagine coming home from hiding and finding bodies everywhere? This was the only Northern city that was effected much in the Civil War. Many Southern cities were demolished, as most of the fighting happened there.

Today, we made our longest journey of the trip, to Williamsburg, VA. It’s a town recreated to be as it was in the late 1700s. This town was the capitol of Virginia back then. Many of our founding fathers were members of the House of Burgesses and some of them were governors - Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, etc. This was one of the major hot beds that evolved into the Revolutionary War.

There is so much to see. We barely scratched the surface - Governor’s Palace, Capitol, Residence, Tavern, Hospital for the Mentally Ill, Blacksmith, etc. The staff walk around in period costumes and many of them act in character.

We discovered a peanut shop featuring famous Virginia Peanuts. I didn’t know there was such a thing, but the shop owner says once you eat Virginia peanuts you can never go back. Mom and I each bought some to share with our office mates. We’ll see if that claim is true. :} Peanuts were grown to feed animals and slaves ate them, too. You wouldn’t find people from high society eating them. But, the story goes that Jefferson loved them.

The town had two working kitchens with cooks making real food that would have been made back in the day. You wouldn’t believe the spreads these high class folks would have had - two rounds of several meats, starches and vegetables, then two rounds of desserts. They’d eat leftovers for late night supper and breakfast the next day - all without refrigeration, of course.