California Vacation Part 4

The last day in San Francisco, we walked to the "worlds most crooked street".

Even in San Francisco, it is great to be a Florida Gator. Here is some sour dough bread shaped like a Gator. Everywhere I went, it seemed like somebody was saying Go Gators to me or Chrissy (since we usually were wearing something with the Florida logo on it). It always makes me smile.
We took public transportation pretty much everywhere we went. I had my handy-dandy map and my itinerary with each location we wanted to visit listed and mapped out. I even had a list of restaurants we wanted to try. We got through about 4 of the restaurants, and all of the site seeing places. I almost had as much fun planning the trip as I did going there. We experienced some good food in San Francisco. Thanks to a recommendation by my Uncle Stann, we ate at a really nice British pub called Lill's Liverpool. I think the best food we had, not to mention the worst for us, was Ghiradelli's ice cream and chocolates. I literally gained 9 pounds from the day I left our house until the day we got back. For the finale, we went to AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants. You know we couldn't make a trip without at least one stop at a ballpark. Some general notes from the park: 1. Ryan Klesko, the Giants' 1st baseman used to play for the Braves. He was my favorite player while he was there. He's a big, powerful, home run hitter who also strikes out a lot. When a player for the home team gets up to bat, they always play a song that player picked out. Klesko's song was "Long Haired Country Boy" by the Charlie Daniels Band. That made me laugh since he's from California and he doesn't have long hair.

2. There were a few former Sox players and Braves players on each team. Rafael Furcal and Klesko from the Braves 2004 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox players Derek Lowe and Dave Roberts. 3. The stadium is right on the bay. On the other side of the right field stands is McCovey Cove. In around the 5th inning, the fog started rolling in from behind home plate out towards the bay. It looked pretty cool.
4. San Fran was playing their biggest rivals, the Dodgers. The chant they used most was BEAT L A!! BEAT L A!! Not bad, but not as good as Yankees suck!! 5. Our seats were on the very top row of the stadium. Along with the fog, the wind came in as well. Shorts were definitely a mistake. We ended up moving around trying to find a place to sit where the wind wasn't quite as bad. The weird thing about San Francisco fans is half of them don't show up until the 4th or 5th inning. We had to move probably 5 times while we were there.

6. The few weeks before the trip, I was watching Barry's home run totals getting closer and closer to the record. Of course with 4 to go, he decided not to hit anymore. Though I'm definitely not a Bonds fan, I did think it would be exciting to see a record like that broken. Since he wasn't going to break the record when I was there, I started to hope I'd see the pitch where Barry got plunked in the knee with his career ending injury. His line on the night: 2 walks, grounded into 2 double plays, and allowed 5 or 6 outs to drop in front of him for singles. As bad as I hate to admit it, it was really exciting every time he got up. I was happy to see him fail though.
Overall, I'd give San Francisco about an 8 (out of 10) and Monterey about a 3. If you're ever over on the west coast, San Francisco is a great place to spend some time.