A Week in California

This is a long post...

Jon presented his research at the Experimental Biology conference in San Diego last week. The conference lasted 4 days & his boss said that I could come along. How exciting! We'd never been to California & it was on the list of places we wanted to visit. I started planning the trip, trying to make the most of our time together. Jon was able to reschedule his experiments in the lab & we decided to make the trip a little longer by spending some time in San Francisco as well. My parents were more than willing to watch Hultz so we could enjoy an early anniversary trip.

We got to San Diego late on Saturday & stayed in the fancy Omni Hotel (because the lab was paying…). It was right in the Gaslamp district, by the Padres stadium, and had a view of the bay.
Day 1-Sunday: San Diego
Jon had lots of seminars to attend on Sunday. While he was gone I enjoyed the peace & quiet by reading by the pool all day & taking a nap. I took advantage of being without a toddler and had a great leisurely day. We also watched the Solemn Assembly from Saturday General Conference during our dinner in the hotel.

Convention Center, where the Conference was held:

Day 2-Monday: San Diego
Jon presented his research & poster at the Conference. I had most of the day to myself. I took a cab over to Balboa Park for the day. It’s a beautiful area filled with gardens & museums- both of my favorites! I saw many things, but my favorite garden was the Olive Tree and my favorite museum was Natural History (which isn’t usually) but there was an incredible exhibit about Pompeii. That night there was a street party for everyone involved in the EB Conference. We skipped some of it to enjoy a very delicious dinner of lamb & steak.

Entrance to Balboa Park:
Large Olive Tree:

Museum of Natural History:
That evening we got a phone call saying that Jon’s Grandma Hubbard passed away right after the Sunday morning session of General Conference. Jon had promised his grandmother at his grandfather’s funeral that he would play the violin at hers. He spent some time on the phone with airlines trying to figure out how we could get from San Francisco up to Idaho for the funeral so he could keep his promise.

Day 3-Tuesday: San Diego
Jon did a few more seminars that morning. Afterwards we both went back to Balboa Park and did the Art Museum & the History of Man Museum, both of which were excellent. We went back to the area of town where our hotel was & walked along the beach. We flew from San Diego to San Francisco that evening. Jon’s best friend Leremy lives there while attending Stanford. He met us at the airport & took us to get some extra yummy pizza & dark chocolate gelato and we chatted the night away.

Right behind the Hotel was the park along the beach: Day 4-Wednesday: San Francisco

We had early tickets to ride out to Alcatraz. We weren't counting on there being a ton of protesters for the Olympics that caused all of the streets to close down and for police to be everywhere. That made our trains be behind schedule and eventually we were all told it would be quicker to just walk to wherever we were headed. We just flagged a cab and he got us to the pier just in time. Our tour included an audio tour and we learned a lot about the island.

After getting back to SF we did a little walking around and decided to take another ferry over to Sausalito, across the bay, for a nice lunch. It was a sweet little town with lots of personality. We had a delicious lunch and a lovely walk. We then took a long walk along the bay to Ghirardelli Square and enjoyed a yummy ice cream sundae. The trains were still closed due to the protesters and the Olympic torch being somewhere in the area (they had to detour it quite a few times so no one really knew where it was) so we climbed aboard a bus that was going along one of the trains' routes. It was tricky to stand up while we went up and down the very steep streets of that part of SF, but it was really fun to see the city. We met up with Leremy for dinner at Nova and then went to the Giants game. It was a rather dull game but we enjoyed each other's company.

Approaching Alcatraz from our ferry:

The view from Alcatraz:
Protesters (this was only a fraction of them. They lined both sides of the streets for several blocks. The Chinese on one side, the protesters on the other):


Lunch at Horizon with a cute boy in Sausalito:

A correctly titled photo:
In Sausalito, right before boarding our boat back to SF:

Yumm:

Dinner right before the Giants game:
Day 5-Thursday: San Francisco

Every vacation I ever went on as a child, my family went to the temple. This continued through my teenage years too. It made a great impression on me. Jon & I have continued this in our travels as well. We used Leremy's car and went to the Oakland temple. It was a beautiful temple and we really enjoyed doing a session. We drove up to Pleasenton to have lunch with Jon's Unlce Ted. This was the last of 28 Aunts and Uncles for me to meet in Jon's family. From there we drove downtown. We took a nice walk around, admiring the beautiful buildings. We then went to the SF Symphony. Charles Dutoit was conducting Don Quixote and it was an amazing performance.

Outside the Oakland Temple:

Driving the Bay Bridge:
On the balcony of the Symphony Center, right before it started.
Day 6-Friday: San Francisco

Luckily, Leremy is almost done with his PhD so he had a free morning to go to Muir Woods with us. It was breathtaking to see the beautiful tall redwoods. We took a long hike through and then a drive down Hwy. 1 along the coast. We had lunch in the Golden Gate Bridge Park. We went to de Young Museum and then up to the Legion of Honor to see their Dead Sea Scroll exhibit. It was fascinating! We went down the hill and had a very nice dinner at The Cliff House (our anniversary present from Mom & Dad Smith-thank you!!). It was right along the coast of the Pacific.

The tired hikers (can you tell that I've been eating out alot?)
The view of the coast from Hwy. 1:
Driving the GGB:
The Legion of Honor:

The Thinker by Rodin in the Legion of Honor:

It's all about deserts for me. This was ours at The Cliff House:

The view from our seat at dinner:

Right outside The Cliff House, the Pacific is behind us: