ChaChaneen

~*~

Recently my daughters school field trip was to San Francisco to see the return exhibition of King Tut at the de Young museum located in Golden Gate Park. Often I'm unable to go but I had enough notice to put in for the day off to go on this one. 30 years ago, I vividly remember my Mom taking our family to see the original exhibit when San Francisco used to be a major tour stop of arts and treasures that travel the world. Today's exhibit is much smaller in scale than the original but to me it was just as exciting! As for the class, it was split about 50/50 for interest but that's to be expected for their age. I kept reminding the group that if they were ever going to see it again, they were going to have to go to Egypt as the treasures wouldn't be traveling the world again.

Of course, cameras were not allowed inside the museum so I loaded up my pockets with only what we needed and off we went, but we made due with my cellphone that takes great pictures if the lighting is good.

The Mask and Coffin's don't travel anymore as they were declared national treasures by the Egyptian government and are too fragile to leave the museum in Egypt but there was still a lot of wonderful things to see from his tombs. I also spent $13 dollars for the two of us to have the audio tour and it was worth the money as it was narrated by Omar Sharif... okay all the ladies sigh..... and it really added to the experience as it would tell you more information than what was printed on the place card. We share our audio sets with the group and when we did, the kids especially enjoyed the tour better!

We bought a coffee mug, a key chain, a necklace and a magnet from the gift shop to make a memory for the family! Aren't the bags cooooooool!

When the tour was over the class made began the long drive back to school but I drove my car separately so that my girl and I could spend the rest of the day in the city to enjoy some overdue Mother-Daughter time together. Right next door to the museum is the famous Japanese Tea Garden and my girl willingly obliged my begging to go and spend some time there and of course have tea!

The garden is as peaceful as a I remembered it was!

The famous Moon Bridge!

As we walked the paths we talked about the history of the garden, which is that it's actually a left over exhibit from when San Francisco hosted the worlds fair in 1915 and it was moved to it's permanent location today.

This tower looking thing below is called a Pagoda.

I remembered as a child spending .50 cents to have the famous Green Tea and Fortune Cookies in the garden...

... today it is $3.25 and it comes with a pot of tea in which you can choose from 3 types of tea and mochi cakes or salty crackers/cookies.

I let my girl pick and she chose the salty crackers/cookies and they provided regular apple juice for her to drink. It was kind of cool in the city that day and this was the perfect way to warm up!

We spent about an hour at the gardens and enjoyed every minute of it.

As we left the garden, you walk directly into the Music Concourse from the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894. Rich in history, we again talked about all the famous things that have happened there and my memory of when it was damaged in the 1989 earthquake. That reminds me, the anniversary of that is this weekend!

I suggested we make some history of our own and get up on the open stage and put on a show. In the squeal response heard around the world, we climbed the famous steps! My girl was a bit shy to do her thing a crowd of people came walking by....

... but NOT ME! I don't know these people walking passed us but that didn't stop me because my purpose was to give my girl a memory of her and I up on that HUGE stage that she will share with her kids someday! I did an improv dance routine and pretended like I knew what I was doing...

... and when I came up from my bows, I looked over and saw strangers cheering and applauding me. Yea.... I probably gave them a memory too of hysterical laughter but.. a'hem, I know it was all in good fun!

Here is my biggest fan!

After all that fun, we both agreed we were ready for an early dinner so I suggested we drive down to Pier 39 to have some of the famous clam chowder!

Still feeling the stage excitement of moments before, she boldly and LOUDLY volunteered to go up on this stage when we were walking by this gentleman doing his act at on the pier.

She spent her prize winning dollar for a ride on the carousel!

Our time at the Pier and our walk to get there from our parking spot was quite a scene. Our kids are pretty sheltered, so it was sensory overload for my girl as she saw all that San Francisco beholds... homeless individuals, pimps and prostitutes, random protesters doing their thing on a variety of topics among other visual sites, so my original plan of where we were to get our clam chowder was thwarted by the environment. So I changed the plan looking for a better dining experience and I saw a NICE and QUIET - $$$ - restaurant on the pier. We walked in and I explained to the hostess that I KNEW we weren't appropriately dressed for their fine dining establishment however could we still be seated in a corner tucked away from their Suit and Tie guests before the dinner crowd began to arrive. He smiled and said, "I have the perfect table for you ladies." Bless this man because he lead us to the BEST table in the restaurant, a table right next to the corner bay window overlooking the bay onto the yachts and seals! (Inner squeal not heard around the world!)

The bowl of clam chowder was as big as she was!

It had been AGES since I had a prawn cocktail, so that was my selection! And OH THE BREAD! San Francisco has the BEST sourdough bread!!

You can see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background!

Before we left the city to come home, we stopped at the ocean to see if we could see Alaska... ha ha

We made a memory of a wonderful day... just the two of us!!

~*~

~*~

A September Tea hosted by my Mom

I didn't have my camera this day as my Man took it with him while they were fishing... to ya know, take pictures of all the fish they were going to catch... A' hem... so I used my cellphone to take these pictures.

A beautiful table with her blue dishes...