Old Friends

April 27, 2008 American time
After that unremarkable night- to say the least- in Travelodge (Read: Never go back there ever.), we had to wake up at 3 freaking o' clock because we were to leave for the Yosemite in Nevada Mountain at 4am. It was actually worth it because of all the natural beauty and goodness but the bad night we had at that inn reminiscent of the one in No Country For Old Men (I can sense Anton Chigurh already) gave all of us a bad mood. Not only was that not in the itinerary, the hotel we were supposed to stay in was the best thing that ever happened in the trip, and boy couldn't we have checked in in a better night.

But before checking in in that Sheraton in San Jose, we had a trip around San Francisco. We hopped in on a cruise going underneath the famous Golden Gate Bridge and went past the infamous Alcatraz State Prison. After that, we went to the gift shop in Fisherman's Wharf then went around the entire city going through the gay street of Castro and the wide streets of the Market up to the Twin Peaks where one could get a bird's eye view of the entire overpopulated city. It's the best city we've been so far though things can get a bit too uniform regarding the architecture of the houses, but I digress.

We got to see City Hall and take pictures of the sunset in Treasure Island and went to see a part of Chinatown to eat, yet again, some Chinese food. That was the second best thing of the day, delicious Chinese food in a restaurant called China House. And like in the Joy Luck Club, many denizens of San Francisco, not only Chinatown, are pretty much Chinese.

Everyone couldn't wait to get to the Sheraton to get actual rest and the wait was also worth it. However, we had a few visitors and some unexpected guests...

The first to come were my mother's aunt, uncle, their child and her African-American fiancee. I had to listen to 3 conversations at one time, but I'm not complaining. The next 2 visitors were pretty unexpected and last-minute and they were my sister's classmate and his mom. They invited us to go to this arcade and we had no choice but to go despite my desire to sleep by then. Still, the trip to the arcade was enjoyable and I won 1000 tickets the first time in a roulette thingy. But that's not something to brag about unless it's actual money. Of course, you have to go to Vegas for that. We claimed 8 cups and a stupid toy snake with the 2,456 tickets we earned and went back.

April 28, 2008
We were to have breakfast in Chinatown, or rather, a lot of dimsum. And though I expected that we were to do that first, our unintelligible bilingual tour guide said we had to climb up a steep mountain to see this majestic garden where cars pass by. The hunger made me uninterested in this, but it was actually a pretty and unique idea to put a curving garden around a steep road. Buses were prohibited to get there which is why we had to walk our freezing limbs up to series of very steep hills.

And finally, we got to that dimsum restaurant. Yeah, the dimsum was delicious especially the beef balls. I don't remember the name of that restaurant, but their tagline is "the best dimsum in Chinatown".

After that, it was bye-bye San Francisco. Awwww...

Well, it was a damned long trip back to L.A. that's bound for today, and we're finally nearing our hotel. We had to have lunch in Burger King at 2:30pm but I didn't really care.

4:08PM
It could've been merienda time, but everyone would probably still feel those trans-fats in their stomachs and the grease in their throats. The next bathroom break would probably be the restroom inside the bus, but who would want to pee while a vehicle is moving and bouncing and "kneeling"?

Still, I'm kind of psyched to be going back to that old Lincoln Plaza Hotel in the Chinese community in Monterey Park for some reason, because I miss the Sheraton already. It was the kind of hotel where you'd feel very relaxed yet you know in the back of your mind that you saved a bundle of cash. If we were to stay in the San Francisco Sheraton instead of the San Jose Sheraton, we would've probably had more or less the same luxurious rooms for a hundred twenty five more. That's because the cost of living nowadays in San Francisco is very high with buying your own small lot costing almost 48 million pesos! Tomorrow, however, we go to the newer California Disneyland called California Adventure then we go straight to the airport after that so I'll keep you posted when I reach the Hong Kong airport.