Revisiting Baghdad by the Bay

Last weekend, Terri and I went to San Francisco for three nights, flying in on Friday and leaving Monday. I've been there many times, beginning in 1967, and Terri's been there, too, but it's been a long time for each of us and we've never been together.

We stayed at the Omni downtown, in the financial district. We did some of the usual touristy stuff: a walking tour of historical sites in downtown San Francisco, shopping in the market in the newly restored Ferry Building, strolling along the Embarcadero, gawking along Grant Avenue into Chinatown, Union Square, and lots of trudging up and down hills. In Portsmouth Square, I saw an interesting approach to meditation by a Falun Gong follower.



The highlights of this trip, however, were get-togethers with old friends.

On Saturday, we met up with Valerie, whom we both worked with at the Comptroller's office. She left in 1997 and moved around a lot afterwards, to Louisiana and Georgia and Michigan and more places than I can remember, before settling in San Francisco five years ago. We went to lunch at Francis Ford Coppola's Café Zoetrope on Kearny Street in North Beach, then Val led us on a walking tour of the nearby neighborhood. We visited her lovely apartment, which had the most incredible view on an incredibly beautiful day: Coit Tower on the left, the Bay Bridge in the center, and downtown with the Transamerica Tower on the right, all laid out before us through her living room windows. We also got to meet Ron, her boyfriend, and we heard the exciting news that he proposed to her last month. Congratulations to you both!

On Friday night, we went to dinner with Jim. Now, the last time I had seen Jim was October 1968, when we graduated from Army helicopter flight school. A few weeks later we were both headed to Viet Nam, he to one part, I to another, and afterwards we went about living our lives for the next four decades.

We're both older and grayer and heavier than we were back then, but it's amazing how much of a person, and a personality, stays the same. We talked a little about the old days, but mostly he and Terri and I described how we each ended up where we are now, in 2011. Good food, good wine, good company, what else could one ask for?

On Sunday, we took the ferry to Sausalito. Jim, who is from Northern California and now lives in Mill Valley, picked us up and gave us an all-day tour of Marin and Sonoma. We had a very tasty lunch at Grilly's, a restaurant that Jim owns and operates. We visited the houseboat dock where Jim used to live, which provided a perfect opportunity for Terri to take our picture. We made a few stops at Sonoma wineries then headed towards the Golden Gate Bridge to see the city at night.



Monday morning, our friends were back to work and the weather, which had been brilliantly clear, was back to its usual foggy drizzle. We braved the rain for a while and walked around downtown, but it was obviously time to go.

Here's all my Flickr snaps from the trip. Or you can sit back with popcorn and see the slideshow version.

P.S. I finally realized that long hair just does not look right on old, fat, balding guys, so I had a major haircut today.

Just say, "Oops!"

Terri and I have been frequent travelers since we got together in 1998. I quit counting several years ago at 30 trips, mostly international but with an occasional jaunt inside the U.S. We've gotten good at it: we can pack quickly and lightly, negotiate smoothly through security and customs, decipher transit schedules in several languages, and tell what's chicken and beef and what's organs or horse on foreign menus. But we have our moments, proving once again that being good at something doesn't mean not making mistakes -- we all make mistakes -- but how well and quickly you recover when something goes wrong.

Our first day in Brussels we walked from our hotel through the Grand Place, past the central train station, then to Place Royale, where we could catch a tram to the Horta Museum. Victor Horta was one of the founders of Art Nouveau, a favorite interest of ours, and his home, now a museum, was away from the center. We were eager to use our new transit passes to start getting around town.

Although it was cold I started sweating walking up the steep hill from the train station to Place Royale. When we got there I looked around and did not see any trams, only cars and tour buses. I looked at my map to make sure we were in the right place, then looked at another map, then a guidebook -- they all said there should be trams in this very place.

Not only did I not see any trams, I did not see any tracks where trams could run. Completely perplexed, we decided to walk back down to the train station and see if we could find a tourist information center. We asked someone on the street, but they did not understand the English word 'tram.' The info center was closed. We went across the street to the Le Meridien hotel and asked for help there. The young lady at the desk explained how to get to the tram stop, but her directions pointed us back to where we had already been. I was getting angry now, muttering about unhelpful Belgians and erroneous maps. We walked around the neighborhood, went down several streets that seemed to promise trams or tracks, but had no luck.

Finally we decided to walk back up that very steep hill to Place Royale. Perhaps we just didn't go far enough. Maybe the trams were around a corner. Up, up, up the hill, sweating and peeved, we got back to the square and the first thing we saw was a tram rumbling right through the center of the same plaza where we had been standing an hour before. We asked a Belgian standing next to us if there was a tram stop nearby, and he said, of course, right there at the corner, by the waffle truck.

The maps were all right. The directions we had been given were correct. The tracks were there, right in the middle of the street, where I had not seen them before. We laughed and bought a waffle to eat while we waited for the next tram.

When we got to the museum we went up the door labeled Horta Museum and tried to open it. It was locked. We double-checked the hours posted, looked in the guidebook. It was supposed to be open. Next to the door was a buzzer labeled 'museum' so we pressed it. Nothing. As we were standing there trying to unravel this latest dilemma, I glanced to my right and saw a very large placard not five feet away labeled ENTRANCE with an arrow pointing to the door next to the one we had been trying to open. Terri and I looked at each other and started laughing.

There's more besides. I lost our museum passes, Terri lost a glove, we couldn't get off the tram because I didn't know which button to push to open the door, and we had a silly disagreement over which building was the Hotel de Ville and which the Maison Royale. Every time we lucked or improvised our way out -- we got replacement passes contrary to the terms and conditions, a kind Belgian found and returned Terri's glove, we got off at the next stop, and we eventually agreed on the orientation of our different maps.

In other words, we had our share of Oops! moments but luck and adaptability saved us every time -- all that work for good karma paid off. And no matter what happened, there was usually a waffle cart nearby.

The whole set of Flickr snaps from Belgium is here.

Or if you'd like to sit back with a bowl of popcorn, here's a slideshow of our snaps from Belgium.

P.S. We're off and away for a three-day weekend beginning next Friday. Stand by.