the odyssey: part 2

next stop- san francisco. san francisco is a delightfully colorful place...that's in reference to the people, the culture, the buildings, the everything...there is a definite energy to that city. it is alive, and people and things are always moving, but not so much that it exhausted me. it seemed to be just enough- just enough to make me feel alive, too. following the advice of our hosts the night before, we made sure to stop and eat at "mama's cafe"- a local restaurant totally worth the 1/2 hour (at least..) wait. we walked around chinatown, coit tower, lombard street, the golden gate bridge and found ourselves with much too little time for all the places we wanted to experience. i'm not sure if leah would say driving down the one-block-long, strangely curvy lombard street was totally worth the immense effort it took to get there....but now we can look at a postcard of it and say- "hey, i have been there!" when we stopped at the lookout point for the golden gate bridge, we were doing the usual- taking entirely too many pictures of what is really just a bridge (don't get me wrong- i do think it's a beautiful one), but somehow makes you think you must try to capture it at every angle, when a kind fellow offered to take our picture. now, this man did not take one or two pictures, but several pictures- even showing us how to place our hand a certain way so it looked as though we are holding up the bridge (unfortunately leah has those, otherwise i'd put them up). turns out he was not a tourist, but a proud resident of san francisco. he told leah and i he loved to just come down to that point and meet tourists, tell them the hot spots in town, and of course, take their picture with the bridge. he seemed to be a very happy, fufilled man. of course, a few hours in san francisco is not nearly enough time, but it was enough to recognize the familiar feeling that i felt the first time that i went to san francisco....i like this city. i feel comfortable in this city. someday, i will return.