This year, Tony’s parents gave us the best Christmas present ever-a totally kid-free anniversary! Like so many BYU students, we got married between semesters (I seriously have at least half a dozen friends with the same anniversary as ours). It seemed like a good idea at the time, but having an anniversary two days after Christmas can make it difficult to have the energy or resources to plan anything special in the middle of the holidays. It’s been at least five years since we went a full 24 hours without seeing our children.
So celebrating our anniversary in San Francisco alone together was pretty much the most enjoyable thing we’ve done in a long time.
Actually, spending the day in San Francisco was one of the first things we ever did together (our second date, to be precise). In fact, Tony has a photo-of-the-month for every month since we met, and the very first one is me in front of The Stinking Rose, the iconic San Francisco restaurant where they “season [their] garlic with food.”
Here’s Tony in front of the same restaurant, eleven years later.
We took BART into the city, which was fun and saved us from trying to navigate the narrow, crazy San Francisco streets and paying exorbitant parking rates. It did not, however, prevent us from getting lost on multiple occasions, even with our tourist map in hand. San Francisco tourist maps should really be topographical. I forgot how insanely hilly it is. We did eventually make it to dinner at the Stinking Rose, and probably also preemptively walked off every single calorie contained in all the delicious black linguini and clams that we subsequently ate.
After dinner we went home to our hotel room, where we hung out with cheese and grapes and champagne and reveled in our kid-free state.
Next morning it was down to Fisherman’s Wharf to watch the sea lions and street performers. My favorite was this guy, who was playing Scarborough Fair on a twelve-stringed piece of wood.
Of course, we also had to eat clam chowder out of a sourdough bread bowl. Yum!
And before we came home, because we had not yet climbed enough hills, we hiked up the hill to Coit Tower, which I think is built on the highest point in San Francisco. We skipped the 40-minute wait to ride the elevator to the top of the tower, but the view from the bottom, next to the grandiose statue of Christopher Columbus, was still pretty breathtaking.
Here’s to another 11 years! (after which we may actually be permanently kid-free. How crazy is that?)
How fun! By the way, I love your socks or leggings. 🙂
How fun! I love San Francisco, too, and have memories of the Stinking Rose. One of the friends I ate there with asked a waiter, “Do you have anything without garlic?” and he answered, “This is a themed restaurant, Madame, and our theme is garlic!” It still makes me laugh.
Looks like you had a great time. Happy anniversary!