Day: February 2, 2010
Ode to a hot fudge sundae
I am SO full. We got out with daylight to spare today (and the rain held off for the evening), so we decided to head to Ghirardelli Square and the surrounding areas while we could still see some stuff. We made definite dessert plans (hello, hot fudge sundae at the Ghirardelli Ice Cream Shop) and just needed to find a place for dinner. Again. We headed for the water (less than a block away) and walked along Jefferson Street and eventually (okay, it didn’t take that long – there were signs) figured out we were at Fisherman’s Wharf. So naturally, we had seafood. We basically picked a restaurant at random and ended up at Tarantino’s, which was very good. We were early (6-ish, maybe a little before), so there was no wait, and we got a table overlooking the boats in the marina. I had prawns and scallops sauteed in all the delicious stuff (wine, garlic, butter, etc) with vegetables and rice. SO good. I called Mom and Dad during our walk back to Ghirardelli Square (and listened to the everyday drama of finding the other phone so they can both be on the line (I know I make fun of you, but I love that you do it that way. I just wish you’d have the phone handy!)), but was, you know, forced to hang up on them because the banana hot fudge sundae was twisting my arm and marching me through the door. Man, that was good. But huge. And I couldn’t finish it. Madeline couldn’t finish hers, either. She got the one with peanut butter topping AND hot fudge – they brought her three spoons. Hm. Maybe she could have finished it if she’d used all three.
I did well today, in class. If I may say so myself. No major screwups, no belligerent students (unlike yesterday, but I didn’t have to deal with them. Myrtle did.), and when I misspoke (happened a couple of times), Mona was there to rescue me. I wasn’t nervous at all, though, so that’s pretty cool. 🙂 I don’t think tomorrow will be much different. Hope I didn’t just jinx myself.
Looking for dinner
I remembered why I don’t like to exercise at the gym. Hotel gyms, anyway. They’re HOT. Freakishly hot and humid. But I’m not about to go for a run by myself, in the dark, in a city I don’t know, so a treadmill in the rainforest it is. We did go for a quite a nice walk last night, though. Martha’s phone died Sunday night, so we walked to a nearby Verizon store and figured we’d look for a place to eat near there or on the way back to the hotel. We saw surprisingly few restaurants at first, but we kept walking. Ended up at Union Square (I think), found a sketchy street, turned around and headed east (I think – no, it was north) for a while, found ourselves in Chinatown, dismissed one restaurant because it was empty and smelled weird, found a really steep hill (the first one we’d seen! very exciting), and tried to find our way back to Market Street. We did, eventually, and we turned east again, but within about three blocks we realized we’d gone too far east on California Street (maybe in Chinatown? nope. Again, that was north.), so we turned around on Market and found our way back to 2nd Street. California was the hilly street. We had dinner at a Thai place less than 2 blocks from our hotel (it was really good and we were really hungry) and then crashed for the night.
I think tonight we’re either going to find one of the French restaurants Evelyn recommended or head somewhere famous and touristy.
Today is my first teaching day, so I have to hurry up and get ready.