Merry Christmas!

If I’d been travelling with someone other than my father, I would have made a real effort to put something Christmassy on the agenda, but I knew he wouldn’t care and it was better just to leave it alone. But I did wish him “Merry Christmas!” when we got up. And we called my brother, and I fielded several “Merry Christmas” texts from my nieces and friends. Packed, got cleaned up.  Downstairs to the hotel cafe, had an order-at-the-counter quite nice breakfast burrito and breakfast sandwich.  Back up to the room, refreshed cooler, got luggage cart, downstairs to check out.  The valet for some reason parked the car directly in the out exit of the garage, which means we had to load it and move before anyone else could get out.  Not sure why he did that.

The routes the Google Maps was suggesting didn’t go up Route 1, so I sort of faked it by pointing it at some town we didn’t actually want to go to.  I made Dad listen to Xmas music, although he got annoyed with the first album I picked.  (Again, Dad isn’t much of a Christmas person.) At some point, Route 1 veered away from the ocean, so we did a bit of backtracking to get on Skyline Boulevard.  Sort of worked our way up and eventually realized we were actually doing it exactly right – up the left side to the tip of the land mass, then east to Fisherman’s Wharf.

Dad and I had both been to the city before. I’d been there in ’92 for a band conference, and again in ’97 for a business trip (which Charles came along for, and we extended it into the weekend). But not in quite a while.

Found our hotel, the Riu Plaza, pretty fancy.  Checked in, then we summoned a bellhop and I had Dad accompany him up to the room while I figured out the parking garage, which turned out to be easy.  Dad and I got unpacked and settled (not the full unpacking this time, not that much drawer space). The room was kind of fun and funky, and had a direct view of the top of the Skystar Wheel.

Once we had our act together, we headed out to Fisherman’s Wharf.  Again, one fear that had been in the back of my head since we started planning this trip is that it might be tough to find places open to eat on Christmas Day. However, the wharf (Pier 39) was packed with people exploring and everything was open.  We ended up going up to the 2nd level and eating lunch at the Crab House.  They had long waits for tables, but we offered to sit at the bar and and ended up at this circular counter surrounding an elevated fire!  It was a chilly day, so this was really nice.  Dad had a salad, I had crab chowder in a bread bowl and a Caesar’s salad, and we each had wine.  Super nice meal, surprisingly so in this midst of a lot of touristy crap.

Walked west to look at the Musee Mecanique.  It was fun, and I had quarters with me, but we only put the quarters in a couple of things and they were kind of stupid. Like one with a doctor and a crying kid and a baby, made no sense.  But one was the ‘opium den’, that was creepy and kinda cool.

Dad was tiring, so we went back to the hotel to chill and so I could figure out dinner. I made us a reservation at Palio, an Italian restaurant that was having a limited Christmas menu.  (Turned out later that Dad had heard that we were going to a ‘paleo’ restaurant and expected nothing but twigs and grass.) I waffled about driving vs Uber, but we uber’d and that was the right decision – it’s so hard to see at night when you’re driving in a strange city, and figuring out parking etc.

Restaurant was great, although service was slow.  I suppose on Christmas, you’re lucky to get anything.  The host-manager came and talked to us a lot.  I had a cosmo and we both had wine.  There was focaccia and olive oil. I wasn’t at all hungry after lunch, so just had a bowl of minestrone.  Dad had salmon, which he thought was cooked perfectly.  (I ate some of his mashed potatoes).  For dessert, we both had decaf, and I had tiramisu  He ordered what he thought was cookies (and there was a different dessert that was actually cookies), but it was more of a chocolate pudding with a cookie on top.  He liked it, though.  No real problem getting back, although I noticed he leaned against the wall while waiting the very few minutes for the cab. Poor tired Dad.

We were getting better and better about traveling together, too. For instance, in Santa Cruz, the room at night was pitch black, and it was tough finding your way to the bathroom. We made sure in this hotel we had enough ambient light (and a light in the bathroom) to circumvent that problem.