Travel Journal - San Francisco

One of the things that drew Ryan and I together was our shared love of travel.  One of the things that kept us together was that we actually became very complimentary travel companions.  We liked doing a lot of the same things on vacations, hoped to go to similar places, vacationed at a similar pace, and both liked to travel at a respectable budget.  We wanted to go everywhere together; our list kept growing and growing.  Ryan had done so much travel on his own that he was going to have to make a lot of duplicate trips in order to satisfy me, but he didn't mind.  Thinking about our trips together makes me ache.  I can't believe we won't be going on any more of them.  A memory, even a happy one, feels very different when you know that it's totally in the past, and there's no chance of getting it back.  Even more, the person I shared these memories with is now gone, so there's no one else who I can reminisce with.  I find myself trapped in memories sometimes.  Over time, I'd like to write down the memories of some of our trips as a way of sharing some of my happiest times.

Our view of San Francisco from the ferry to Alcatraz.

The very first vacation the two of us took together was to San Francisco.  It was in March 2007, and Ryan had decided to take me on a trip for my birthday.  He gave me two choices - either we could go to Miami or San Francisco.  Being more of a city person than a beach person, I eagerly accepted the trip to San Francisco.  For the only time in our relationship, Ryan planned everything.  He got the flight, the hotel, and the rental car.  It was, by far, the nicest birthday present I'd ever received from a boyfriend.

We flew into Los Angeles, and spent a day with a cousin of his who I hadn't met before then.  Ryan has a very large family, and I come from a very small one.  I was always nervous to meet his relatives, but I never had any reason to be - I was always pleasantly surprised by how great they all were and she was no exception.  After the brief stay in L.A., we drove up the Pacific Coast Highway towards San Francisco, stopping at Hearst Castle along the way.  Ryan had sprung for a convertible at the rental car facility, something that seemed like a great idea in L.A., but the farther north we went the less it seemed so.  Along the way we stopped to enjoy local cuisine.  By this, I mean In and Out Burger.  Ryan marveled at the efficiency of a fast food restaurant that only had four menu items.  Even though he didn't really like burgers, he went on and on about how great the place was.

Ryan at the Japanese Tea Garden in 
Golden Gate Park.  I have no pictures of the 
two of us together on this trip, as we had yet 
to master the art of asking strangers to take 
our picture..

When we got to San Francisco, we found that our hotel was a little off the beaten track.  Luckily, we both liked to walk a lot.  Unluckily, I found out on this trip that I had fallen pretty out of shape.  One of the first places we wanted to go was to the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, and based on the location of our hotel, it looked as though it wouldn't be too far of a walk.  So we set out on foot.  It was really about double the distance that I thought, through the rolling hills of the Presidio park.  I got winded and had to stop so many times, that I was afraid of what Ryan must be thinking.  He later told me that he was surprised how out of shape I was.  In hindsight though, I was probably having a hard time keeping up with Ryan - one way we didn't travel well together was that he walked about double my natural pace, and was not easily slowed down.  Either way though, my embarrassment from the trek is part of what inspired me to start running.

There are a lot of stories I could tell from this trip, and it's hard to pick just a few of them.  If I made a generic list of things we did in San Francisco, leaving out the specific names of the places we went, it could probably be applied to any other vacation we took afterwards.  We saw historical sites, I indulged Ryan by going into a military museum, we window shopped, we went to an art museum, we went to tourist traps, and we got lost at least once.  We talked for hours on end.  We created inside jokes.  We had one very nice dinner out.

The nice dinner out was one of my favorite parts of this trip.  Since Ryan had decided to pay for the entire trip, I made him promise me that I could take him out for one very nice dinner.  We found in our guidebook a place called the Tadich Grill, which claims to be the oldest restaurant in the city.  Ryan was sold on it right away for the historical value.  It was a very long, narrow restaurant with a three-sided bar that ran the length of the place.  We had to wait for a table for I think over an hour and waited at the bar - I think it's the longest I ever got Ryan to wait for a table.  The bartenders all wore white coats, adding to the turn of the century feel of the place.  The place was pricey, the wait was long, and the food was not memorable.  But Ryan loved it for the atmosphere and the history.  He talked about it for years afterwards, and I always thought that some day we'd go back there.

I thought this about a lot of places we'd been.  It's always seemed to me to be a romantic idea to return to places that were a part of our story.  Most of the time, we never did.  We kept wanting to go to new places, and, of course, we thought we still had decades together to get to return to these places,and to go everywhere else we wanted to.  I can't believe that we won't get to.  While writing this entire post, I've been thinking about the things we won't get to do.  We  never did get to Miami together.  We always talked about driving the rest of the Pacific Coast Highway one day - we never did that either.  I can't believe that I've lost my travel partner.  I've loved to travel for many, many years, since long before I knew Ryan.  Somehow now though, the idea of travel seems pretty empty, knowing that I won't get to do it with him.  This trip to San Francisco was the beginning of a lifetime of travel experiences together that was cut way too short.