She's Baaaack

Hello from the sunbelt.  I have returned from my great adventure. While travel may still be enjoyable for some, it is not so for me.  My hearing loss and unsteady gait make it less than fun.  And that is why I call it an adventure.

Someday this will be a funny story that my children will tell to all and sundry about when Mom got off the plane at the wrong airport.  I think I can even laugh about it now, but at the time it was definitely not amusing.

I failed to check my boarding information before I left and, like a typical person who knows all the answers, I failed to ask questions.  I was under the false impression that my flight was a through one and had no stops.  Wrong!   I was en route to Oakland, CA and when the plane arrived at the gate I assumed I was there.  (Bear in mind that I can never hear announcements so I am flying blind.  To be technical I am flying deaf.)  Guess what?  I found myself at the luggage carousel in Los Angeles.  I wondered why the wheel chairs had L. A.. airport on their back.  Ha! Ha! 

Of course this goof meant that I had to get a new ticket, go through the check point again and be patted down once more.  If I think I got a thorough inspection in Tucson, I just didn't know what a real one was.  I must have looked like a gray Granny who was about to blow up the plane because I really got a body search.  Bear in mind that this was before the Christmas day Detroit incident.  I never realized that I must look so menacing.

I made it two hours late and my dear daughter was smiling and assured me that my delay was no problem.  She is such a sweetheart.

And so the Christmas adventure began with the trimming of the tree. Gail is placing the lights before the girls start putting ornaments on it.

After Christmas we went to Union Square in San Francisco where they have their tree and ice rink similar to Rockefeller Center in NYC.  I took this photo as we were crossing the Oakland Bay Bridge.

 

After a lunch of panini sandwiches the girls got skates and took to the rink.  They stopped long enough for me to take their picture.

It was cold and my daughter had brought a throw for me to put over my lap.  No problem there, but it happened to belong to the girls and it had a cartoon dog in the middle.  I was sitting at an outside table waiting while Gail made arrangements for the girls to skate and I pulled the throw up to my chin.  A young man walked by and asked me if this was my blankie.  I had to laugh and decided this might be what is termed 'a second childhood'.

 

This is the tall tree as it looks in the daytime.  I will show a night version later.

 

This pillar dominates the center of Union Square.  You can see that it was not a sunny day.   

From Wikipedia I learned the following information  on Union Square: 

Union Square was built and dedicated by San Francisco's first American mayor John Geary in 1850 and is so named for the pro-Union rallies that happened there before and during the United States Civil War. Since then, the plaza underwent many notable changes with the most significant first happening in 1903 with the dedication of a 97 ft (30 m) tall monument to Admiral George Dewey's victory at the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish American War. It also commemorates U.S. President William McKinley, who had been recently assassinated. The figurine at the top of the monument, "Victory", was modeled from the likeness of a local heiress, Alma de Bretteville Spreckels. The second major significant change happened between 1939-1941 when a large underground parking garage was built under the square that relocated the plaza's lawns, shrubs and the Dewey monument to the garage "roof." It was the world's first underground parking garage and was designed by Timothy Pflueger.

The girls take to the ice. Sarah on the left and Rachel in the striped shirt.  I will continue with the story of my adventure on the next post.