100620 Chinatown & Palace of Fine Arts

Sunday we took a walking tour of Chinatown, which was a delight.We visited the food markets, a fortune cookie factory, and a "natural foods" store, and learned about the basics of Chinese medicine. We watched a "pharmacist" making a prescription using the ancient ways. We visited a Buddhist temple. The tour guide had been raised in Chinatown and did an excellent job of giving us a glimpse into the history of Chinatown and what it is/was like to live there. She told us about growing up in a two-room flat, sleeping at the foot of the bed that also held her grandparents and two siblings, getting toe massages on her back. :-) She told us about the telephone operators who each translated calls in five different Chinese dialects (there are 200) and had 1000 phone numbers memorized. We learned about "Chinese School", which she attended daily after her American school was over, and all summer long, which primarily consisted of silently memorizing facts about ancient Chinese history. At the end of the tour, the group ate together a dim sum meal (family-style, a taste of lots of different foods) that was a real treat. I would recommend the "All About Chinatown Walking Tour" to anyone planning a trip to San Francisco who wants to get a feel for Chinatown.

Then we took the bus over to the Palace of Fine Arts. , which is a serene park with a beautiful pavilion built for the world's fair held in San Francisco in 1915, to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal. I enjoyed the quiet beauty of the place, but was disappointed the inside area was closed due to construction.

After that I took Birdie to a conference near San Jose that she is attending this week. We drove up winding roads into the mountains. The steep dirt road driveway to the retreat was a challenge, but Carri made it. Whew! I am on my own for the week, then I will pick her up at noon on Friday PM, and we will spend a few more days together before she flies back to North Dakota the following Thursday.