A San Francisco Treat Or, of Cousins and Cable Cars and Chocolate

Our girls love to read Good Night, San Francisco at bedtime.  One of a series of books called Good Night, Our World, the little book highlights a number of the city's most famous landmarks.  (The girls also love to read Good Night, Hawaii.)  Although the girls have the book practically memorized, they've yet to visit most of places in the book.  With their cousins as our first out-of-town visitors, we were excited to introduce the girls to some of the things they've been reading for some time.

We've especially wanted to take the girls on one of San Francisco's iconic cable cars.  We'd seen the cable cars on adventures into the city, but we'd not managed to actually ride one with them.  We planned to take Margaret, Matt, and Lizzy to the city to ride the cable cars on Sunday afternoon, and we hemmed and hawed about whether or not to take the girls.  We knew they'd love the adventure, but we also knew that (since we'd begin the trip after church and after naps) it would be a late night, and we're sort of sticklers when it comes to sleep.

Eventually, though, we threw caution to the wind, loaded the circus and our visitors into two cars, and hit the road.

We arrived in the city and joined a rather long line of tourists waiting to ride a cable car.  Fortunately for us, the view from the line was pleasant, the weather was sunny and warm (particularly by San Francisco standards), and we're accustomed to making our own fun.

Madeline played a bit of peek-a-boo.

Kathleen occupied herself by jumping off the bench. She gave her sister some pointers, too.

Eventually we moved up to the front. We watched the workers turn the cable car on the giant roundabout before they loaded the passengers.

Although we'd had grand plans to sit on the outside (well, at least Daddy and Matt were excited about that plan), we wound up sitting inside the car. Inside or no, everyone was still pretty excited.  The lighting inside the car wasn't perfect for photographs, but we couldn't pass up a chance at capturing the circus all together.

Lizzy and Margaret, who were sitting on the opposite side of the car, photographed much better than we did.

And then we were off!  The girls were delighted.  And so were their cousins, we think.  We rode the Powell and Hyde line to Union Square, where we disembarked in search of some supper.  Once we'd been fed, we stood on line, waiting for a cable car to take us back to Aquatic Park, where we'd begun.

We were a bit concerned, though, when the cars that passed us seemed packed to the gills.  We were nearly despairing of squeezing onto a car (we'd already discussed how we could split up) when a particularly nice gripman stopped and, noticing the little ones, promised to get us on his car!  

He was true to his word, directing Mama and the girls to open seats.  There wasn't a seat for Lizzy, though.  The gripman took her with him instead, giving her the best non-seat in the house!  She stood right next to him at the end of the car, next to the lever he used to drive the cable car.  She got to see the sights and watch him work.

We were so excited to have found the kind gripman that we never noticed that he was actually driving a car on a different line! We'd ridden to Union Square on the Powell and Hyde line, but we rode back on the Powell and Mason. The mistake wasn't much of a problem, though -- we ended just blocks from where we'd started and we enjoyed new views.

Coit Tower

We walked just a few blocks to our evening's ultimate objective: chocolate!

We paused for a brief photograph...

And then commenced eating chocolate! The circus ordered two sundaes to share. (Clearly, we ordered at least one more sundae than we needed.) When the waitress brought the the goopy, chocolatey concoctions to our table, Kathleen quickly moved one of the treats in front of her seat. Then, looking over at her Mama, she said, "Well, Mama, since you don't have an ice cream, I'll share mine with you." We're raising some generous children...

The sundaes were extremely well received.

Full of ice cream, and tuckered out from a full day, we finally headed home.  Everyone got to bed late (late, late, late!), but we'll be savoring our sweet memories of cousins and cable cars and chocolate for a long time to come.