Hawaii trip--Part 1.

Well, as I anticipated, the trip was a little crazy in the beginning due to using free miles, this meant we left at strange times and took longer routes. We had a 5 hour lay-over in San Francisco. Years earlier if this had happened we would have just suffered it out at the airport, but we are now older and with more discretionary income, so we took a taxi into town for a dinner at the harbor. We ate king crab, which is not that salty dried stuff you get on the East Coast. It actually tastes more like crab and your face and fingers smell fully of your gluttony when you are done. They gave us bibs with good reason. I washed very carefully knowing I would be sitting next to strangers on the long plane ride over the Pacific.

I have visited San Francisco before and knew the temperatures would be mild and the culture very liberal. The mild climate meant that there were homeless or drifters in the parks, all in very good humor doing street dancing and singing and dressed most colorfully. It seems everyone in California has a talent of some kind.

We encountered a 'farmers market' down near the docks. This was a little different than most farmer's markets you might be used to, because San Francisco's customers are relatively well-educated and upscale in income. So we saw stalls with fresh oysters and sushi, exotic flowers, homemade soaps and perfumed oils, unusual sauces and syrups (One sauce was a cherry jelly with chile peppers in it!), and this fruit (?) below that I had never seen before.












We bought some dried pluots (I can't remember how you spell this but it is a cross between an apricot and plum, I think. Ours were a deep burgandy red, not like the picture on the webpage linked above.) These were very tangy in their sweetness and they lasted as great snacks through a good part of our Hawaii trip. (We didn't think we had to report them to USDA upon landing in Hawaii because they only asked about "fresh" fruit. Anyway, if they had had bugs we ate them!)

I took some photos of the lovely sailboats, one of one of the many yacht harbors and of course, the smelly, noisy seals airing their armpits as they do---see the fellow in the upper middle.



















As you can see, they also do Christmas in San Francisco. After our early dinner we headed back to the airport and on to Honolulu...next entry on my journey.