The day began with a devotional by the pastor. He was extremely welcoming to us!
As the counselors were getting their kids, we prayed for the kids and the day. We weren't quite sure where we fit in, but we decided to wait and see what happened.
Shortly after that, we began to help prepare lunch. This was the friend's job, so it was great to be able to help her out! We made sandwiches and set out juices and oranges. It was quite enjoyable actually. :)
After the lunches were done, we headed to downtown San Francisco to take a free walking tour that we found online. They are called San Francisco City Guides. Their website is http://www.sfcityguides.org/current_schedule.html. I am in no way paid to tell you about them, but we had so much fun I wanted to share it with you! We took a tour about the Gold Rush, but they have many others. :)
It was a bit stressful trying to find street parking in time to walk to the starting location of the tour. Ok, read very stressful. We tried multiple parking lots but they cost too much. So we kept driving around until we found a spot on the street! Unfortunately, we parked at the exact time the tour was starting...and had to walk a ways to the meeting location. Alyssa ended up calling the company to figure out which direction to go if we need to catch up! Thankfully we didn't have to!
We learned about how the city grew suddenly because of the discovery of gold in the surrounding regions. They called this an 'instant city.'
The San Francisco Bay used to come further up into the city, but over time they filled the bay with various things, including dumping full loads of cargo from ships into the bay. As the city built up, they began using boats as foundations for stores! This then led to the boats being built on top of! To this day there still remains over a dozen ships under the foundations of San Francisco. Each one that is discovered must be documented and recorded before the building can proceed.
Another interesting fact is that when the bay was farther into the city, they built long docks into the bay for ships to come They became so long that people didn't want to walk all the way back to the city before going to another dock, so they connected them with a walkway. This structure later became the grid pattern of the roads of the city. There are two exceptions to this: mission road and precidio road. These were both well-worn paths that existed before the docks did.
*This picture was found online; I cannot remember where right now, but if desired I will find out to give proper credit. It is also the picture the tour guide showed us!
Mark Twain also spent time in this city. In one of his books there is a frog. I cannot remember which book or the story on the frog, but there is a statue of a frog to pay tribute to Twain.
San Francisco was the last stop on the Pony Express. They have a plaque as a reminder of this! The riders would ride at a gallop, stopping briefly every 20 miles to change horses. After seeing all the terrain they had to ride, we have a new respect for what they did to carry letters across the country!
China Town is the largest community of Chinese people outside of China. They live in small apartments packed with people. If the density of San Francisco was the same as China Town, the population would be around 9 million people. That's a lot!! We didn't have a chance to spend much time in China Town on this trip :(
We also got to hear about the history of the California flag. It started with white muslin with a strip of a woman's red petticoat stitched on the bottom. They then put republic of California because Texas' flag said republic of Texas. Then they added the lone star from the Texas flag. To finish off the flag, they wanted to add a fierce animal. They thought of the great grizzly bear! And so with all of that combined, the California flag was born. :)
We learned even more history, but if I added it all this post would become much too long! Hope you enjoyed the highlights.
After the tour we walked over to the Ferry Building (think that's what it's called). There we bought vegan donuts from Pebble's Donuts. We haven't had donuts in probably over a year because of our allergies. Oh my! They were so good! We sat on a bench looking at the harbor to enjoy them. I got Salted Caramel; Alyssa got Vanilla; we shared a cinnamon and sugar.
As we sat on the bench, we saw a bunch of pigeons. Some of them were all fluffed up because it was cold! Haha.
After our donuts, we drove a ways to buy dinner from a food truck we had seen on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives a few months ago. They now have a restaurant and a food truck. We decided to go to the food truck! It is called KoJa (Korean/Japanese fusion cuisine) If you are ever in San Francisco, we definitely recommend looking up where this food truck would me. We got teriyaki steak on fried rice...patties? Buns? Cakes? It was delicious!!
On our way to and from the food truck, we got to drive on a double decker bridge!
We were exhausted by this point in the day, so we went back to our friends' house to relax and watch TV. :)
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