San Francisco Day 2 (and 3)

We really wanted to go to church while we were in San Francisco, so we looked up the closest meetinghouse to our hotel and put in a call to the bishop of that ward. We wanted to know if they were having any schedule changes due to it being Christmas Eve and all.

We never received a call back, so we just went at the regularly scheduled time. Unfortunately, I guess we ought to have called the bishop of the other ward as well, because they combined wards for Christmas Eve. We missed Sacrament meeting, but at least were able to stay for Sunday school and Relief Society/Priesthood.

We really fell in love with these combined wards. Most of the ward was younger adults (30s & 40s), so we felt right at home. Plus their meeting schedule ran like clockwork--each ending on time and beginning on time. It was very refreshing.

When we move to San Fran in a few years, we hope to be able to attend one of these two wards.

Check out the architecture of the church building!! It's unlike any LDS chapel that I've ever seen. Very Gothic.


After relaxing for a few hours after church, we hopped on a bus to the Golden Gate bridge. It was pretty cold and windy out there by the bay/ocean, but it was fun to see the bridge up close at night. We walked to the halfway mark, made some phone calls, and then turned around. It's kind of like walking the whole length, right?!

Here are some pics from our venture out to the GG bridge:






Monday morning, after checking out of our hotel, we decided to stop at UC-Berkeley and walk around campus a little. It's one of Jeff's goals--getting a PhD in Philosophy from UC-Berkeley--so we decided to see what the campus was like. It was so quiet on Christmas morning! It is a really beautiful campus. Huge, compared to the community college that Jeff is currently attending.

The campus is beautiful, but we didn't really take too many pics. Here is a pic of a grove of trees in the middle of campus. There was even a guy doing yoga or tai chi or some other type of meditation. We didn't ask.

That was the close of our trip to San Fran. We spent the rest of Christmas Day driving back to OR. We were grateful for the good weather. Well, it was raining pretty good the last few hours, but at least it wasn't snowing!! Too much snow as caused the Siskiyou pass on I-5 to close, so we were happy we didn't have to experience that.

We spent a good chunk of the drive home learning interesting facts about the states--what's the highest point, the capitol, the largest city, its rank in size and population, and the nickname. Not sure that we remember any of it, but it was a fun way to pass the time (as least for me). It took a little too long for Jeff. Of course, I had the answers and he was doing the guessing. Maybe that made a difference. At any rate, it beat doing another 4 hours of the alphabet game--our game of choice on the trip down.

Hope you enjoyed our pics as much as we enjoyed our visit. I imagine we'll make the drive down there again sometime in the next few years.