Ghiradelli Day

My kids all time favorite San Francisco experience is going to Ghiradelli's for ice cream.  Of course it's an entire day journey.  First we ride BART into the city.

On BART.

I love that to get them to calm down and not annoy people on BART I just have to suggest that they play a game to see who can hold their breath the longest.  Instant silence:-)

Notice there are no pictures of Darin here.  He was acting like a cool teenager and embarrassed of his brother and sisters.

After we got into the city we took the Cable Cars to the Cable Car Museum.

We had planned on visiting the Cable Car Museum for years.  I wish I could say it was worth the wait. Some parts were interesting but it was small and not exactly what we expected. It's like a 30 minute stop.

The best part, by far, was watching the cables that run underground.  We did learn about how the cable cars are pulled up and down the hills.  We also learned how there aren't any brakes on cable cars.  That's a crazy  thought considering the super steep hills.  The cables run underneath the streets, the operators work what is basically huge pliers to grab onto the cable as it is constantly running at about 9 mph.  Depending on how hard they grip onto the cable (or not at all in the case of stopping) is what determines how fast the cable car travels.

Me and the boys felt very educated when we hopped onto another cable car to ride down to Ghiradelli's and a tourist asked the operator about brakes.  At our next stop the operator told him to look underneath and if he saw the wood brakes.  The guy totally fell for it and actually believed that wood brakes would stop a 10 ton cable car going down 100 ft hills.  It was too funny!

Another interesting thing was learning about how the cables are repaired.  It takes 5 hours to make a simple repair in the cables.  They have to fix not only the section that has small tears but also weave their repairs into a 90 ft section of steel rope.  We also saw cross sections of the steel rope.  It was pretty amazing, if they didn't sell it for so much we would have bought one to take home and show Ken.

These are older cable cars from other lines.  There were 7 companies that had routes all over the city.  It was really fascinating.

Waiting for the next car to come by.  We saw lots of trainees as they circled the block.

And took lots of silly pictures while we were waiting.  The boys held the Transamerica building in their hands.  Aren't they all powerful!

Of course whatever Brothers do means that Rose must do it too!

The 2nd ride we were able to score seats on the outside.  The girls have to sit but the boys hung off the side of the trolley.  

Ginger was not very thrilled that she couldn't stand up on the outside.

I took this picture right before I started having a panic attack that Nathan might have a seizure while hanging off the side and imagining all sorts of terrible repercussions if he did have one...UGH!

Actually, most of this day I was feel pretty uptight on edge because I was worried about Nathan.  It started on BART when Nathan totally stumbled and had a hard time getting to his feet.  He said he just bumped his shin, but he was really unsteady and I also think he doesn't like to tell me about the weird feelings in his legs.  He has partial complex seizures in his right leg.  He has the partial seizures first, sometimes it stops right there and sometimes it spreads to the rest of his body.  Pretty much ever since he started his seizure medicine Nathan has said that he isn't having anymore of the weird feelings he had been having.  But the thing is, it took forever to get him up to a full dose (like he still wasn't at this time) and we have noticed  that the stumbling and leg shaking as gradually stopped.  So, when I see him stumble I kind of go on high-alert.

I stopped myself and decided to continue with our normal plans.  But, I was jumpy.  I also hung onto the back of Nathan's jacket the rest of the ride and made him stand directly in front of me.

Yum, Ghiradelli's!  Nathan and Darin wanted Gold Rush's.  It's a peanut butter and fudge sundae.  The kids decided that they didn't want to take 3 bites and pass this time, so they all chose their favorites and stuck with them.

Rose went with a Mint Bliss.

Ginger just wanted a plain mint chocolate chip ice cream cone.  I ordered the decadent hot chocolate (which was awful).

All gone!

A trip to Ghiradelli's isn't complete without stopping to admire the breastfeeding mermaid fountain.

My children.  What a beautiful sight!  It was a gorgeous day in San Francisco.  I felt so blessed to be there with them enjoying all the sights and surroundings.

Of course underground wasn't very beautiful as we rode BART back to the peninsula.  The boys reminded me of the steep escalators we rode in Washington D.C. this summer.  This one wasn't nearly as tall.

And then we read this sticker that was on the back of some official looking door.  When I read it closely, I was like what???  The  boys couldn't wait until we picked up their Dad so they could tell him all about this "creepy" thing we saw...