San Francisco Revisited - Part 3

Good lord, I can't believe how long it's taking me to tell this story! I left off at Rose and Jen meeting us at the mall. In addition to the four of us, Noelle's nannite, Maddie (the girl she nannied for for 12 years), and her two girlfriends rode the train from Santa Clara to San Fran for the weekend to celebrate her birthday. They all arrived at the same time due to the flight delay and we were all able to meet at the mall. The three of them headed off to galavant around and the four of us walked back to our hotel to drop off some bags and let Rose and Jen check into their room (which I might add was a lot bigger than ours). We made a reservation for dinner at Colibri, the Mexican restaurant next to our hotel for 8:30ish.

After the girls got checked into their room and we had a drink for the road, we went outside and hailed a "taxi." It wasn't a regular taxi, it was a black Lincoln Towncar that had no signage... this made me a little bit nervous, but the driver said he'd take us anywhere for $15. We all piled into the car and we told him we wanted to go to Lane Bryant. Being that we're all big girls, that's where we shop, and we figured it would be a good place to go. When we got in the car the driver asked us where we wanted to go, so I gave him the address. He asked us if we were sure we wanted to go there and we said yes. He asked us again if we were sure that's where we wanted to go and we all told him again that was correct. Being the friendly girls we are, we asked his name and he said it was Jafar (no not from Aladdin or the Lion King or whatever cartoon that was from). Once we got to the strip mall where LB was located, he gave me his number and said to call him if we needed a ride while we were in San Fran. The four of us spent at least an hour at LB trying on clothes and looking for fun stuff that we don't have in Salt Lake. When we were finished we decided to go to Safeway (yes, there are still Safeways in the world) and buy our liquor for the evening/weekend so we could drink before we went out, so as to save some money on expensive cocktails. We decided on a 1/2 gallon of Absolut and some mixers.

By the time we were done at Safeway, we realized why Jafar had asked us so many times if we were sure we wanted to go to Protrero in the Mission District... Let's just say ghetto is a nice word for it. I called Jafar twice to ask him to come back for us, and guess what, he didn't answer, or call me back! We didn't see any cabs around so we walked back to LB and asked our cute salesgirl for the number to the cab company. She told us we'd have to give them the phone number of the store we were at and would have to say we were one of the employees so the cab would actually come pick us up. An hour later, and still no cab. We were all getting pretty pissy (although we were still entertained at this point) so we asked the salesgirl what she suggested. The four of us ended up on the bus. It wasn't a very nice bus, either. The walk to the bus was possibly one of the scariest 3 minute walks I've ever taken. I kept telling the other three not to look nervous and just try to fit in. Yeah, four white girls in the hood of San Fran trying to look like we fit in. What was I thinking? I came to find out that Noelle has a great fear of busses and that just made the situation even less appealing.

We finally made it back to the "safe" part of town and walked back to our hotel vowing never to return to Protrero/Mission again! Oh man, a hot guy just walked by.... sorry, I'm downtown and there's lots of foot traffic outside. Anyway, we got back to the hotel and decided we should drown our sorrows (ok, not really, we were just ready to get the drinking started). We figured we'd have a few drinks, start getting ready and head down for dinner. The four of us had a few drinks in Rose & Jen's room and then Noelle & I headed to our room to start getting ready... we took the bottle of Absolut with us... no, I think we had Rose bring it up about 20 minutes later. Rose & Jen finished before Noelle & I had finished getting ready, so they met us in our room. By this time, none of us could see straight. I don't think any of the four of us had drank that much in years.

At the restaurant we ordered a round of Cosmos and then ordered our dinner. The food at Colibri was great. It wasn't your traditional Mexican fare, but more of a contemporary flare on traditional Mexican food. Another round of Cosmos later, we were all completely enebriated... and that's when Jen's chair collapsed underneath her. The poor girl was so embarrassed and all the rest of us could do was laugh. A few weeks later she asked us if she did a good job of pretending she wasn't drunk! I told her I wasn't coherent enough to know, but I thought she did ok. After dinner, we went back to our room to change our shoes because we knew we'd be on our feet for the rest of the night. We left the hotel and headed over to the Sir Francis Drake Hotel to the Starlite Room. The cover charge was $15 per person, but Rose told them we were there for her birthday and they let her in for free. I bought the first round of Cosmos and half each of Noelle & Jen's ended up down the front of Noelle and on the floor.

K, I'm stopping here b/c I need to get some stuff done... I'll continue later!