Saturday, In The Park...

Wow, what a spectacular day! 70 degrees in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on a beautiful November afternoon.

There's one small problem: Usually, my most spectacular days include plenty of good food and drink!

I'm supposed to be eating 21 points worth of food using the Weight Watchers Points System (plus 35 a week extra to use for splurges), but yesterday I racheted up a whopping 40+ points(or so...I have no idea what was in some of the stuff I ate!).

We went to Golden Gate Park to see the "Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay" exhibit. We also brought our bikes to ride through the park!

I had a feeling I would be sampling from a wonderful buffet of awesomeness. Being in San Francisco, you just can't avoid excellent, diverse, and exciting food. So we parked where we could (it was packed!) and rode our bikes toward the De Young and the Music Concourse where we found (because we were looking for) Sam's (Mobile) Chowder House, of Half Moon Bay fame! The Lobster Roll  has been voted one of the 5 best sandwiches in the city. Hmmmmm....I wonder why?

And the "mobile eatery" is #10 in the COUNTRY for outstanding fare from a truck! We shared a lobster roll and a shrimp taco (with chips and soda), Jacob found a hot dog stand nearby and had his usual "day out" meal of hotdog/churro/chips/soda,  i.e: carb, fakemeat, carb, carb, sugar. Mmmm mmmm, good stuff!

Next came a stroll through the Japanese Tea Garden. Jacob was pretty impressed and, of course, broke one of the railings. I swear he just touched it, but you can't take that kid anywhere without something breaking. Really, it was just one of the bamboo fence posts that was too short and popped out. I know it's irresponsible, but after we put the pole back in it's hole, I made Jacob pop it out again so that Rob could get a picture of him "fixing it". (we do a lot of this):

Then came our bike ride! I wanted to ride from the Japanese Tea Garden to the other end of the park (where the old windmill is) and back. It's not that far, maybe 2 miles each way, but we just kept going down hill. I had no idea the park was on a HILL? I kept thinking; "How are we getting back UP to the De Young?" Of course we made it back no problem. I've mountain biked up the Pleasanton Ridge before (not all the way), I could do this park! After the lobster roll and fried shrimp taco, I was glad for the unexpected work out too!

The De Young exhibit was excellent, just beautiful. Jacob didn't touch a painting or break anything. He did the guided tour in record time, of course, and came back to tell us all of the "good numbers" we should listen to. You know...to save time? So thoughtful. : )

After riding back to the car, I wanted to take Jacob and Rob to Burma Super Star, an excellent Burmese restaurant on Clement Street. I thought the Rainbow Salad would be a perfectly healthy, low point option, but fate had something else in mind.

We missed the turn to get out of the park (which is really strange, it's not a turn you can "miss") and drove  right smack onto Ocean Beach and the most amazing sunset EVER!

I got us back on track toward Burma, but as we turned away from the beach, we realized The Cliff House was SO close. Let's call and see if we can get in!

There was a 40 minute wait which turned out to be the best 40 minute wait EVER. We parked, walked down the hill to the Cliff House, and as I was explaining the Sutro Baths to Jacob, we noticed that there were quite a few people climbing around down there, and we had time!

We watched the dogs play in the ocean, photographers with their tripods getting excellent shots of Seal Rock as the sun was setting, lovers (young and old) enjoying the mild evening and amazing sunset. Jacob noticed several young couples holding hands, sitting on the ruined bath walls and said "Mom...when I'm 16 I'm going to borrow your car. This is a great place to bring a date!". Three thoughts ran through my mind. 1) I was relieved that he doesn't think we're buying him a car. 2) What an awesome boyfriend he's going to be one day! And 3) I'm driving so I can keep an eye on them. There are CLIFFS and CAVES here.

Time for dinner! A glass of Rombauer, fried calamari, French Onion Soup, a few bites of Jacob's hamburger...could have been worse! Oh it was so good.

Worth every point! I'll just have to learn to live without a lot of extras for the rest of the week. I decided not to "cheat" and pretend the day didn't happen. It was too exquisite to delete from my tracker!