The Smith Family: San Francisco

Last week I got to leave these two crazies . . .

and headed to the city for an early Mother's Day present.

Erik was actually able to keep a secret from me and I didn't have a clue!!

I was thrilled.

We took BART, so we didn't have to worry about parking and driving around. We got into the city without much of a problem. We started walking and without knowing it, we walked right past our hotel. We kept walking for a few block and realized that we probably weren't in the right area. There were people passed out all over the sidewalks, it stunk of urine and feces. Just imagine the worst a city could look, and this was worse. People had stains all over their clothes, and you could tell that most people hadn't showered in at least a few months. We noticed that there were 2 cop cars about half a block up from where we were so I went running to catch them to ask where our hotel was. I knocked on the window and the cops jaw dropped. I was really confused, but when he rolled down the window I asked him where the address was. He then told me to get in the car. I assured him that we could walk and that we didn't need to get a ride. He again said to get in the car, and got out and opened his trunk so we could put our things in. We quit questioning him at that point and just followed suit. After we were seated in the back seat of the cop car, the cop said, "How did you make it this far into this neighborhood without getting mugged?" We were speechless. Apparently we were in THE WORST neighborhood in SF. I'm just glad that nothing happened. They dropped us off at the door to our nice hotel, not in the bad neighborhood. As we got there there were a couple more cops on foot right by our hotel. As we were getting out of the car there was and exchange between both sets of cops that I missed, but the ones we rode with told the others where they had picked us up. The foot cops were shocked, and said, "I would have picked them up, too!" The foot cops were shocked that we had walked through that neighborhood and not ended up with poop thrown all over us. As we got to the hotel, all we could do was laugh. It was an awful experience, but we made it out safely. This is one of those experiences that I want to see played in Heaven. I want to see the army of angels that were surrounding us. CRAZY!!! We got all changed and ready to go out for the evening, but to be honest neither of us wanted to go. We found a really cool Jazz restaurant. The food was great and so was the atmosphere.

I don't know if this was real or not, but after the night before it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Here we are in front of the Painted Ladies.

I must admit that I was excited because I was seeing the house from

Full House.

I was so excited that when I got home I watched an episode and saw that the house had a square top versus the triangular tops that you can see behind us.

I later found out that the true house is not on Postcard Row, but is actually located at

1709 Broderick Street.