Choir Trip 2018: San Francisco

We are on day five of the choir trip to San Francisco.  I'm able to fire off this blog post because Danny C and I have the day off.  Since the choir is recording up at Skywalker Ranch the past two days, the chaperones figured that there was no need for all of us to be up there.  Yesterday Danny and I went with to chaperone, and today the lady chaperones went with.  So that leaves Danny and I with a free 8 hours or so to explore San Fran.

Our tentative plan is to take an uber to a ferry.  Then we will take a ferry into San Fran, walk about a mile to the Museum of Modern Art, where they have several Rothko's on display.  Then we will see what else is around downtown before taking the ferry back and ubering it back to our hotel.

The trip has been a blast so far.  The trip is structured differently than the past two choir trips (2004 and 2016, respectively) that I've chaperoned.  On those trips we spent a majority of time with our specific groups, but not so this time.

Students are free to mix and match with other groups depending on what they want to do.  As a result, I've gotten to spend some time with students I haven't really gotten to know yet.  I even got to lead a group on our first night in San Francisco, well, San Rafael, where we are staying for the first part of the trip.

Here we are headed to dinner at BJ's, who had excellent pizza and even better Caesar salads.

Below are some highlights of the trip in no particular order.

Here is a student that I've gotten to know, Heidi, holding up a double decker bridge in San Fran.  This was shortly after we explored the Exploritorium on Fisherman's Warf. She is still reeling from seeing John Gordon Levitt there with his family.

Here we are at Point Rayes.  In a tree.  For some reason.  We originally were going to go hiking in Yosemite, but the milage was wrong on our initial estimates.  Instead of 3.5 hours on a bus to Yosemite, it was closer to 5 hours one way.  So no one envied having to spend 10 hours on a bus after spending 17 hours getting here.

After Point Rayes, seeing the Painted Ladies (the skinny Victorian houses made famous by the opening scenes of Full House), and walking down Lombard Street, we spent about 90 minutes in China Town.

After that, we got a tour of the Cable Car Museum.  San Fran, of course, is famous for their legendary cable cars.  This station/museum runs the remaining four lines of cable cars in San Fran.

Here is the famous Lombard Street.

I've never been in so many selfies before until this crew!

This isn't one of the Painted Ladies, but it gives you an idea of what they look like.  This was just a random Victorian house.

Here is a random palm tree.  Not sure why I snapped this picture other than to show the layout of San Fran.

Here is Abigail, whose older sister Kaitlyn went on the last choir trip, posing with a koi fish at the Japanese Tea Gardens.

The Golden Gate Bridge in all of its glory.  It is as impressive as I thought it would be. Amazing.

As with any trip, it's some of the odd/strange events that really make it great.  Here Abigail found her purse on the hill overlooking the painted ladies.  Luckily, it was still there when she went back to get it.  Better say a prayer to Saint Anthony.

Here Wyatt displays his unique laugh in all its glory.  

Darcy making sure all the kids spit their gum out before hitting the studio.