field trip, the Rettie way

Now many of you, if choosing a day in San Francisco, would probably do something like go see the Stein exhibit at SFMOMA. But we are the Retties, the people who go to London and don't see the changing of the guard, spend five days near Milford Sound, New Zealand, but never see it, we've yet to go to Alcatraz, or see the new Academy of Sciences. We tend to shy away from the usual adventures. But we do like the ferry ride into the city, and began our trip on the 9:30 boat. Our first stop was the Municipal Railway Museum. Free, donation a nice idea. And well worth the time. We then wandered our way to our favorite part of San Francisco.

 

North Beach, yes the location we dream of retiring. Since all we probably ever will be able to afford is a small dark studio apartment, with no parking, we have decided that we we will just have to start frequenting on a monthly visit basis. We have found the perfect lunching spot, Cafe Puccini, on Columbus. Perfect for us at least. Since it was Mike's birthday we decided to celebrate and had a glass of wine with lunch. The spaghetti carbonara was more than good, as was the minestrone, and my antipasto salad. The window seat gave us a view to the world, and who needs to go to Italy. Traveling to Italy, while desirable, is about as likely to happen as our actual moving to North Beach.
So given that we were completely stuffed we wandered back to the ferry via Grant Avenue, taking in all the sights along the way. A stop at some of galleries on Geary, and then a brisk walk to catch the 2:00 pm ferry back to Alameda. We do fit a lot in a short period on these trips.