How to Have a Good Time in San Francisco

Take your parents. Or your in-laws. This gets the whole thing off to a really good start.

Don't give your enthusiastic five year old a glow-in-the-dark necklace on the plane. While you might THINK it would entertain her for hours, it will, in reality, burst within a few minutes and spray green, glowing, chemical goo all over the wall, seat, and window of the plane, not to mention all over your five year old.

Don't try to do it AGAIN in the rental van on the drive from Monterey back to San Fran, thinking that simply warning her not to "play too rough" with the glow-in-the-dark necklace will keep it from happening again. Oh, and be prepared for your husband's outrage that, just as he was giving all the good reasons NOT to let her play with it, it burst again. Now there is green, glowing, chemical goo all over your rental van. And five year old. Again.

Be amazed that your parents can play the Alphabet Name Game for two straight hours on that same road trip from Monterey (after your friend Amy, sitting sacrificially between your children in the "way back" has cleaned up the green, glowing, chemical goo and has fallen asleep with their heads in her lap.)

Eat at a Chinese restaurant. It's chopsticks only, and the wait staff speaks very halting English with very big smiles. Eat early and have the whole place to yourselves, and put all the food on one of those giant, lazy susans and let your kids spin it around.

Climb the glittering, mural-covered stairs (330-odd of them) just behind your rental house. They lead to a nearly 360-degree view of the city, and in the fog, the whole peak transforms into a glowing haze of giant, weeping, shadowed trees.

Take everyone to Golden Gate Park. Tour the Japanese Tea Garden, then let your kids play for hours on the curvy, cement slide at the playground where they also have a magnificent--and cheap--carousel.

Drink coffee and eat sourdough bread in a bakery under a huge banner that says, "Make Loaves, Not War."

Watch the sun set over the Pacific. Do this as much as possible, and as often as you can in the company of your parents, your husband, your children, and one of your closest friends who's flown down from Portland to spend the second half of the week with you.

Tour the Mission Delores, the first building in San Francisco. Tell your children what the kneeling bench at the altar is for, and then stifle both your giggles and your tears as they very naturally and spontaneously kneel and pray. Enjoy local church history with your parents, your husband, and your kids.

Ride on the top level of the double-decker bus and try really hard to enjoy it even though it's freezing, your kids are begging to go home, and you're trying not to think about the steep grades of the streets vs. this bus's brakes. Then retreat to the first level, where you, your mom, and your kids will enjoy the rest of the tour, stopping for an hour or so to play at another playground and eat sourdough rolls in the shapes of turtles.

Wear all your layers all the time. Quote Mark Twain a lot, who said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." It will be in the 50's during your whole visit.

Play the jukebox in your rental house and let your kids discover that their favorite songs are "Hound Dog" (Elvis) and "I Feel Good." (James Brown) Do not let them discover that too early in the trip, lest the rest of the visit have a very simple, repetitive sound track.

Hike Muir Woods. Sit on Muir Beach. Walk the trail along the ocean at Coyote Point State Park. Walk the trail along the ocean at Lands End. Walk the trail along the ocean at the Presidio. Smell the salt air, feel the wind on your face, be together with your family and your friend.

As you park that evening to go to a restaurant, prepare to avert your eyes. A local bike race happens to be using that same street. One of the riders will be naked. Oh, and avert the eyes of your children, because the rider will see them, and they will see him. He will laugh and yell, "Whoops! The kids got an education tonight!" Your four year old will look at you with a big, goofy grin and say, "Mommy! I saw his BEETIE BOTTOM!" And your friend Amy will add, dryly, "Do NOT borrow that guy's bike." Your parents will wonder how anyone would possibly want to ride a bike naked when it is that COLD.

Let your husband and your dad go to a baseball game. Let your husband play golf at Pebble Beach. (But do not--I repeat, do NOT find out how much it costs until AFTER you've had the most blissfully restful and relaxing day of the trip, lounging for hours with your parents, children, and Amy on a peaceful Monterey beach. Then be glad for him that he got to do something so once-in-a-lifetime.)

Cook meals in. You have a great rental house on a hillside and it's so fun to make dinner for each other and share around that long table.

Go to Alcatraz with your parents and Amy. Your husband will take the girls to Golden Gate Park while you go, and you can be immersed in the awesome audio tour, the ferry ride back and forth, and the pleasant hour together in the cafe chatting afterward.

Be thankful your husband is such a gifted and motivated trip planner and tour guide.

Be thankful that you can log all those stories--and more--into your personal memory bank. Oh, and journal about it, because if your personal memory bank is like mine, your memory retrieval system might fail you more often than not, and you'll want to have everything written in your passbook. :)