This is only my third one ever, no make that my fourth, but I think Thanksgiving might be my newest favourite holiday. I love that it’s on a Thursday so there’s a short working week, I love that Black Friday is the day after and everyone runs out to the sales, I love that after all the fun there’s still a weekend of relaxation making it a nice long holiday, and above all else I *LOVE* that when all the fun is over, there’s STILL THE EXCITEMENT CHRISTMAS TO COME! I love Christmas of course, but once Christmas Day is over with, the whole of Christmas is too…

This year we stayed local and went to visit friends in the city for a fabulous home-cooked dinner, *fabulous* being the word.

Turkey comas merged into deep sleep, and deep sleep led us into morning in San Francisco.

Morning football and morning play took us to a lazy late lunch in the mid afternoon.

And from lunch we went to Union Square where we waited in the cold…

…for this…

…to become THIS!

Followed by a trip around the sales (and a new outfit for Baby Peach), ending up on the seventh floor of Macys standing in line to meet Father Christmas.

All of that and there was still the weekend to go.

Yes, I love Thanksgiving.

Guess what, guess what, GUESS WHAT??!! I think I have found me one of the best, best, BEST things EVER! I’ve only gone and found myself a local tearoom *great big, fat squee*. After weeks of anticipation and planning my birthday treat the great day came and we headed into the city for tea and scones at the Crown and Crumpet and it certainly didn’t disappoint. Given that anything ‘English’ (especially things like afternoon tea) is a bit of a novelty over here, there is a bit of a risk of it being overdone – I only have to mention the words ‘chintz’ and ‘doily’ and you get the picture, and then to make it even more over-the-top add to that all the lace, net curtains, the obligatory grandfather clock against the wall and the fake red telephone box in the corner and it’s cringe, cringe and Cringe Even More. But the Crown and Crumpet was EXCEEDINGLY different… pretty and modern and fresh and a complete EXPLOSION of Cath Kidston, everywhere. A perfect blend of tea and kitsch, if you ask me. Not contrived at all, and run by a bona fide Englishman which made it even more special. It actually reminded me very much of a place we went to on our trip to the Lake District last year, which says a lot as it could very well pass as a tearoom back home in the Motherland, easily. The Doc and I had the Afternoon Tea For Two- hot buttered crumpets, finger sandwiches, tea and scones and jam, and some little cakes too. Marvellous. We will definitely go back. Well, it is our local tearoom after all.

PS Oliver liked it too. They even let us have his stroller next to our table.

So the other day it was my birthday, Happy Birthday to me,Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to meeee, Happy Birthday to me. Growing up, my family have always had a policy of doing something VERY SPECIAL whenever there was a birthday in the house, usually involving going out for a daytrip, having a special birthday tea, and of course there was always birthday cake too. Last year if you will remember, we went out for the day to Highclere Castle, near Newbury. What a lovely day it was spending time with my family, pretty English countryside, and even a spot of rain….. yes RAIN! My favourite sort of weather, oh how I have missed summer rain and the smell of wet grass, wearing my Barbour jacket….

Anyway, this year my birthday was all a bit different. What with there having been rather a lot going on of late (babies, lots of visitors, weddings etc.) the whole thing got a bit overshadowed and felt a bit unspecial. Even our second wedding anniversary passed us by rather un-noticed. But to be perfectly honest we haven’t actually had proper weekend free since the beginning of June so there hasn’t been time to celebrate properly. To mark my actual birthday, DrMrNin got me some of my favourite things – chocolate covered berries and $30 on my Starbucks card – and we went out for a meal at the restaurant down the road. It was low key, but lovely.  Hopefully we’ll get to celebrate properly toward the end of the month which will be our first free weekend since the beginning of June and only about the fourth since we moved into our house in April. This will only be the second ever birthday that I’ve spent without my family so I want to make sure we do something extra special.  The other week whilst the menfolk were out celebrating before WineChris’ wedding I went with a friend of mine for Afternoon Tea at Lovejoy’s Tearoom in San Francisco (that’s where we are in the picture above). It was really rather nice and that has put me in the mood for recapturing my British roots so I’m hoping we might do something similar for my birthday treat. Google informs me that there are quite a few places that do Afternoon Tea in the city, which is excellent news. Right now I’ve asterisked the Crown and Crumpet in Ghirardelli Square as the likely contender and I can’t wait, squee!

—edited to add—
Lovejoy’s Tearoom receives a glowing review from me. Nice atmosphere, a classic take on the food, and a good assortment of tea. At first I thought it might have been a little on the pricey side (about $17), but for what we got I think it was worth it and it was deceptively filling. It was impressively authentic and a nice breath of British fresh air in West Coast America. Yes, I would go there again. And indeed plan to. PS They even let me take the stroller in!

What a wonderful weekend! We had our baby party on Saturday and we were absolutely bowled over by the generosity of our friends- thankyou all so much! Everyone was so incredibly kind and thoughtful with their gifts and well wishes and we are so grateful to our friends in San Francisco who hosted it for us in their fabulous apartment. It really was the most perfect day that’s going to be filed away with the rest of life’s special memories.

The weather was typically San Francisco (i.e. foggy and atmospheric; my favourite kind) but it was still warm and dry enough to hang outside. We even got to check on the progress of the wine that our friends are making (we’ve been eagerly following their progress since they picked the grapes in Napa last autumn). For a first time try it’s impressed everyone, but then they are professional chemists so no matter how much they protest that they’re winging it, they know every single chemical reaction taking place, hehe. Hopefully DrMrNin and I might get in on it this year too- but this time the plan is to buy the grapes ready-picked as it’s far less work- it took four people picking for an entire day to get the juice contained in these ‘barrels’.

PS Don’t you love the polka dot mug? It’s from Sur La Table. I’m going to investigate as I think they’d look lovely in our kitchen

I like having Sunday as a day of rest. Today we slept in until noon, then in the afternoon drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to the pretty little harbour town of Sausalito where we were lucky enough to spot the $100,000,000 Maltese Falcon bobbing up and down on the water. That’s a glimpse of it right between our heads. Wow, what a sight!

For some reason I find bridges TREMENDOUSLY exciting. Whenever I see one, I want to drive over it, and when we do it’s usually with an accompaniment of squeals and squees with along with much clapping of my hands and bouncing up and down in the car seat. Even if I’ve driven over the same bridge countless times before, it’s usually always this way. I just can’t help it, I love bridges.

I am fairly discerning though as there are actually various degrees of bridge that will turn me into various degrees of child. Usually it’s the bigger the better, and the fancier the better (plus a great location scores it bonus points) and where one lacks in one respect it has to make up for it with the others. So I suppose it’s really a scale of “Impressibility”.

When I lived in Massachusetts back in the Spring of 2002, I used to make a point of going down to Manhattan every other weekend, and each time I would make a special excursion to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. It was my little routine- grab a latte, start walking across, sit down on one of the benches in the middle and drink my latte which was by this time the perfect temperature. And as I did this I would look up and gawp at the incredible piece of engineering that was suspending me across the chilly waters of the East River. It was this little hour (sometimes longer if there was good people watching fodder) that would define each of my trips to New York City. With its size, engineering and location, the Brooklyn Bridge was definitely highly ranking in the scale of Impressibility. It’s always been one of my favourites.

England has its fair share of bridges, but in general these are usually all fairly small (but then most things over here tend to be small scale as that’s how we are). We do have a couple of big suspension bridges but their rather bland looks and middle-of-the-motorway locations mean they score rather poorly despite their size. We do however have what is undeniably one of *the* *best* bridges in the world.

Tower Bridge in London. It may be small, but it’s oh so perfectly formed, and oh so perfectly Impressive. (By the way it’s not to be confused with London Bridge which is further up the river, smaller, plainer, has no towers, is not a drawbridge, and is actually not the original as an American businessman bought the first one thinking it was Tower Bridge [doh!] and it’s now in Arizona…I think at Lake Havasu but don’t quote me on that).

Tower Bridge was the one that started it all off for me. I can’t even explain how thrilled it makes me each time I see it. It was also the very first impressive bridge that I drove over by myself. As with all of London, it looks particularly impressive in the winter when it’s cold and damp and there’s a mist in the air that makes it glow magnificently. I took these pictures three days after Christmas in 2006 and it’s just reminded me that I haven’t been back since so I will definitely need to pay Tower Bridge a visit before The Big Move.

Speaking of which, one of the things that excites me THE VERY VERY VERY MOST is that as of this September I am once again going to have not one, but TWO SIMPLY AMAZINGLY *INCREDIBLE* bridges practically ON MY DOORSTEP! They’re big, they’re hard-core engineered, they’re rocking ironwork, they make me so excited that just thinking about them makes me want to squeal out load, and clap my hands, and bounce up and down, and squeal some more, and dance round the room….EEEEEEEPS!!!! I’m going to be near The Golden Gate!

Gosh it’s so beautiful it makes me all teary eyed just looking at this picture (I haven’t looked at many pictures of SF since moving back (UK) home in fear of what my emotions might do). All those trips flying back and forth across the Atlantic it would be the moment when I would see The Golden Gate from the window on the aeroplane that I knew that I was very almost (US) home. I’ve missed this bridge so much. The Golden Gate connects the urban peninsula of San Francisco with much more rural Marin County to the north which is filled with mountains and coastal redwood trees. We were driving down toward San Francisco in the photo above, I took it out of the sunroof on our way back from a winetasting trip to Napa Valley (about 1.5 hours to the north).

The toll booths on this bridge are especially pleasing to me, I don’t know why, I think it’s because they’re so retro/deco or whatever. You only pay a toll going *into* the city, not out. It’s the same for the other oh-so-insanely-fabulous bridge that I’ll be right near…

The Bay Bridge! This connects the city of San Francisco with the city of Oakland to the east. It’s also the bridge that had a portion collapse during the Loma Preata earthquake of 1989. Above is another ‘through the sunroof’ shot as we drove across one of one of my very favourite parts. It’s so industrial-feeling and iron-girdery, and the roar of the car engines echoes and bellows to a constant deafening boom. I’m in bridge heaven when I drive across this one. It’s actually a double decker, with the upper level flowing into the city (SF), and the lower level flowing out of it toward Oakland. Of any bridge I’ve ever crossed, this is my VERY favourite. Unfortunately they’re in the process of building a new bit of bridge to replace this rigid old favourite part of mine which isn’t thought to be earthquake proof enough. The new bit is going to be a rather plain suspension bridge and it may well be in place when I’m back there in a few weeks. I hope not but then at the same time should the earth shake violently when I’m on the new bit, I’ll be glad that they built it, hehe.

We were ever so lucky the other week as on our trip to Scotland, we got to see another of the world’s great bridges…

We didn’t drive across this one as it’s only for trains, it’s the Forth Railway Bridge, just outside of Edinburgh providing a key link between the capital and the Kingdom of Fife. It can only be described as an engineering marvel, and they’re even considering nominating it for a UNESCO World Heritage Site because it’s *that* special. We made a detour to get off the main road (leading to the road bridge on the left) especially to see it up close.

For some reason, this sort of engineering makes me proud to be British. It’s truly spectacular. And it’s British. OK, it’s in Scotland, but seeing as that’s part of the United Kingdom I can therefore claim ownership over it, hehe.

A few years ago I was up in Edinburgh for a geology conference and treated myself to a trainride over the top. It was fun and I almost burst with excitment as we went across. The view from below is much, much better though. That’s the best way to appreciate a bridge like this. Back then when this was one of the first big superstructures that I’d seen, I thought this bridge was HUGE, but really it’s not that big compared to the ones I’m now used to in San Francisco… which I’ll be living near in a matter of weeks!!! I can’t begin tell you how excited I’m beginning to get about moving back out there again.

I suppose I’m lucky in that I’ve now seen and been across all but one of what I think are the most impressive bridges in the world. The last one left for me to see is the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I hear it’s a lot smaller than what is to be expected, but its location must surely make up for it. Hopefully one day I will get to judge that for myself. In the meantime I’ll just have to content myself with seeing the San Francisco bridges on an almost daily basis