I don't remember anything we did until we ate donuts and cream cheese danishes. I do remember this day ended with my entire family going to jail, though.
Just thinking about the food brings it all back. The sustenance (or sugar) gave us the energy to find and board the cable car. It was kind of like a roller coaster but without any kind of safety harness. We weren't going that fast, but Garrett, Dad and I were hanging onto the outside of the car (Mom got a chair) and the hills were huge. We were also super close to the car traffic.


Our roller coaster dumped us off at the Museè; Mecanique. The admission is free, and the building was full of antique toys and games, some from the 1800s and up to the '90s, and a lot of them were powered without electricity. They were typically used in old amusement parks. To see any of them actually work, you to pay the machines quarters, as if in an antique arcade. There was a jukebox that read music by the holes in the paper and played all the instruments, including drums, piano, tambourine, triangle, etc. Another interesting one demonstrated a miniature french execution. I promise videos when I get home.
I almost forgot lunch! We had delicious and super filling bread bowls with clam chowder at Boudin's and toured their bread bakery. ILOVEBREAD. Apparently the bread we had could be hundreds of years old because the bakers always saved some of the previous day's yeast to use in the next day's bread. They've been doing that since the bakery began.
We walked to Pier 39 for lunch and SHOPPING... two of my favorite things. There is a really cool earring store ; I went to a few years ago that I wanted to take my mom. There were several other cool stores I'll go into detail about later because I may have bought some presents there....


And then we all went to jail. Well, first we had to walk to Pier 33 and get on the boat to Alcatraz for our tour of the prison, which was pretty interesting. Highlights:
- only five prisoners successfully escaped (meaning their bodies were never found)
- only one prisoner escaped and made it to mainland before being recaptured and tried for escape, where as the rest of the 36 escapees throughout the prison's lifetime were recaptured on the island and tried for attempted escape
- al capone was the first high risk prisoner sent to Alcatraz
- "machine gun" Kelley was another high risk prisoner sent to Alcatraz and his case was the first high profile one to be taken on by the then-recently established FBI headed by J Edgar Hoover
- I got pictures of where prison guards dropped grenades to stop an attempted escape. Frag out!


No more spoilers. After the boat ride back, it was time for more food. We hiked around the hilly city for places Mom had coupons for, but both ended up being closed... it was basically my worst nightmare. Luckily we found Hunan's Home in Chinatown and it was delicious!!! We walked it off the 18 blocks or so to the hotel and I snuggled into my nice warm bed and had some really weird dreams for the second night in a row...


Oh, and naturally, I brought my pokewalker. I took 18,335 steps before midnight and about 2,000 steps after (Texas time. And it automatically resets at midnight). ( By the way, on an average day, I usually get about 7,000 steps.)
TO BE CONTINUED...

I know I failed at the Alaska travel blogs, but on my defense I was gone a month and took over 5,000 pictures. I still plan on going back and making those blogs. In the meantime, California blog!


Day one was mostly travel. Flying out.of Dallas was way cheaper, so first thing in the morning we roadtripped it up to Dallas and hopped on a afternoon flight to San Francisco. It was a smooth, no-stop flight, so naturally when we landed early, Mom's suitcase was missing. I don't think that had happened to us before, but it turned out to not to be a huge deal; it was back to us by the time we finished dinner.


We ate at John's Grill, which was a setting in The Peregrine Falcon novel. We were too tired and full to do anything else, so that concluded day one.

I know, I'm a million years behind my promised travel posts, but I'd rather tell those stories with pictures, which I haven't finished sorting yet.... So we'll take a detour down the book binding lane because it was AWESOME (and I have crappy phone pictures).

My professor has a studio we were required to visit this Saturday. There she had a guest show us the awesome art of hand-binding books in a workshop so that we may do so for a project we will have at the end of the semester. She had done the hard part and cut out all the papers and covers we would need to the right size. We just had to start by folding sets of three papers in half. Each set of three pages folded is called a signature, and we ended up with eight signatures.

We then took a sewing pattern and poked holes through the paper, one signature at time. Next, we took book-binding thread and sewed each signature one at a time (after getting a little wax in the picture on it), following the pattern, and tying special knots (paller and keller) at the end of each signature. Down the middle, we cut three 3 inch stripes of book tape (or ribbon with iron-on glue on the back) that we sewed around to attach them.

Another type of paper was used for the end pages that are glued on once the signatures are sewn. One end page is glued to the first page, and the other is glued to the last. If the end pages have a texture or patter, it
should be folded to the inside.

Pressure should be applied at this point while the glue dries. It also is important because the PVC glue should be brushed onto the spine and needs to dry under pressure.

Cover paper was also provided, and it was coated with PVC and glued to the cardboard for the front and back covers. A jig (double the width of the cover) was used to trim the corners in order to fold the edges of the cover paper over onto the inside of the cover. The other side of the end paper was coated with PVC and attached to the covers.

After that, all that was left was ironing on the book tapes and putting the book in a book clamp for about a day.

The result:

an awesome, tiny, one-of-a-kind, hand-made book full of empty pages. Now what to fill it with? And can I possibly repeat this process on my own without disaster striking?