Hey all!
I’m heading up to SF this afternoon for the Irish language immersion weekend. I’m really excited (and a little nervous!) Three days of intensive learning with teachers from Donegal (and on Sunday we even get to have Mass in Irish!). And sessions every evening (not just dance music, but singing and poetry as well). Next best thing to a weekend at Oideas Gael!
See y’all Sunday evening!
Audrey
::C&F claxon blaring frantically::
Alert! Alert! Red has a life!
Well…I’m not sure. I’m going to play Irish music and to speak Irish, and to socialize with people who do the same. Whereas what I do most of the time is…er…play Irish music, WRITE in/about Irish, and socialize (albeit on the internet) with people who do the same.
I think it will be pretty much my usual weekend, only without all the typing!
Redwolf
Naw!!! It’s all different if you can see 'em.
You mean real people? As in 3D? Oh dear… 
Redwolf
San Francisco was my favourite US city when I was on a trip there a few years back. It had haar (coastal fog) and made me feel at home. Everywhere else was just hot and sticky, or in the case of Vegas, hot, sticky and expensive.
You didn’t find San Francisco expensive? 
To be honest I didn’t notice that anywhere was particuarly expensive apart from Vegas, which I hated. Although that may have been because I was still under 21 and couldn’t actually do anything.
SF was just ace and seemed to have an excellent cheap public transport system and lots of affordable tourist things for us to do.
I grew up, well from I was 5 until 14, in San Francisco so look on it as home in many ways. Even when we moved out of the city we only went 25 miles north so that was like having the best of both worlds; being in the country but having the city close by. I always feel sorry for tourists who I’ve seen wandering down Market St. with map in hand because in many ways that can be one seedy street with even seedier areas close at hand. I think the expensive part can come about for tourists who stay at some of the nicer hotels…I have neighbors where I live now, 100 miles from S.F. who were new to California themselves and after being here a couple of years were going to show their German relatives the sights; Fisherman’s Wharf etc. and then planned on staying in a hotel in downtown S.F. before heading up the coast the next day. After driving around the block about 5 times looking for a parking place they said to heck with it and ventured over the Golden Gate Bridge and ended up, as they told me later, in a place called Stinson Beach (formerly known to me as my back yard) where they saw a little motel right off the beach and checked in. The next morning they had breakfast and walked along the beach, stayed a few hours before driving north. I told them their chance change of plans couldn’t have worked out better if they had planned it. They even got off season rates at the motel there. I was glad they avoided getting sucked into the S.F. tourist vortex all from not being able to find a space at the parking garage.
San Francisco is an amazing city. Enjoy yourself. Maybe take a walk down down the Haight.