A Perfectly Beautiful Saturday

After an incredibly grueling week, we were given a perfectly beautiful Saturday as a gift from heaven. Since I was up early, I headed to the pool, while my husband got some well deserved rest. Swimming always seems to help me feel better physically, and while I've set myself a six month goal of 50 miles in the pool, I'm not trying to be insane about this. But up I was and so I went swimming.

It's hilarious to me to see some of these young guys at the pool, who are in the medium lane when they should be in the fast lane. They thrash and flail and try to look as impressive as they can while they are swimming but some of them aren't much on endurance. I'm not built for speed, but I am growing in strength. One of these fellows looked at me in amazement when I kept going easily after he stopped. Who knew I'd ever be able to do anything like this?

It was a gorgeous sunny day, and very warm here in San Francisco, and after our breakfast, we took our walk by the water. Practically everyone had the same idea--it's warm, let's hit the beach! In addition there was a community beach cleanup event and the ROTC kids from Balboa high school were marching together with their advisers. In short, people were everywhere! Thankfully, Steve's parking karma kicked in so we easily found a spot, and it wasn't long before we were sitting at the top, at the Land's end overlook, with a gorgeous view of the Golden Gate bridge. We talked and people watched and then Steve surprised me.

We drove towards Half Moon Bay, and Steve borrowed a great idea from our friend Bill--we went to the Fitzgerald Marine Preserve to see the tide pools. We hadn't been there since our kids were young and it sounded perfect to me. Beautiful weather, clear skies and warm, too. We didn't time it properly so the tide pools were covered with water, but in the water, playing around were a bunch of seals. They were having a great time, and we were enjoying their antics a great deal, when our friends found their way to the marine preserve and we got to hang out with them a little while.

Our stomach clocks had gone off, so we decided to continue our drive, but got as far as Princeton by the Sea, and saw that the road to Half Moon Bay was clogged with traffic. Not our idea of a good time. So.... we turned into Princeton by the sea and we found that the fishing boats were in. We did a little exploring and ended up seeing some beautiful, fresh Dover Sole. Someone asked the guys on the boat if they had been up since early in the morning. "We've been up for three days!," one of them said, flashing a big grin.

Oh those fish were beautiful. So beautiful that we were suddenly thinking of dinner. We picked out a beautiful Dover Sole and the guys bagged it up for us with ice. Then we walked it over to this place where they will clean your fish and fillet it for you for a mere $3.00. That's definitely a bargain as far as I am concerned. Cleaning fish is a really messy business, and would put you off actually eating fish unless you had a strong constitution. So with our prize fillets in hand, we made our way home. We both were glad that this particular fish didn't "just keep swimming."
It was the best fish I've had in a very long time, and certainly the freshest. This might turn my husband into a fish lover!