Saturday was family day, so of naturally it was the highlight of the trip. Since we got up ridiculously early, we decided to walk to Stoli's house, which is like deciding to walk from New York to Boston. We set out through our seedy downtown neighborhood and walked up Market Street, a huge diagonal cut through the city. It's usually the quickest way between two points because of this cutting feature, but it's also usually the ugliest.



In the midst of this nondescript urban area, the massive Civic Center caught us by surprise. (Well, not really, since it's very clearly marked on the map, and I've been here before, but I'm just making the surprise part up to emphasize that it's completely unrelated to its surroundings, and to the whole city for that matter.) The Civic Center area takes up a massive amount of space-constrained San Francisco, and is a cross between the US Capitol and les Invalides in Paris. I believe it's bigger than the Capitol, and quite grand, although the litter and large number of homeless people camped out in the surrounding parks detract from the grandeur. Also, when we went it was being set up for a huge video game contest, and there were dozens of port a potties being lined up for the festivities, which again isn't a grandeur enhancing addition.