Day 11

Day 11:

Our day started around 7:38 with a slow morning of Blogging and Breakfast. We had a scheduled lunch with my dad's friend from college, Jason Ravitz. The thing that was a suprise to me was that he worked at the San Francisco branch of Google.

Because of this we got a great (and free) tour of the facility. Sadly, we had to sign a release form before entering saying that we couldn't take pictures of what we saw, but there was nothing about talking about it. One thing that I found interesting, was that there is, by design, a kitchen within 500 feet of every desk. There was also a soundproof recording studio. The office had its quirks. For example the names of each room were extreamly unhelpful. My dad and I talked and we believe that this is a precaution in case of a break-in.
Eventually we went to lunch, where there was a free coffeebar as well as hundreds of fresh food options. It was really cool to meet one of my dad's friends from college, especialy one who was such an interesting guy and worked at such an interesting place.

 After lunch, we decided to check out Lime Scooters. We did this because we originally wanted to try a segway tour. The problem with that is that it costs a fortune, but it's slow and very touristy. So we tried this, one dollar to unlock, and 15 cents per minute from there ... AND IT WAS AWESOME!

Their max speed was 13(ish) miles per hour, and they were light enough to carry up stairs, It was perfect and let us zoom through crowuds seamlessly.

We explored the piers and waterfront until dinner, where we went to the first dim sum place in the city, and country. 

The food was great, specifically the pork dumplings and the shrimp dumplings stood out. The shrimp popped in my mouth, it was extreamly good. The pork tricked me at first because we had ordered lamb and pork and the pork came first, but we thought it was lamb because of the taste. It melted in my mouth. 

We continued to explore Chinatown after dinner and found a few really cool shops, one where we bought tea, another where we bought a tea cup, then the final one where we bought a pendent for my mom and a bone zodiac bead for me. The bone bead is my zodiac sign, the horse, and it is made from ox bone, the eyes are made from onyx. The bead grabbed my eye originally because of its small size, and extremely ornate carvings. The legend behind the zodiac signs was that there was a great race between all of the animals on earth. The animals who won are those who make up the 12 year cycle.