validation please

I just got back from San Francisco. I went there for a work conference (which was fabulous, by the way) and extended my trip through the weekend and into Tuesday of this week to visit with a dear friend (Tami) and her family. The weather was pretty crummy until my last two days which were spent in beautiful Napa and in the actual city. On my last night, we went to Fisherman's Wharf for dinner. I really wanted to pick up some sourdough bread to bring back with me. We headed to Boudin's as they make excellent bread and was actually featured on Food Network (LOVE Food Network!). I purchased my supply and we ended up eating dinner there. Tami had clam chowder and I had the chili. Very good.

We then took our parking ticket to get validated. To our disappointment Boudin's didn't validate. With that, we decided to set out to find a place that did. Parking was $2.00 for every 30 minutes. Highway robbery, I tell ya! We had to find validation! We first stopped at the chocolate store. We made some purchases, and then asked about validation. No such luck. Apparently, only the "fancier" (quotation marks added) restaurants provided such a break. We continued to walk up and down the street to look for places that validated. Our clever idea was to stop at another restaurant and to just order dessert in order to secure validation. The first place we stopped at didn't validate. Lucky for us, we asked before we were seated. We moved on. Finally, we spotted a "fancier" restaurant and walked in.

The view was fantastic. The lighting was dim, atmosphere quiet (save the old timey music in the background--perhaps it was Senior Night?), and we were over the water. It would have been very romantic had I been with a man. (sigh) We asked about validation as we were being seated and thankfully, they did! Yay! But then....we opened the menu.

Of course they validated! Everything was so expensive. We went through several menu options and decided the nicest thing to do would be to order a salad and a dessert to share. Even with that order we were embarrassed. I'm sure the waiter was a little dissapointed...especially when we asked for just water. But we ordered that still the same. The salad was delicious, as was the dessert. Sadly, because we were really full from the last meal we had eaten less than 30 minutes ago, we left much of the salad and even a portion of the dessert still on our plates. But at least we got validated, right?

Well, yes and no.

Our "free parking" ended up costing us $24.00. Had we just paid the dumb parking, we would have only dished out maybe $8.00. It didn't even occur to either one of us that we were taking the more expensive route! It just goes to show that those seeking validation do the weirdest things...