The last night

The last full day, the last night.
It's 7.45 pm and I'm sitting with my coffee from Peet's in front of a mall. Once again. The others went to eat pasta. I'm not hungry. I can cook pasta every day at home.
Billy wanted to go "home" at 6, but our host hasn't arrived yet and Susan and Meike were hungry. So where to go? To a mall, of course. There's always a food court...
So we passed through the city after our first real traffic jam over Golden Gate Bridge, left the city behind us, why stop, it's dark now, we won't see anything. God, what's that?! Unbelievable!
At 8.30 we'll meet again and that was that for today.
Tomorrow there won't be anything else than packing our suitcases and going to the airport in the "hope" to get on the plane.
I really don't want to be ungrateful. I've got too much to thank for. First of all for this trip. Without them I'd never have had the opportunity to come here!!

Today was a cloudy und quite cool day. We spent the morning at Stanford University. Interesting, huge, impressive, exclusive. If I had studied here...

From there we went straight to Japan: an All you can eat japanese buffet. Very japanese, but the food was nearly cold and unseasoned, but we got stuffed nethertheless, enough for the rest of the day.

We crossed the town to reach Muir Woods National Monument, a forrest of redwood trees. These trees are something special. After a walk through the woods we took a short look at Muir Beach before we decided to get back into town.

Uschi had planned a walk through Golden Gate Park, but after the traffic jam that took us about 45 minutes it was dark when we arrived. For them reason enough to skip the walk.

The next decision to be made was where to eat. Billy categorically said he can't park in the city and headed south, direction home, while Susan searched the navigation system for the next mall.
I don't even know where exactly I am right now, but it doesn't matter. All the malls are more ore less the same. There's one difference here: I'm looking at a tram station in front of the mall and the thought passes my mind to take the next tram, go downtown and leave them here.
Of course I won't do that.

I understand that Billy wants to spend time with his friend, but he needn't leave tomorrow. He and my sister always sleep early, but the 26-year old ladies?! What's wrong with me that I want to savor this experience until the last moment?
I'm not old and tired.
Perhaps they are just saturated, having seen so much of the world, travelled so many countries and cities. I haven't. I'm still excited and thrilled to be here.
I'm sad that tomorrow it's over. Back to every-day life, probably jet lag after 12 hours sitting in the plane lika a sardine in the can.