When I was a child, we spent Thanksgiving in perfectly-appointed, sprawling family homes, eating lavish spreads of gourmet food culled from my mother's pristine cooking magazines, the air laced with the criss-crossed counterpoint of football games in the family room and Christmas carols in the kitchen. 

Now most of us are divorced and living in condos, so we go to San Francisco!

We are experienced San Francisco travelers, and my brother lives there, so our visits are like the Deep Cuts iTunes compilations. That said, we still love to revisit and rediscover SF's greatest hits. I should add that two members of the family--my almost-four-year-old son and 65-year-old mother--are known to completely shift their likes and dislikes on a yearly basis, such that we have to keep updating our itinerary to accommodate their ever-morphing tastes.

We are a family of eaters, art-lovers (but only for an hour, then we get hungry), culture-appreciators, movie lovers, shoppers, and able-bodied walkers. With that in mind, here are our favorite stops (in no particular order) from this year's San Francisco Thanksgiving, Esposito-Style. 

The Walt Disney Family Museum

Nestled in a sprawling campus in the Presidio sits the Walt Disney Family Museum. Like all things Disney, they got pretty much everything about this place right.

The main museum exhibit traces Walt Disney's trajectory from Irish forbears and stark midwest roots through grit to canonization; the special exhibit, the city-wide banners for which lured us here, features the transcendent American artist, Evyind Earle. 

Our first stop--the first for anyone with a child--was the basement potty. Inside, we found two kid-height sinks, which, for anyone who's sick of hoisting their kid up to dirty bathroom counters, is a not insignificant pleasure. Next to the bathroom was Declan's favorite part of the whole museum: an intricate model of the trains at Walt Disney's Carolwood estate. The trains, the bathroom, and the gift shop are all accessible without paying admission--further proving that children tend to prefer the packaging to the thing itself. 

For Declan, it was all downhill from here. But, for the adults in the group, things were about to get exponentially better. First: Awaking Beauty: The Art of Eyvind Earle. Earle is responsible for the look and feel of some of Disney's most iconic early features--including, most notably, the attenuated elegance of Sleeping Beauty. But he was also a poet, a greeting-card maker, and an accomplished landscape artist with an affinity for the rugged beauty of California. I adore his paintings and I'm desperate to paper my new apartment with his prints--which are only available as pricey, high-quality serigraphs. Eep.

Finally, we raced through the main exhibit on borrowed pre-nap time. Sans four-year-old, we could have lingered much longer--but we were still able to get the point: Walt Disney was that rare combination of dreamer and doer; master and visionary. His quasi-delusional refusal to heed setbacks and belief that anything is possible are a shining validation of my own Sagittarian viewpoint. For all you dreamers who tire of hearing the word "dreamer" used as an epithet: a trip through the Walt Disney exhibit should silence even the gloomiest naysayer in your life or heart.

The California Academy of Sciences

Previous visits to the California Academy of Sciences evoke memories of butterflies, and fear. Many will be delighted to learn that you can walk through the rainforest exhibit and experience the--wonder?--of live butterflies hovering around you, frolicking in the humid biosphere. I, on the other hand, have been perennially terrified that a hairy, thick-bodied, antenna'ed butterfly would get trapped in my hair, driving me to madness. Indeed, my practice has been to hold a jacket over my head and crouch my way through the exhibit in a perpetual flinch.

But now I am a mother and I must model bravery. Therefore, the first thing we did when we got inside? Butterflies.

This time I wasn't scared of the butterflies. But it was hard to be scared of a few winged insects when Declan kicked off the exhibit by running away from me. After I recovered from that heart-stopping, fugue-state experience of thinking I would never see my child again, I would have let a whole crowd of butterflies nest in my hair.

Other things we enjoyed about the science center included the intermittent "snow" in the main gallery, the penguin photo op, the seemingly never-ending aquarium, the dinosaur bones...

...and the living roof! Man, that thing is fascinating. I can't decide if it's beautiful or grotesque--but its technology is probably going to be instrumental in saving the world Declan inherits, so I think I'll settle on beautiful.

A Streetcar Named Cream Cheese (and Other Trains)

On Thanksgiving Day itself, before we headed over to the Duboce Triangle for Declan's uncles' culinary showcase, we were briefly waylaid by the misapprehension that we would take Declan on the Powell Street Cable Car. DO NOT fall for this. Yes, the cable car is adorable. Yes, it is featured in the credit sequence for Full House, and yes you will look great hanging off the back with the wind in your hair. But you will also wait two hours in a line on Market Street, which means that by the time you get on the cable car you will be so steeped in cigarette smoke and piss that you'll wish you'd, as Dave Coulier was wont to say, cut. it. out.

And why take the Powell Street Cable Car when you can take one of San Francisco's historic streetcars? We caught the F line's Philly Cream Cheese--built in 1947, named after the Philadelphia Cream Cheese Company, and all shined up like a new penny. You can't hang off the back of it, but keep in mind: the best streetcar photos aren't taken by a friend who's on the streetcar with you, and, unless you're a Kardashian, you probably don't have a camera crew in tow. So congratulations: you just saved yourself two hours. Get off at Fisherman's Wharf and have one of those chowder bread bowls at Boudin. 

If you can't find the streetcars, or you don't have the time or inclination to ride them--a category in which I placed myself before my son was born--you might just take San Francisco's Muni. In fact, I'm not sure Declan enjoyed the Muni any less than the streetcar; he may have liked it more, what with the seductive potential dangers of either falling on the tracks and being electrocuted or being "taken away" by the homeless men living by the ticket machine. (Two fears my mom successfully programmed into him.)

San Francisco International Auto Show

There isn't much to say about the San Francisco International Auto Show at the Moscone Center. It features men milling around stroking their chins, vehicles, attractive women talking about vehicles, men looking at the attractive women talking about vehicles, and, somewhat oddly, a row of police exhibitors peddling little knickknacks (presumably to resurrect public opinion about law enforcement). Declan liked the Audis, the BMW 7 series, and the green fidget spinner from the Sacramento Police Department. I also enjoyed the BMWs, especially the M and 7 series, and the Alfa Romeos, because they are Italian and seem old-fashioned.  

A final note: for some of the best Instagrammable holiday photo ops, don't miss the Sugar Castle and Enchanted Castle in the lobby of the Westin St. Francis in Union Square. Even if you stay elsewhere, you can always make a cameo. Here we are last year, enjoying the Christmas cheer. You'll note that, even then, Declan was running away from me.

Stay tuned for my companion post about the real focus of our trip in San Francisco: THE FOOD!