It felt very strange to find myself in San Francisco at Christmas time. I usually travel out of the country as soon as my Christmas vacation from school begins.

This year, though, our international travel was very close to home: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

We traveled on Christmas Day when it was just pouring down rain all day from San Francisco all the way up north in Seattle, Washington.

As to be expected, the mass was very well attended. In fact there was hardly a seat available for all churchgoers.

After the mass, the church remained open for a little while and we decided to take pictures of its interiors.

Unlike in previous years, Christmas decorations were put up late this year inside the church. At least, that's how I remembered it. Anyway, this is how the altar looked that night.

After leaving church, many of the streets were deserted. However, Marc and I decided to walk up and down Grant Street, Chinatown's main street to look at the stores and see their Christmas decors if they had any at all.

Shortly thereafter, we headed home walking up the usual steep hills. We passed by The Stanford Court Hotel on California Street and we didn't realize it had decorative lights that changed colors every few minutes. The hotel façade did look very nice and colorful.

We crossed the street and ended up in the Fairmont. We took a quick look inside to see if there were any celebrations held. There were lots of people in the lobby.

We ended up at the Episcopalian Grace Cathedral, the chicest church in all of San Francisco. If there was a church or catherdral or basilica where people always dressed very well when attending mass, this cathedral was it. A concert was scheduled a few minutes after we arrived. There were lots of people already seated and waiting for the Christmas concert to begin. We left and got ready for our trip early Christmas morning. I shall blog about the Grace Cathedral later.