San Francisco - Friday/Saturday

San Francisco was so much fun that it requires 2 blog posts to adequately let me stuff as many pictures in as I can.

Friday
We like to start our road trips by stopping at Winco and filling bags with bulk candy - our favorites? gummi bears/sour gummy worms, yogurt pretzels, and peachies (I've been informed that they are called peach rings.). We also got strawberry and pineapple licorice this time. Definitely a good idea.

We planned to stop in Reno for dinner so that was our mental stopping point. We actually stopped over the border of California in Truckee for dinner in the Donner Pass (ironic, eh?). We went to this awesome place called Burger Me. -- I don't know if it was that we had spent 5 hours building up dinner in our minds or the long car trip, but their burgers are some of the best we've ever had. (The onion rings, too!)

Can you see Guy Fieri in the picture behind Andrew?

We got to San Francisco late and David gave us a little driving tour of the city. We got to our dumpy-looking hotel on Lombard St. wondering if it was a bad idea to stay here. We were pleasantly surprised. Everything in the rooms themselves was actually pretty nice. 

Saturday

We woke up the next morning and ate at a little cafe/diner called Home Plate. Everything we had was delicious - they had really good scones and carrot-potato pancakes. Then we went for a walk down to the Marina. 

The trees they have in the streets.

The Palace of Fine Arts. I want a house right next to this park.

At the Marina.
I'm not sure what Andrew is doing, but I thought these were funny pictures.

Our Golden Gate pictures.

Laura and Andrew had to ditch us to go a wedding, so we headed off to downtown SF.
We took the bus down to Chinatown and went in and out of tons of shops. It was cleaner than NY's Chinatown. also, they don't sell handbags the same way. NY has a lot of people coming up to you and asking "handbag, handbag, you want a handbag?" There was no one on the streets saying stuff like that in SF. Instead, when you are in the stores looking at bags, someone will come up to you  and ask you if you want to see more. SAY YES. They will take you to the back of the store and pull back a magic curtain and show you the secret hideout of shelves covered in bags.

We tried to go to a Quickly to get our fix of boba drinks but we were 15 minutes too early before it opened. So we decided to keep going and we would get one later.

We went down to the shopping area downtown - with the BIG mall. It is pretty fancy schmancy. David told me about this little chocolate place he and his companion went to on his mission, so we set off to find it. I've never spent $10 on 5 chocolates before in my life. But it was worth it. These were so delicious.

So I don't forget what we had: Anise truffle (black licorice), Caramel cup, Branchli (hazelnut), Lavendal (lavender)

We got some pizza from Blondie's and ate in Union Square.
Then we got this brilliant idea to walk over to Nob Hill and get ice cream from Swenson's and eat it while watching people drive down Lombard.  The ice cream was delicious. The walk was not. But I'm glad we did it. It was fun to see the city that way.

Lombard from the top.

At this point we were so tired, we walked the 10 blocks down the street to take a nap.
After we woke up, we caught the bus out to the west side of the city. We stopped by the church David spent lots of time at.

Then we hiked up this hill on Maraga. It is officially called Grand View Park. It had so. many. stairs.

The first half of the stairs.

You get half way up and you can see this bench:

The view was pretty amazing and worth it though.

We went to dinner at this little hole in the wall place called The Lime Tree. It had really good Indonesian food - nothing like we've eaten before. They had this roti bread with a little curry to dip into. So good.

We caught the bus out to Ocean Beach to watch the sunset.  It was the perfect day - there was no fog anywhere - and there were tons of people at the beach.

Then we went to Trader Joe's and back to the hotel. Where I pretty much fell asleep right away. After Andrew and Laura came back, the boys went and got us some late night pizza. I'll never say no to pizza. But I'm pretty sure I was only half-awake eating it because we'd walked so much.