Our San Francisco Adventure

Today, my CPS friends (Alice, Haley, Hannah, Niki, Rachel & Vanessa (we missed you Rori!)) and I went all over San Francisco on a "tourist adventure". We started out at Rockridge at 10:30 this morning, and I drove to SF in my van for the first time in over a year and a half. I've never really liked driving to the city, but for my friends, I'd do almost anything, so it was fun. It was nice to explore SF since I actually don't really know it well at all. I'm so glad my friends and I got together today because it's great to reconnect with everyone. I've missed my friends since we've gone to college! I'm glad everyone seems pretty happy for the most part. When we come together, everything falls right back into place, like we never really were apart. (If this post is too long for you to read, you can just look at the pictures. I'll understand).

Niki, Rachel, Vanessa, Haley, Alice, Hannah and Me outside the Ferry Building

We went to the Ferry building first. Haley and Vanessa got a few macaroons and other goodies. We tasted samples of apple cinnamon butter and lemon-y butter on bread, and browsed a bit. We went to the small market across the street by Embarcadero center. I'm so glad we drove because otherwise, we would have spent $49 total for 7 of us on BART and couldn't have gotten around easily. This way, we had to pay only a few quarters each for parking the whole time and a few bucks for gas! much better :)

We then drove to Chinatown. There was no parking so we parked on a street off Columbus St. Great spotting friends! It was a 1 hour parking meter so we kept going back to add money, but that's ok! We ate at a dim sum restaurant and had yummy food such as gailan, snow pea shoots (dou miao), hao gao, dofu hua, jin diu (with red bean inside. Hannah really liked these :)), seaweed, bbq pork buns, chicken buns, shrimp noodles, etc. Great meal for $8.50 each!! I was really silly to bring a salad. I always carry extra food with me (salad, orange and apple this time) just in case I get hungry, and I thought i'd bring romaine lettuce and caesar dressing for lunch just in case. But no. Dim sum was much better!!

Everywhere we went we kept smelling pizza!! mmm. Probably because we were near or in North Beach for a lot of the time by the Italian District. It's a bit strange to me how the Chinatown and Little Italy areas always seem to be right next to each other! I noticed that in New York when I went there with Dad a few weeks ago too.

 Exquisite Cake shop that we passed

We then went trekked up to the Coit Tower. I've never seen or noticed it before. Rachel says it's like a fire hydrant, which I guess it looks like. We kept trying to take pictures of the beautiful SF scenery but sadly, it was too foggy or smoggy. We walked around the ground floor and looked at the murals on the walls of farmers working on orange farms, packing apricots, etc.

Coit Tower

 

Us in front of the Golden Gate Bridge

(which you sadly can't see b/c of fog)

We then went back down to Columbus Street, visited City Lights Bookstore. I looked into a SF tour book all about free things you can do in SF. I learned that SF MOMA, de Young Museum, the Conservatory of Flowers, and a few other places are free on the first Tuesday of every month! Cal Academy of Science and other places are free on the third Wednesday or something, and places on other days are free too. Very cool.

Next, we went to Tutti Melon since Haley wanted a frozen yogurt :). I tried the Mango and Pomegranate. They're yummy. Haley got a 1/2 mango, 1/2 pomegranate one, with flavored mochi. I believe Hannah and Alice got mango and Niki got the original. Rachel and Vanessa were holding out for pastries at Stella's. Mmm pastries!! But... unfortunately... Stella's was closed! So we went to their sister pastry shop Victoria's but they didn't have the specialties that enticed V or Rachel, so we decided just to head to Golden Gate Park.

I knew driving in the city was hectic, but today I was reminded of how crazy it is. It definitely takes concentration driving there! I had be constantly alert to people walking, see if the light was going to change, etc. But it was fun hearing the chatter of my friends in the car, and hear the songs "Tik Tok," "Telephone," "Use Somebody," "Evacuate the dance floor," repeatedly on the radio... haha. Right now I have the lyrics from "Tik Tok" stuck in my head. "Wake up every morning feeling like P Diddy..."

I'm glad my friends knew more or less how to get to the park because I had no idea. We overshot it a bit, but that's ok. We finally reached the park, and drove around inside it looking for the Japanese tea garden. It was nice to see the scenery since it's so beautiful in there. We ended up finding 4 hour parking right outside the Conservatory of Flowers! I don't think I've ever been in there, but it's really neat.

Us in front of the Conservatory of Flowers

 

I like the little exhibit at the end with the toy trains and the miniature SF model. (Ready? Alert: Tangent! I had a satisfying granny smith apple after the conservatory. I love granny smith apples! I used to love sweet fuji apples, but now I really like the tangy-ness of green apples! It's weird how your tastes change. I used to like milk chocolate, but now I'm like dad and love dark. Strange, but still good!)

After the Conservatory of Flowers, we decided to walk to the Tea Garden. We passed by the de Young Museum. There's a King Tut exhibit there now. Just in case you were interested. When we got to the Tea Garden, we were sad to see that there was a $7 admissions fee for non-SF residents or members or something. You can get in free on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays during the open seasons from 9:30-10:30 am though. Oh well. We ended up going into the de Young museum for 15 minutes. I felt bad that we couldn't stay longer, but I also wanted to miss as much of rush hour as possible. So we went back to the car and headed back at 4 pm. I haven't driven on the bay bridge since they'd made the S curve, so it was interesting. After a bit of rush hour traffic, we reached the other side of the bridge at 4:30, and decided to go to Oakland Chinatown for a bit pearl/bubble tea! We went to Sweet booth. Vanessa got a hot ginger pearl tea, Rachel got a hot thai pearl tea and Haley got a coconut pearl drink. They were all very yummy :). I know cuz my friends were generous enough to let us taste them! After our drinks, we headed back to rockridge and headed our separate ways.

 Us at Sweet Booth!

I love how most of our travels revolve around food. This is great cuz I love food and think about it a lot, which you probably know if you know me. Ahh such goodness.

What a great adventure. We packed a lot into 7 hours! Well done friends :). So now, our future expeditions will include exploring the Sibley mazes at the junction between Skyline Blvd and Snake, and have a picnic there when it's sunny. We also hope to explore other areas of SF in the future too. Get pumped!