Part 1
San Fransisco
Day 1
San Fransisco
T’was a particularly quick plane ride to California for me (and I think Judy) as I had worked the night before and went straight home to pick up my stuff so Josh could drop me off at Newark airport. The five hours, most of which I spent asleep, flew by. We landed at around 4PM, breathing in the crisp western air. Damn. I really thought I’d be leaving the cold back in NYC.
A stop to the nearest Avis left us with the Kia that would bring us all the way to LA and parts in between.
With our newfound driving freedom, we drove to the Marriot Marquis and dropped off our stuff before rushing out to see the Painted Ladies. If you ever watched Full House, this one’s for you! Being here made me feel like I was truly seeing America for the first time. Watching sitcoms of All-American families as a child in the city really made me feel like I was in a different country altogether – turns out I was just in the wrong state.
On another note, it’s kind of crazy how much people warn about car break-ins in San Fran. For how dense NYC is, I’ve never heard of that being a huge problem… or maybe we’re just vigilant about hiding our belongings already. We decided to just uber everywhere for the rest of the day, as this area was particularly known for break-ins too (at least from what I read on online forums).
At this point we were fighting with daylight to squeeze in a few sights before the forecasted rain the next day. The next stop was the Twin Peaks, though we didn’t actually hike up the hill cause it was so damn cold! Walking from the uber to just past the barrier in the road was good enough.
Our uber driver was quite the character though – a young guy, probably in his 20s. We asked him if he could recommend any restaurants in the area and his response was “Yeah, there’s a lot of great restaurants here, the food’s really good, you definitely have to go to the restaurants in the area.”
The silence was palpable.
What kind of answer was that??
Then he asked us what else we were doing for the trip and offered to drive us all the way to Los Angeles. Like we’d trust anyone who couldn’t even tell us where to eat!
No thanks to the uber driver, we found Death by Taco, which was pretty close to our hotel. The margs were so good, but it was actually comical how the server insisted that the tacos were “bigger than your average” and that we were trying to order too much. He might’ve been right about the ordering too much (cause I was already so full of chips and dip) but the tacos were literally regular size. At least they were tasty.
We took an uber back to the hotel to sleep for our only full day in San Fran.
Day 2
San Fransisco
Our first stop of the day was Plow, located near some really nice houses on Potrero Hill. It’s a well-reviewed brunch place — so good that the wait was about an hour. We decided to just grab some snacks at the nearby corner store and call an uber to a restaurant recommended to us by our uber driver that morning (he was definitely more trustworthy).
Brenda’s French Soul Food — we devoured those shrimp & grits. There was also a wait for this place but it wasn’t as long, and it looked to be a bigger place. It’s safe to say we were full soul food.
We walked to the San Francisco City Hall so we could gain some energy again and luckily it was just around the corner.
San Fransisco City Hall
The real MVP on this trip was a tripod that Josh had gifted me for my birthday. It’s so lightweight and actually extends pretty tall. We used it throughout the whole trip.
We proceeded to spend about an hour at target, grabbing snacks and supplies for our drive the next day. Also alcohol. It’s always surprising when alcohol is readily available at Target or corner stores.
Then back to the hotel we went so we could get dressed (I put some makeup on cause the eye bags were bagging) and practiced a tiktok dance that Juhee and Judy had found.
It was about 4pm when we decided to go get coffee at Philz in the Embarcadero center. We really went on Judy’s friend’s recommendation to get the mint mojito coffee, but it wasn’t that great lol… At least we found a trolley station a block away. Unfortunately we had to download some app and buy a ticket and this that and the fourth just to catch a ride, so these pictures of us standing outside of the trolley will have to do.
San Francisco
Chinatown
We were so lucky that it didn’t rain that much this day, cause we were able to roam around Chinatown and actually stop by the Dragon Gate. There were a lot of cute shops and also some not so cute ones, like the camera store that tried to sell me Ektar 100 for $24 per roll!!! WTF.
We had some great pork buns at least.
Ahh, Lombard Street. This was one of the places I actually knew about other than the Golden Gate bridge. We were here around 6PM, so it was a little crowded both people and car wise. I also found out how out of shape I was when we had to climb all the stairs back up the street.
Since it was so packed, we resolved to just come back in the morning before we left for Los Angeles.
Palace of Fine Arts
I had no idea this place existed before coming here but it was gorgeous. Obviously, a lot of other people thought so too. There was a plethora of photoshoots going on, from bridal to prom, including our little tripod shoot. We walked around for a bit, taking some photos and enjoying the scenery, but we only had so much sunlight left for our next stop.
Golden Gate View Point
The sunset was getting closer and closer now at 7 o’clock, but I think we came at the perfect time. We stopped by the Golden Gate view point first. There were a couple signs telling people not to leave any belongings in the car to prevent break-ins, so we moved all our stuff to the trunk before leaving.
Battery Spencer
This was, without a doubt, the best view of the Golden Gate bridge. It was completely unobstructed and maybe a little bit dangerous if you weren’t paying attention. Some people even climbed down to a better view in an area that had no barriers at all, but we didn’t take the chance. Where we were was perfect for group photos and we ended up there at the perfect time.
We were at Battery Spencer for quite a while before we left for dinner, passing by the Palace of Fine Arts on the way. Just when you think it couldn’t get any more gorgeous, you see it in its nightly glory. There were quite a bit of photographers settled in front of us, I guess taking some long exposure photos. I think we were too hungry for that so we left after snapping a few pics.
Dinner was at this wonderful restaurant only 15 minutes from our hotel – Burma Love. This was one of the best restaurants we went to during this trip. I’ve never had Burmese food before (it was reminiscent of Thai I’d say). We shared the beef curry, pork with mustard greens, honey chili wings, and garlic shrimp, and we each got different cocktails.
We definitely wanted to stop by a bar in SF, so our next stop was Novela. It was a dimly lit bar with a large wall of books and a ratio of Asian people that I hadn’t seen since the last time I went to Krush in NYC’s Ktown. We had a couple of drinks before we left to rest for a long day of driving.
