Sarcasm with a side of optimism.

I (heart) SF

We're finally back after a short (but awesome) vacation in San Francisco. Here's a photo recap to make up for all the recent text-heavy posts.

Our trip started out with an uneventful 5 hour flight and a car upgrade since Hertz was out of economy vehicles. It was hard not to giggle when the clerk asked, "Is a Nissan Xterra OK with you?" Oh my god. I need I need I need. I want I want I want. It looks pretty much the same as my Xterra but the engine is so much better. As in, when you push down on the gas, the car actually moves.

Then we checked into our hotel. I started to get nervous when we saw motel after motel after cheap motel on the strip our hotel was on. The hotel was ranked highly in the Days Inn world (whatever that means), probably by Serbian refugees who are now hotel critics. We were there for a total of ten minutes. "Hello? Hampton Inn? Do you have any rooms available? Great, we'll be there in 10 minutes." We checked in at 12:30 SF time which was 3:30am for us, so you can imagine after a full day of work + Craig's mishap with the car + travel + hotel screw up, we passed out.

We woke up Friday morning a little groggy, but ready to explore the city. We went to the de Young museum in Golden Gate Park. It was an interesting space with a very eclectic collection of pieces covering all periods. The museum opened on Oct 15th, so it was pretty crowded still, even a month later! I don't have any photos because I forgot my stupid camera battery in my luggage. Craig had his camera, but it was running out of batteries. He did manage to snap this photo in the park though:

It was overcast and misting that whole day. Despite this, the park was still very serene and beautiful. There weren't very many people out in the park so we had it to ourselves. We made a mental note to return to the park on a nicer day if we had time. Then, we went back to the car to go for a drive around the neighborhoods to scout out what we wanted to do later. At least, that was the plan. Leaving Golden Gate Park, we headed to Haight-Ashbury, which is the same thing as St.Marks Place/8th Street in NYC, but in a single uninterrupted strip. It looked OK, nothing to scream about. We were going to skip it altogether but at a 4-way stop, I noticed a Prelude like Craig's so made a left even though he suggested the opposite. We parked in front of someone's driveway for a second to jump out and take a quick photo. Turns out the Prelude was the same exact one that Craig saw last year when he was in SF. Go figure!

When we returned to the car, the legally parked car behind us pulled out. Hooray for parking! We then took a quick walk up the strip and had supposedly authentic pizza at Escape from NY (pizzeria) and guess what- it was pretty authentic! Then, we headed to Chinatown. Again, we intended for it to be a drive-by, but we found a meter, and since it was a holiday, parking was free! It turns out that we were right around the corner from where my great-grandmother used to live. She passed away in 1995 at the ripe old age of 95. Even though she was old, she was sharp as a tack, and slightly eccentric. She was in fair health, but then decided that she didn't want to live anymore and it went downhill from there. She threw a huge banquet for the family in '95 because she "wasn't going to be around for much longer" and she was right. It was sad to see her go since my grandmother had passed away in 1989, so the old-school chinese lineage was no more. It was very weird to be there again. Time moves on. It was like she never existed.

SF Chinatown is very different from NYC Chinatown. The streets are NOT lined with fake merchandise. The fakes I did manage to find were 3x the price of the (same) ones found on Canal Street. This Chinatown was big on upscale junk shops for the more distinguished yuppified consumer. If you thought Pearl River was fancy on Broadway, you should see some of these "boutiques" with the same junk. I found a Ten Ren so I was happy. I bought xmas gifts for some friends and they're going to LOVE it! (I was pretty excited.) Craig bought a Mercedes, unfortunately it's 1/200 scale or something like that. After walking that stretch, we went back to the hotel. Yawn.

Later that evening, we met up with a high school friend of mine. More details on that later.

The next day, we slept in and woke up finally feeling refreshed. We opted for the scenic tour and went to a viewpoint for the Golden Gate, then continued to Muir Woods then Point Reyes. That day was amazing. California really is a beautiful place, and better yet, to experience all of it with Craig was simply incredible. At certain moments, I wished time could stand still.

Continuing up the coast, we headed to Muir Woods. The drive up Hwy 1 was very scenic. Muir Woods is a gigantic forest of redwoods. I've never seen a redwood up close before. They are so massive you feel like an extra in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. It was weird to think about just how old the trees were. If you think about it long enough, you start feeling small and insignificant.


By this point, it was already 3:30pm. We left and made our way to Point Reyes. One thing we forgot is that Hwy 1 is so curvy that even though it's only say, 20 miles away, driving that distance in a giant SUV takes an hour. We made it just in time for sunset. Words don't do it justice.



On the way back, we saw a banana slug. My hand is in the photo for scale. One word can sum it up: Ew.


The next installment coming soon. Gotta get back upstairs!

posted by v @ 8:53 AM