Surviving San Francisco – Day Two

     After seeing his beloved cars, we made the trek into San Francisco.

     Our Airbnb place is in a town called Walnut Creek, which by BART (the metro) and Bus, it’s about a 40-minute ride from San Francisco. So after seeing the Astons, we walked to BART and made our way into the city.

     We arrived in San Francisco just in time for brunch, so we made our way to Mazarine Coffee. This place was delicious! I had a latte and Belgian-style waffle; no syrup needed and that’s saying something since syrup is my third love (after Matthew and butter). Matthew had an Americano and Basil/Ricotta/Tomato Toast. Now, you may be thinking, “Toast? Like … toast, really?” Ohhhhhh ye of little faith. Try to expand that imagination of yours and then look at the photo below this paragraph.

Matthew’s “toast”

     After brunch, we made our way to Union Square. I’m not really sure what I was expecting, but I was expecting more than what we saw. The center of the square had a tall monument with loads of open space surrounding it where people could sit, eat and enjoy the weather.

     I thought the coolest parts of the square were the buildings around it … Macy’s (which we couldn’t help but visit after we looked through their windows and saw their top floor was Christmas heaven), Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany & Co. and Apple (which we visited later).

     Next on our list was Chinatown. Hmmm … how can I describe Chinatown? Mainly it was filled with neat buildings, but we did come across a little shop with some interesting things. We originally thought we’d just eat lunch in Chinatown. I mean, it just seemed like the best idea, until we actually saw Chinatown.

     It just seemed untrustworthy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for hole-in-the-wall places that look horrible, but their food tastes amazing, buuuuut this seemed sketchy. So we opted for going back into the financial district to get lunch at a Nepalese place called Bini’s Kitchen.

     Let me tell you a little something about Bini’s Kitchen: Scrumpdillyicious. Yes, that is a real word. The experts at urbandictionary.com say so.

Chicken Curry with rice and turkey momos.

Our next stop was a big one: Golden Gate Bridge.
We’d been walking all morning, so we hopped on the bus to head toward Fort Point. There are few things in life where you just stand in awe and this was definitely one of them. I swear in every photo I took, the bridge easily looks like it was photoshopped in because it just looks too perfect. I’m still not over it.

After spending some time with all the other tourists at Fort Point, we decided to make our way down to Crissy Field, which is this big open grassy area where you can sit back and look at the beauty that is the Golden Gate Bridge. On our way to the field, we stopped at a pier. Once again, a beautiful view of the bridge, but also a great location to spot a couple seals in the water.

After seeing everything there was to see at the pier and Crissy Field, we started thinking about heading back into the bigger part of the city for the GoCar Tours. Well, in order to get where we wanted to be, we would’ve had to hike all the way back up to Fort Point to catch a bus. We quickly decided that wasn’t an option our feet were willing to let us make, so we unanimously voted on Uber.
What an excellent decision.:)
It was our first Uber experience and it went very well and was much faster than the 30-minute bus ride back into town.
Our Uber took us straight to the GoCar Tours, which we found out had just stopped running for the day. Big bummer, but nothing to get too sad about when we had fish and chips on our minds.
Alyssa has a friend who told her about a place with great lobster rolls and fish and chips. We knew we wanted to have fish and chips while in San Francisco, so we started our very long walk to Woodhouse Fish Co.
Now, do you remember those stories your parents told you that included the line, “We walked (in the snow) uphill both ways …”? I’m pretty sure whoever was the first to coin that phrase (minus the snow part) grew up in San Francisco because WOW. We had hills coming at us from every direction. I’m pretty sure Siri wanted us to have the full experience of San Francisco because she had us climbing hills so steep that we almost called another Uber just to drive us up them. *Note: For those of you who read our first blog posts from Seattle, you might remember us talking about a hill that Matthew said (and still says) I tried to kill him on by making him climb it. Well, the hills from today were that hill times 10.

Sunset on our walk to dinner.

A million hours later, we finally made it to our destination without keeling over.
Do you remember me saying Bini’s Kitchen was “scrumpdillyicious”? Ha. Ha. Ha. That was child’s play compared to Woodhouse Fish Co. I’ll just throw this out there … it was better than the fish and chips we had in London. For those of you who know just how much we loved everything about London, you know by that last statement just how good this place was.

Yuuuummmmm

     Now that I’ve written an entire book about our day, I think it’s time to sign off.
We’re loving San Francisco. The atmosphere, architecture and liveliness of this city has definitely not disappointed and we’ve only just finished day two.

     *Note: I apologize for any errors, my editor has fallen asleep. [insert FRIENDS reference here]