Explore!

Location | Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco

The morning didn’t begin any more different than the morning before. We woke up and took the trolley to the Ferry Building where I met up with my friend, Albert. I had the best cup of latte that I’ve ever consumed at Blue Bottle. Just thinking about the wonderful smoothness of the espresso with a hint of honey and a beautiful whip of soy foam makes me so happy.

The barista made this one especially for us since we were raving about the latte.

We stood outside enjoying the coffee and looking toward Oakland. Then it was off to the Mission District. We walked down to the BART and rode it to 24th St-Mission St and went to El Farolito. Now, this may or may not be the one my friend recommended, but there was a line and it looked as if it was mainly locals. Always an excellent sign. We went in and ordered burritos, nachos, and various other goodies. It was heaven. I love Mission style burritos! The only problem was that we were so full afterwards it was hard to walk.

I <3 Burritos!

We went up to The Castro, which is a fun bustling area of SF. We walked back up to the streetcar and rode that back up to the Ferry Building. From there we walked up the Embarcadero to Pier 39 to meet up with Ngoc’s sister, Van. We then took a walk up to Coit Tower, which believe me, was not an easy walk/hike.

Coit Tower is supposed to resemble a fire hose nozzle.

After hanging out around the tower, we hopped a bus ride back down toward Lombard Street. It was a good day to take a hike apparently. I’ve driven down the street before, so it was interesting to see all the tourists taking photos and driving down the street. I wonder what the residents on the street must feel like?

We headed toward Ghiradelli Square where Ngoc and her sister indulged in some ice cream while I shopped around for stationary (I know, random). We ended up heading back to the hotel for a few minutes before walking down to meet Eric and Anna for dinner. We had a really wonderful Italian meal at Sotto Mare. Despite all of us still feeling slightly full, we completely ate our meals as if we were famished.

Eric took us to a nearby bar where we ended up playing drinking games and being obnoxiously loud. A table near us wondered what we were doing, and decided to join in on our drinking games. It was a bunch of Australians. Well 2 Australian guys, and 2 American girls they had met. Since I kept winning the drinking games… I obviously turned out fine,  but some of our other… friends, were not in such good shape.

Haha, the following conversation cracks me up:

Eric: Would you like to go with us to a Hookah bar?

Australian fellow w/ strong Australian accent: What!? A Hooker bar!?

That was amazing. They didn’t end up coming with us, but we got outside and tried to get cabs. Now, SF is nothing like NYC, so cabs are not easy to come by. The girls hopped into one and we were ALMOST to the Tenderloin district when… well let’s just say Ngoc’s sister’s stomach did not like the alcohol… and we got into a major fight with the cab driver who was screaming at us and demanding money…. it was not pretty.

The owner of the Hookah Bar saw the whole thing and told us that he’d take care of us and hook us up with some free flavors. We ended up there until around 3 or 4am when we got back to the hotel and fell into our beds exhausted.