The Golden City (Part 1)

'FRISCO <3

Our trip to San Francisco flew by just as quickly as it came. Sameer and I had booked our tickets back in April for $290/person (including taxes) round trip with Air Canada. However, any savings we might have reaped from the relatively cheap plane tickets were cancelled out completely by the stupidly expensive rates we paid for the hotel. I know hotels are expensive in San Fran, but still ...

Travel Tip: If you Google the name of an airline (works for most major airlines), you will be able to search for flight prices through Google. You can click through the price calendar to see what average flight prices are for departure on a specific day. Lower than usual flight prices will be highlighted in green on the calendar.

DAY 1

We had a 6:15 am flight from Vancouver to San Fran. It was pouring like crazy that morning, so I couldn't wait to get away from the rainy weather. The flight was only 2.5 hours (but felt more like 2.5 minutes considering we both slept the whole way through). From the airport, we decided to take the quickest, cheapest, and most direct route to our hotel using BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). It took us about 35 min to get to our hotel.

We stayed at the Pickwick Hotel, which was conveniently located by Market & 5th Street by Union Square (right by the Powell BART station). Considering that we would be using public transit for most of our trip, the location of our hotel was key. Our room wasn't ready yet when we got there, so we left our luggage with the concierge and decided to do some exploring.

Before we got too carried away, we stopped at Cafe Venue (on 5th Street) for some quick breakfast. I forgot to take pictures because I was too hungry and tired. We each ordered a plate of the Eye Opener and a cup of their organic Guatemalan coffee. Once our bellies were filled, we continued our self-guided tour of the busy streets of San Francisco ...

 Market Street & 5th Street.

Union Square.

We were so excited to be in sunny San Francisco and away from rainy Vancouver.

Initially, the idea was to take a picture of every heart that I came across. I gave up on that fairly quickly.

Since we were both recovering from a cold (AND since we woke up at 3:50 am that morning), we took it easy the first day and spent the majority of the day checking out the stores around Union Square. I must say, Union Square has to be one of the most centralized shopping areas in the world. From Macy's to Bloomingdales to Saks to Barneys to the individual stores around the Square ... you could probably find any label you're looking for, all within a couple of blocks. Sadly, we had to exercise some self-restrain as the currency exchange was not exactly optimal. 

The Cajun lobster roll and Lobster Mac & Cheese at Lobster ME.

Earlier in the day, we came across woman in an elevator who was holding a delicious-looking (I am purposely emphasizing word "looking" here) lobster sandwich. Me being me, I needed to know where she got it from. She pointed us in the direction of Westfield Mall ... and off we went. We ordered The Cajun lobster roll and the Lobster Mac & Cheese (obviously). I didn't notice the price until the cashier rang it up ... $33.60 ... yes, that's USD... and yes, WTF! Needless to say, I was a bit surprised considering we were at the food court of the mall. My only justification on their behalf was that there were some fairly large chunks of lobster. Aside from that, it was pretty disappointing overall. Neither the lobster roll or the mac and cheese tasted that great. To think of it, I don't even think there was any cheese in the mac and cheese; just cream and butter. As appealing as the picture may look ... NOT worth it.

Skip to a bit later (after a power nap and a couple more hours of walking around aimlessly) ... we had a casual dinner at our hotel's restaurant, SOMA Restaurant & Bar. To avoid getting any sicker, we called it an early night so we could be well-rested for the next several days.

On a side note, we discovered really quickly that 6th Street (south of Market St) is veryyy different than 5th Street (in a bad way). We discovered this by accident as we were looking around for a restaurant on Natoma Street. I will spare you the details...  but let's just say that we avoided going anywhere close to there at all costs for the remainder of our trip.

DAY 2 

To start off the day, we hopped on the F line streetcar and headed over to the piers. 

Seated comfortably at the very back of the F line streetcar.

We got off at the Fisherman's Wharf stop and walked a couple of blocks south to have breakfast at Hollywood Cafe. This place had amazing reviews on Yelp, so it was on the top of my list of restaurants to try. 

Stay tuned for my post about Hollywood Cafe on my food blog!

After breakfast, we walked over to Pier 39 for the bay cruise that we had tickets for. The Bay Cruise is operated by Blue & Gold Fleet and runs almost every hour from 10:45 am to 6:30 pm/7:00 pm, depending on the day. We couldn't get tickets to Alcatraz, so we decided to take the Bay Cruise instead. The cruise was both better and worse than I expected.

Better because: 1) the views of the city's skyline was amazing; 2) cruising underneath the Golden Gate Bridge was a lot more exciting than I anticipated; and 3) we spotted a number of humpback whales in the water.

Worse because: 1) the narration describing the city's landmarks the stories of Alcatraz were completely pre-recorded; and 2) it was very hard to hear the narration from the open top floor of the ferry.

One of a gazillion selfies that we took on the ferry.

Travel tip: The Bay Cruise tickets are usually $30/person, but we got ours for $25 at the San Francisco Information Center. The Information Center is located below ground level, right next to the Powell BART station. They have a bunch of other discounts and coupons there for various activities.

The ferry ride was followed by a visit to the famous sea lions at Pier 39. To our dismay, there weren't too many sea lions sunbathing on the day that we went. I recall the entire docking area being filled with them the last time I was at Pier 39 (about 3 years ago). Regardless, we spent a good amount of time there observing their hilarious antics. 

Next, we went for a 7D Experience!!! A theatre/ride-type experience where you wear 3D goggles to watch the screen and shoot targets. I was perusing through San Fran Groupons online before our trip and thought that this one sounded interesting enough to try. There were 4 different ones for us to choose from: Zombies, Gigamon, Los Banditos, and Road Fighters. Despite my reluctance, we went with the Zombies ride. 

The whole ride lasted approximately 10 minutes. To paint a better picture, that's 10 min of me tensing my whole entire body while screaming. I like the show The Walking Dead, but I'm not a fan of half torn-up zombies popping up suddenly in my face and yelling. At one point, I legitimately had tears in my eyes. It was a bit comforting to hear that the kids next to me were screaming too (granted they were probably 5 years old). Like a typical amusement ride, they took pictures of the riders and displayed them on screens at the end of the ride. I wish I had time to take a picture of mine. The ridiculous look of terror on my face would've helped to cheer me up on a sad day.

To celebrate our survival through a zombie apocalypse, we went to eat ...

Boudin Clam Chowder in their sourdough bread bowl.

... and eat ...

My first time trying In-N-Out Burger! It was okay.......

... and eat some more...

Dreyer's Waffle Cone ice cream - a scoop of Cookie Dough on top and a scoop of Dulce de Leche on the bottom.

We spent quite some time walking up and down Jefferson Street. We stumbled upon a really cool store that specializes in selling hot sauce - Pepper Palace. They let you sample the sauces ... which was part of the reason why I liked the store so much. I found one called The Butt Pucker - doesn't sound like one I'd want to try.

As the day went by, we noticed more and more "fancy" (obnoxious, in my opinion) cars rolling down Jefferson Street. This being one of them ...

And every time a bouncing car drove by, I couldn't help but think of the song California Love. 

Once we had enough of Jefferson Street, we walked down Leavenworth Street to check out the famous crooked street. When we reached the bottom of Lombard Street, we were greeted by a huge crowd of tourists who were all trying to get a picture in front of the street. We joined in and tried for maybe 10 min to get a good picture. After failing over and over again, we called it quits and walked back over to Fisherman's Wharf to catch the streetcar back to our hotel. Sameer had been meaning to try this spot called zpizza by our hotel. It was fairly late in the evening by the time we got on the streetcar, so we were on a mission to get to the pizza joint before it closed at 8:30 pm. We managed to get there just in time to order a pizza to-go. The pizza was so good! We were both disappointed that we didn't have time to go back and try some of their other pizzas. 

Initially, we were planning on going to Bourbon & Branch that night, but we couldn't get a reservation. Bourbon & Branch is said to be one of the most authentic speakeasy bars in the city. I've heard that you can buzz their intercom and ask to be put on the wait list, but we didn't want to walk all the way there to take the chance (especially since it was the weekend). Instead, we headed downstairs to the bar at SOMA and ended off the night there with a couple of drinks. The convenience of a hotel bar can never be beat.

... Coming soon ... The Golden City (Part 2)!