San Francisco: Oakland, Grizzly Peak, Redwood Regional Park & more

On our last day in California we took the short drive to Oakland to meet up with an old blog friend, Kirsten. Although, she no longer blogs we still follow each other on Instagram and have been able to continue a friendship that was built through our blogs.

Before meeting up, Sean and I drove to Grizzly Peak to get the entire view of San Francisco. Unfortunately, my pictures do it no justice and I was unable to capture how incredible the view really was. The Lord knows I really tried.

After that we drove to Homeroom where we were meeting Kirsten for lunch. The restaurant sells so many different kinds of mac and cheese but unfortunately Sean and I were not impressed with our meals. I’ve just had so much good mac and cheese in my life so this just did not compare. Our drinks were great though! It was awesome that Kirsten felt like an old friend that I had not seen in a long while. We were never short on something to talk about and it all just felt so easy and natural. It is still so amazing to me how social media has been able to connect people who never would have met otherwise.

Kirsten brought her dog and it was so nice to finally meet him in person. He is a pretty big deal on Instagram, so I was you know, meeting a famous dog, haha. He is adorable and so, so sweet and needs to teach my dogs a thing or two on how to pose.

After we ate, we drove to Redwood Regional Park and it was amazing. The trees were just so tall (obviously) and incredibly beautiful. I’ve always loved trees for some reason and well, I was completely in eye candy land. I could have stayed here all day just walking around but we couldn’t since Sean does not have time for that ;). Afterwards, Kirsten told us that if we wanted to see another great view of San Francisco she had a place to take us. And she was right, it was a fantastic view but for some reason I did not take as many shots as I think I should have. When we were driving Kirsten back to her apartment we drove passed Lake Merritt which was also pretty neat to see. But to be honest, it wasn't something I thought we needed to get out of the car for.

We had tons of suggestions to get ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery so after we dropped off Kirsten we got ice cream. It was good but being the ice cream lover I am, I've had some really great ice cream. Again, it was good but not the best I’ve ever had.

On our last night, we walked around Fisherman’s Wharf and decided to have an early dinner at Chowder Hut. We sat next to this gentleman at the bar and began talking. Come to find out he went to the same college as Sean and me, roughly twenty years earlier! We ended up reminiscing for our entire dinner, talking about our college and whether this or that was still there or not, etc. It was completely the best way to end such an epic trip and a reminder that it really is a small world.

San Francisco completely stole a piece of my heart and I cannot wait to go back. I hope you enjoyed the recap but this post concludes San Francisco. I hope you all have wonderful (weather is suppose to be pretty nice) weekends!
And as always, thanks for reading! ♥

San Francisco: Chinatown & more

Since we went to bed early the previous day, we were up rather early the following morning.
We quickly picked up tickets at Fisherman's Wharf for the cable cars to take us down to Chinatown.

I haven’t been to a Chinatown since I lived in the city so you could say that I was pretty excited to check it out in San Francisco. It honestly felt like we had stepped into a new world/country. The banks, restaurants, grocery stores were all in Chinese which obviously shouldn’t have been a surprise but for some reason I couldn't help but to point it out. Mrs. Captain Obvious over here.

We decided that we’d also eat in Chinatown and that was quite the experience. After walking around quite a while for a restaurant to eat at, we decided on New Woey Loy Goey and were the only tourists in the entire restaurant. Everyone around us were speaking Chinese and we wondered (just being honest here) if maybe this wasn’t the smartest decision. The restaurant seemed a bit like family style where everyone, regardless if you came together, were seated together. If there was space at the table, that’s where you were seated to eat. I often feel that sometimes you have to feel a little uncomfortable (which at first I did) but once I got my food (which was so delicious) all my discomfort went away and I felt like a person who was just eating at a restaurant with other patrons. The bartender was extremely helpful and kind and helped us narrow down what to eat. We had the best wonton soup of our lives and we both wished that we had gotten two orders each.

Excuse the crappy pictures below. The restaurant was very dimly lit with no natural light peeking through.

After we ate, we picked up a few trinkets/souvenirs in Chinatown and then went
to Sutter Station Tavern in the financial district for drinks.

After that we headed back to our hotel to get ready for the evening. When we were walking out to get dinner, I realized that my outfit matched our hotel’s art wall. So of course I had Sean snap a quick picture for me. It's not every day you match the wall art.

We decided to go back to Bistro Boudin this night since we had a great experience a few days prior. I ordered empanadas and a Pinot Noir and Sean ordered a Cuban sandwich and a Manhattan. I enjoyed my dish but Sean said it wasn't the best Cuban sandwich he has had. When I asked him how his sandwich was, he said, "it isn't bad but it isn't great either".

After we ate we took an Uber to the Mission District and we stopped at a bar that I can't remember the name of. It just wasn't our scene so we took an Uber to Gold Dust Lounge for karaoke due to the recommendation of the bartender at Bistro Boudin. We should have listened to him in the first place. When we got to Gold Dust Lounge, Sean tricked me by saying that we should both do karaoke so being in good spirits (read: wine) I decided on Zombie by The Cranberries. It was so much fun but when I did it Sean decided that he wouldn’t. I guess he didn’t want to compete with my excellent voice, ha. We had such a good time with the locals who informed us that they did karaoke with each other every Wednesday night. They were all so incredibly good too!

While we were walking back to our hotel room we stopped at a small store to pick up several bottles of water. An older guy stopped Sean to ask him where he got that diamond. We were both confused so I asked the guy, what diamond? He said, "You, you're the diamond!" That caught us both off guard and we laughed out loud. It was a great way to end an already great day! :)