Vacation-Take Two

If you're going to San Francisco...

fly into Oakland, then take the BART, I love efficient public transportation.

Check into your hotel in the financial district, which happens to be right next to Chinatown and find some lunch to eat.  Now if you know me and my distaste for Chinese restaurants (all due to my days as a health inspector), you would be surprised to hear this is what sounded good to eat, hey when in Rome.  We asked the desk clerk at the hotel for recommendations, he gave us a good one.

Kevin loves himself some hot and sour soup.

This building next to our hotel had some crazy goth statues on top, almost grim reaper looking, can you see them peering over, three on each side for a total of twelve, weird.

Finally off to get some flair from Chinatown, and to find Wyatt a robot, which he specifically requested we find in San Fran, where does he come up with these things?

Perusing the streets.

We found it!  Lots of flair.

This was a really cool building we saw so Kevin decided to take a photo on Instagram, the best part of it was (Mom don't continue reading), my mom writes back, are those people sitting on the windowsills?  Guess she never heard of clotheslines.  Ha Ha.

We walked the massive hills on our destination to Coit Tower.

A view of Alcatraz from Coit Tower.

Coit Tower from below.

After all the walking we were tired and wanted to get back quick so we hopped on the best method of public transportation in San Fran, the cable car.  I love how it stops for a brief second in the middle of a road with traffic and you run out and jump off or on.  I also love how I saw a mom of two boys, picking one up from school and her other little guy about Luke's age strapped to her body in a carrier and a sack of groceries in her hand riding the cable car probably like she does everyday.  Nobody has strollers, the hills would be way to brutal and I'm sure if you live in the city you don't drive around, nowhere to park, so you ride the rails, I love it.  I think I could live there, just saying.

We're hungry for dinner, maybe let's stop in this alley and find something to eat.

Friday night we met up with the wedding party at a little bar nearby for a meet and greet, we were tired and didn't stay too long, and unfortunately didn't take any pictures.  Saturday morning I was determined to get down to the Ferry Market early, I keep seeing it on the Food Network and I wanted to see the magic for myself, and boy was it ever magical, a foodies dream.

First stop this gorgeous stand of colorful bell peppers.

Looking down at the stands before we even really get into the market.

Kelly:  Hey Kev, let's get some breakfast.

Kevin:  What's this, pork knuckle, sounds good

Kelly:  For breakfast?  Ok why not

Our breakfast of pork knuckle, it was good, but I'm not sure I needed to eat any portion of that early in the morning!

Now you're talking, a cronut, crossaint and donut hybrid, yummy.

In the back of the ferry building.

Heading inside to find more treasures.

Amazing mushrooms.

Look at this mushroom growing on a block of cheese.  We did buy some dried black trumpet mushrooms and they are good.

Off to a place to eat for lunch, as if we hadn't had enough right?  Well we heard from two different people about this restaurant in the market called the Slanted Door and we were told to try the cellophane noodles, so we did, with shrimp, and they were so good.

Kev loves oysters too, so of course we got some, I tried one, still, not my cup of tea.

He's stoaked though.

After that nonsense we took a cab to Fisherman's Wharf to check out the sea lions.

Kind of hard to get excited about these guys when we go to Sea World so much.

We took a short walk to Ghirardelli Square, now that's excitement.

We shared a butterscotch chocolate sundae, it tasted as creamy and gooey as it looks.  Another short cab ride and we were back to our hotel to get ready for the wedding, which was at the old Bently Federal Reserve building, that was really cool.

After eating our way through the city, I'm glad I could zip up my dress!

Mike is on the right and Lissa is center, what a fun couple and a fun weekend.