Our dinner here was really quite good. I got the Roasted Pork Medallions with fingerling potatoes and perfectly cooked green beans. I actually don't have a picture, but it was definitely a solid meal. My parents and I split a bottle of Canyon Road Sauvignon Blanc. Since we're such connoisseurs (HA!) now we really knew exactly what we were looking for in a wine. After a great meal, it was lights out. Drinking wine and eating obnoxious amounts of good food really takes it out of you.
Thursday morning, we took the hotel shuttle to the Downtown Berkeley BART station. We had some good coffee and pastries at Tully's Coffee on the main drag of Berkeley, Shattuck Avenue. Shattuck Avenue reminded me of a somewhat larger version of Clarendon, but not as pretentious. This is where I caught my first glimpse of the hipster/hippie/whatever-you-want-to-call-it culture that the Bay area is no stranger to. There are no suited politicos that you see in the standard Starbucks on K Street here. Here, there are people who look older than my parents and may have been staunch activists back in the day or maybe they just look that way.
After our abbreviated breakfast, we caught the BART train into San Francisco. The BART has a pretty cool look in comparison to DC's Metro. It looks and feels cleaner to me. The train tunnels don't look as cavernous. It seems like not nearly as many people use the BART as they do the Metro. The stations were rather small. The BART system was pretty straight forward though. We took our train from Downtown Berkeley to Embarcadero.
Outside of the Embarcadero station, San Francisco looks a lot like many other cities. It's a financial district down there. It looks like New York or Chicago. We got our bearings, and headed towards the water. My first picture in San Francisco was this weird looking piece of art made out of cement. It was pretty cool. We walked along the Embarcadero towards Pier 39, the Fisherman's Wharf, and North Beach.
We walked by many piers before arriving at the famous Pier 39. This place is much like any other city's waterfront areas. Restaurants and touristy stores abound. The smells of candy and fried dough fill the air. Sea lions and seals are laying around sunbathing. Wait what?! Yeah, I'm not kidding. We saw TONS of these MASSIVE animals just laying around on little docks in the water!
Next, we continued on to check out the Fisherman's Wharf and North Beach areas. We ate lunch at a place called Cioppino's. The place was named after one of San Francisco's signature dishes, Cioppino. It's basically a seafood tomato based soup. They should just call it Mercury Soup because there is just that much seafood in it! My dad got the Cioppino, my mom went with the seafood salad, and I decided on the salmon fettuccine. We all really liked this place. It was a great meal altogether. The windows were open, the weather was perfect, the beers were cold.
Seafood Salad
Salmon Fettuccine
Cioppino
We then purchased day passes for the trolley and headed uphill to see Knob Hill and Russian Hill. After a crowded ride, we arrived in Chinatown. This Chinatown was pretty huge. It was honestly like walking into another country. Duh! There were Dim Sum places all around. We had stuffed ourselves at lunch so we didn't get to experience the food here. After exploring a little more, we took the trolley down Market Street to the Embarcadero BART Station to head back to the hotel.
This morning, we continued our tour of San Francisco. We checked out of the hotel and drove to Crissy Park near the Golden Gate Bridge. We walked along the beach there. We had a great view of Alcatraz and the bridge. Before we left town, we drove through Haight-Ashbury. Obviously, it looked cool, but we didn't really have tons of time to check it out. I snapped a decent pic from the passenger seat. I want to come back to the bay area. Two days isn't exactly enough to see an area this size, but at least I got to touch on some highlights.
We took Highway 1 out of the city south towards Santa Cruz and Monterey. Highway 1 is just as much an attraction of California as any of its large cities are. The views are spectacular. The road winds. The mist of the Pacific hovers over the land and you can smell the salt in the breeze. I loved this drive.
We stopped in Santa Cruz to walk around the boardwalk for a little bit. This city was featured in the film The Lost Boys. Unfortunately, most of the boardwalk was closed for the season. It was deserted. The shops, attractions, and food stands would be open for business on Saturdays and Sundays though. There was an arcade at the boardwalk that was like a time capsule. There were photo booths and REALLY old games. Galaxian or Punch Out anyone? I loved it. It didn't matter that the games were old. This place is exactly what you want a boardwalk to be like. We just happened to see it when it wasn't crowded.
After stopping in Santa Cruz, we continued on to Monterey to stay for the night. Today's activities have reinforced the fact that I love California. More on Monterey tomorrow.
