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Published: December 15th 2008
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Union Square Christmas Tree
The Christmas Tree in Union Square! I am currently in San Francisco on a “working vacation” with my boyfriend. I have heard so much about this city, and yet much to my chagrin had never set foot anywhere near it until yesterday at around 11:20 AM. (My parents might beg to differ on this as I may have been here when I was under a year old, but if so I do not remember it and therefore do not count the visit). We are here until mid-day Wednesday, but as my boyfriend has something work-related most of the day Tuesday and the weather is supposed to be less than favorable for part of the time, we decided to make the most of our day yesterday despite being up since 4:30 AM for our flight. We are staying in South San Francisco, mainly for price and location for work purposes, but we quickly dropped our bags and headed out into the heart of the city yesterday afternoon. This in itself was quite an adventure. Let me say that I have driven (or rather been with someone driving) in a good number of cities both domestically and internationally, and San Francisco is near the top of my list of
China Town
The entrance to the biggest China Town outside of China that I've seen! “confusing places to drive”. Coming from a grid city such as Philadelphia, I guess I subconsciously expect other cities to be laid out in a similarly easy fashion. Not so. In fact, in San Francisco, it is anything but a grid, with streets going every which way, changing names, splitting and meeting back up and pretty much no direct route into the center of the city, at least as is visible on a map to someone not knowing the area. After a good bit of getting lost and laughing at ourselves, we finally managed to get on Market Street heading the correct direction and found parking near the main shopping area (our mission was in fact lunch and sightseeing, not shopping, but we figured the large number of people and stores made it a good place to start for both). We ate lunch at a pleasant Italian place called Puccini & Pinetti, mainly because it was close by and had vegetarian options. It was a decent, satisfying meal, complete with local-ish brews (mine was a Heferweizen from Oregon, but I considered that local enough).
Now that we had gotten a chance to unwind from our re-creation of Mr. Toad’s
Santa Pub Crawl
Our first glimpse of the Santa Pub Crawl, in China Town of all places! Wild Ride, we decided to explore as much of the city as we could on foot. We first went to Union Square, simply because they have a gigantic Christmas tree and I am a huge fan of just about anything Christmas related. From here, we headed into Chinatown. Not only was this the largest China town I have seen that was not actually part of China, it was also where we had our first glimpse of what may well be our most memorable site on this vacation - the Santa Pub Crawl. Yes, large groups of people - and one St. Bernard dog - dressed as Santa, stumbling from bar to bar. We later determined that this was actually not much of an anomaly here, when they passed by us another time and a woman nearby exclaimed “Oh! It’s the Santa Pub Crawl”!
From Chinatown, I also got a glimpse of the water and the Bay Bridge. I absolutely love the water, particularly piers, promenades and anything similar, so at my request we headed down in that direction. The timing couldn’t have been better. We reached the water just as the sun was starting to set and got some
Bay Bridge at Sunset
The Bay Bridge just as the sun was starting to set. Beautiful! beautiful pictures of the bridge and the bay. Next on our agenda was a tea house - partly because we were craving tea and partly because the walk to the water was so cold and windy that we needed something to warm us up. We found a great shop called Ital Tealeaf that provides free tea samplings. They spoke to us about the various teas, their taste and the health ailments for which they are recommended. We enjoyed the experience so much that we bought two of our favorites to commemorate it by.
By now we were getting hungry again and, knowing restaurants close earlier here than in our home city, we headed for an Indian restaurant, Mehlif, which had been recommended to us by a friend who spends a lot of time here. The recommendation turned out to be spot on - the meal was fantastic, the atmosphere was pleasant and the cost was (especially for San Francisco) quite reasonable.
Today we are taking the morning to get some work done and plan to head out towards the wine region for the afternoon, weather permitting. My thoughts of San Francisco so far are this: It’s an incredibly lively city and I love the energy. I also enjoy the wide variety of cultural backgrounds, which is clearly evident in its people, food and shops. I actually enjoy the hills, though I might regret saying this after a few days of walking them, because I feel they give the city a unique character and provide some great vantage points as well as photographs. I absolutely love so much water surrounding the city and this might be its top feature in my book. One thing that might take some getting used to for me is the fact that many businesses, even on a Saturday afternoon during the holiday season, seemed to be shutting early or closed all together. We actually walked past a good number of restaurants, as well as a gym, around 6:30 PM that were completely closed.
On my list of places to visit while I’m here: the wine region, the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, Lombard Street (just to see it), the Ferry Building and hopefully its Tuesday market and a Tea Lounge called Samovar which has been recommended to me by several people. Let’s see how many I make it too!
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