Honeymooning: San Francisco

Stephen and I look for the same things in every city we travel to....

1. Good restaurants
2. Museums
3. Shopping

This makes him the best travel buddy, ever! Stephen started planning our trip to San Francisco long before the wedding. He bought an Eyewitness Top 10 San Francisco book, and a San Francisco Moleskin for us to take notes on our trip and write down places we would like to return to and also to avoid.

We arrived in San Francisco around 7pm on Thursday evening. We had an early night. After we arrived we took BART to our hotel, checked in, and ordered room service for dinner.
Friday morning we had breakfast at Boudin, a sourdough bakery. It was Delicious! Then we went to the Golden Gate Bridge. We both agreed that it is pretty long and bigger than we thought. The weather was overcast but still quite warm.

We had lunch at Ton Kiang, a Dim Sum restaurant near Golden Gate Park. It was so yummy. I took Stephen to have Dim Sum for the first time last summer when he visited me in Washington DC, so it was fun to go with him again. We had Wintermelon soup (my favorite) along with various steamed dumplings.

After lunch we took a walk around Golden Gate Park, an enormous park in the middle of the city half a mile wide by three miles long. In the park we visited the Botanical Gardens and Japanese Tea Garden. Stephen's favorite architectural firm, Herzog and de Meuron designed the de Young museum in Golden Gate Park. We viewed the exhibits and then took the elevator to the top of the museum's tower for a beautiful view of the city.


We were pretty warn out from walking around all day and so we decided to head back towards our hotel and just order room service for dinner. While we waited for room service to come, Stephen went down stairs to pick up some stuff from Walgreen's. He came back with pringles, sour patch kids for him, and milk duds for me. He knows me too well!

Saturday morning Stephen told me he was going down stairs to ask the concierge a question, he came back with pastries from two different bakeries and a fruit cup. It was a nice surprise! We took a street car down to Fisherman's wharf. He had the idea of buying Sourdough bread and eating it at the end of pier 39, so that is what we did! We had a nice view of the Bay and Golden Gate bridges, Alcatraz, and some stinky sea lions.


After we finished our sourdough we walked further along the wharf towards Ghiradelli Square. We were walking along a wide stretch of sidewalk when a homeless man holding up branches tied together like a bush jumped out and scared me. I jumped and screamed so loud, it was embarrassing. Stephen said he would have given the man some money for scaring me, but it isn't hard work.

We went to a seafood bar in Nob Hill for lunch because Stephen really wanted to try oysters for the first time. Big mistake. He ordered a oyster cocktail which was in essence a cup filled with grey sea water and white slimy oysters. He tried one and said it was disgusting, but proceeded to finish the whole cocktail dipping the oysters in Tabasco sauce, the clam chowder, cocktail sauce, and a combination of these. It was pretty gross. After lunch we visited several shops in the Nob and Russian Hill neighborhoods, and then took a street car to Lombard street, also known as "the crookedest street." A man on the street car joked that the crookedest street he has ever seen is Wall Street.

After Lombard Street we walked down to Union Square and did a little bit of shopping. We visited the biggest Banana Republic I have ever seen! It was pretty amazing. Stephen and I made good use of my employee discount. We also went to a few of Stephen's favorite stores. We had dinner at a Mexican place in the Ferry Building called Mijitas. it was delicious! They are famous for their tacos. We tried the pork, fish, and steak ones. The pork was the best.

Sunday morning we took the Subway to Mission St and had breakfast at Ti Couz. A french crepe restaurant. It was probably my favorite meal of the trip. We ordered a tomato and cheese crepe and a berry crepe and split them. They were delicious. We visited the mission Dolores afterwards. Rather than paying the entrance fee, Stephen and I went into the church just in time for the Spanish Mass Service. We stayed for a few minutes and then walked around the church cemetery. The Mission Dolores is the oldest building in San Francisco.

After checking out the mission and its really old cemetery, we made our way to Delfina Pizzaria. Stephen found out about this cute little restaurant in an article in GQ magazine listing the top 10 pizza places in the United States. We ordered the Panna Pizza and also the Cheese. Stephen and I are quite the pizza connoisseurs, and we were very impressed with their pizza pies.

We took the subway back downtown near to our hotel to do some shopping. We went to CB2 and bought a stainless steel planter and a few serving plates and then returned to our hotel for a mid-afternoon nap.

After our nap we took a walk to Chinatown. We visited San Francisco's original city square which is in the heart of Chinatown and several small stores. We purchased a chop stick set and a few other small things for our new home.



Monday morning we checked out of our hotel, left our bags at the concierge and headed to the Contemporary Jewish Museum whose building is right behind the hotel we stayed out. We saw an advertisement for a Chagall exhibit in the city and decided to visit the museum on our last day. The exhibit was titled Chagall and the Russian Opera, it showed the development and end of the Jewish Opera in Russia and Chagall's role in it. We both really enjoyed it. My favorite part of every museum is the museum gift shop. We spent quite a lot of time there looking at books and other things then headed back to our hotel to pick up our bags and travel to the airport! It was the best honeymoon I could ever ask for.