Table For One-San Francisco 2008

As promised, this is my original blog post from my trip to San Francisco last year…

Original Post Date January 15, 2008

I spent the first six days of 2008 in San Francisco, California on vacation by myself.  Originally I was supposed to spend Christmas through New Year’s in Keystone Colorado with my family but, as usual with my family, the plans fell apart less than a month before we were scheduled to go.  I was extremely disappointed by this because the year of 2007 was overall not that great! So, at the last minute I decided to take a (much-needed) vacation all on my own.  Here’s how it went……..!   

TUESDAY: I arrived in the city on New Year’s Day and after traveling for 12 hours, it was still only 3pm Pacific time!  When I got into my hotel room I promptly sat down on the bed and cried.  It suddenly hit me that I was 2,400 miles away from every single person that I know.  I was alone in this huge city and I didn’t know a soul.  It was so overwhelming, especially because I don’t usually get homesick! Now, I did realize at the time that I was exhausted and jet-lagged and I’m sure that was part of my reason for being upset.  So I forced myself to go for a walk along the water…

(This was taken walking along the Embarcadero)

…and I wandered down to Fisherman’s Wharf (huge tourist trap) but it felt good to be around people. 

Seals along the docks…

Ghirardelli Square:

 It’s kind of cold in the city this time of year-it was, on average, 50 degrees the entire time I was there but I didn’t mind it.  I felt a little better after my walk so I headed back for my room and couldn’t keep my eyes open past 9pm. 

My small but cute hotel room

WEDNESDAY: Determined to have a better day today! Wandered up into Union Square (shopping district!) and then into Chinatown.

“Entrance” to Chinatown:

Bought some tea in Chinatown and had a strange but sweet red beans and milk iced drink.  The entire time I was reminded of how much this city reminded me of NYC-but it’s kind of like NYC combined with Orlando.  It has all the different areas-Chinatown, Little Italy, Shopping, a huge park (Golden Gate Park), etc but it doesn’t get as cold as NY does in the winter and it doesn’t get as hot as Orlando does in the summer. It’s bigger than Orlando but smaller than NYC.  Not to mention there are people running and exercising all over the place and there’s an unusual amount of people with dogs.

This is a “pharmacy” in Chinatown…

Along one of the streets…

  And-San Francisco is known as being one of the top “culinary cities” in the U.S. SO-Athletic, Great food, Super pet friendly- It’s like a city made just for me!  Speaking of food, I went on a quest to find this restaurant that was supposed to have the “best dim sum in the city,” and ended up walking 25 blocks before I gave up and hailed a cab. Thank God because I still had about 30 blocks left! It was well worth it though-the dim sum was COMPLETELY AMAZING!! (If you’ve never had dim sum, it’s a type of Chinese food and they walk around with these carts with little bamboo baskets filled with all kinds of little steamed dumplings with everything from shrimp to scallops to snow peas inside them, as well as bbq pork balls and all kinds of delicious things and you choose which ones you want right off the cart. It’s really fresh and you literally get your food within minutes of sitting down!)

 

THURSDAY: Wine Tour!! We headed out of the city and up to Napa where we visited two wineries before lunch (Kirkland Ranch and Madonna), with a wine tasting at each. 

Here is me getting ready to go taste wine! (photo courtesy of the ten second delay on my old *and missed* HP camera)

(I think this is Kirkland Ranch…)

(Me at one of the wineries…)

Look at all that wine!

 Then we drove into Sonoma for lunch at this tiny Italian restaurant-I ate with two couples both visiting from Australia (they didn’t know one another) and we had a blast!  They’re Australian accents alone were quite entertaining for me! Then we headed out to one more winery (Viansa) before we headed back to the city.  All in all I bought 5 bottles of wine to bring back and had a lot of fun!

FRIDAY: While I was there San Francisco had “the worst storm they’ve had in two years” complete with power outages and flooding-just my luck, right!! Luckily my hotel never lost power and to be honest, it was nothing compared to a hurricane! However-I was supposed to go on a tour to Muir Woods (to see the giant redwoods!) in the morning and a night tour to Alcatraz that night. Both of these got cancelled because of the rain so I decided to go to the mall instead. Except the public transportation system got totally messed up due to the flooding so instead of taking the bus to the mall I walked and by the time I got there I was so soaked I had to wring out my jacket in the bathroom. So-it rained the entire day and I pretty much did a lot of wandering in the mall all day. At night I finally got tired of doing nothing so I looked up a comedy club and went out! Had a drink, listened to a comedian (Tom Rhodes) who, ironically, was from Orlando and had a few good laughs after a yucky day. 

SATURDAY: Every Saturday they have an open market at the Ferry Building Center so, even though it was still raining, I was excited to check it out.  Now, if you love to cook then this place is like Mecca!! I would love to live there just so I could go on Saturdays to buy all this fresh produce, cheeses, meats, wines, etc and cook with them!!  After that, since it was still gloomy I headed back over to the mall (this time on a bus) to check out the spa they have on the top floor. OK, LADIES-If you ever go to California try to go to a Burke William Day Spa!! This place was AMAZING!! Its family owned and operated and they have 9 locations all over California.  All you have to spend is $55 or more and you get access to all of their amenities which include: a cool steam room (yes, cool), a hot steam room, a dry sauna, a huge jacuzzi tub, amazing showers filled with all kinds of shampoos, conditioners, razors, soaps, and little stations to do your hair and get ready filled with every kind of lotion, hair product and hair styling tool you can think of!! They also have a “quiet room” with these INCREDIBLE reclining chairs that recline completely back so you’re almost laying totally flat and you can relax there as long as you’d like! All I got was a manicure and pedicure and I was so relaxed I almost fell asleep.  The woman at the front desk told me she came to San Francisco from Connecticut with a round trip ticket, one suitcase and two garment bags and she never went home.  Don’t tempt me! After my spa excursion I was browsing through a brochure and came across an ad for a “culinary walking tour” through Chinatown and North Beach (sometimes they call it Little Italy) and I figured why not?  So an hour later I met the guide at the entrance to Chinatown and it was me, 3 young Asian kids from Texas, and a couple around my age who were from the city. It was a small group so we all got to know each other and we had a lot of fun. We sampled a huge amount of dim sum at the oldest restaurant in Chinatown; we went to the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company and watched as these 2 super old women showed us how to make the cookies, and we had a tea tasting of about ten different kinds of tea (after which I bought more tea)…

Among other things, I learned that the higher up the mountain the tea plants grow, the more expensive they are. I also learned that the normal way to steep tea (loose leaf tea) is only for about 10-20 seconds, then take out the teaball, and you can reuse the same tea several times! Neat huh?

Do you think I love tea?

  Then we continued walking up into North Beach which is filled with lots of Italian restaurants, bars and strip clubs.  This is the area that, during the war, the ships would come into port here, hence all of the bars and strip clubs.  We went into this teeny tiny Italian restaurant and the guide led us behind the kitchen and down these stairs into a small comedy club that looked like something straight out of the 1950′s-60′s.  This was where famous comedians such as Steve Allen, Bill Cosby, Maya Angelou etc got their start all those years ago.  And it is kept to look exactly the same as it did when they performed there. They still use it several nights a week to showcase young up and coming talents. Lastly we headed next door to another restaurant where we had some real Italian pizza and (of course!) red wine. 

SUNDAY: My last day! I had managed to reschedule the Alcatraz tour for this morning and when you’re on the boat heading over to the island the view of the city behind you is spectacular!  

And of course, Alcatraz:

An Alcatraz cell:

They tell you all about the history behind the prison and discuss the “infamous escape” of the three prisoners-which, in a nutshell, there were 3 prisoners that managed to escape by stuffing their beds and climbing out into the ventilation ducts (after digging through the concrete wall with a spoon for probably years) and they made it into the water where they were never heard from again. Some people think they died (the water is COLD!) but a lot of people think they escaped and fled to another country.  Apparently they were learning Spanish before their escape.  They are still listed as fugitives to this day. 

 

Unfortunately, this is as close as I came to getting a good picture of Golden Gate Bridge…

  So-All in all, I am in love with the city of San Francisco and I would currently move there in a heartbeat.  It is quite possibly the best city I’ve ever been to. Yes, it is even better than NYC (and you know how much I love NYC!) but it doesn’t give me that cold, dark feeling that NYC does.  As for traveling alone, I would say it was a success!!  There were some down points, especially when it would not stop raining, but I got through it all by myself and was determined to experience as much as I could! Isn’t that the way life goes?!