Back to My Roots in San Francisco - State # 1

I found myself wanting to do something for Labor Day this year, but many of my friends were visiting family or rehearsing or performing in shows.  It appeared there was no way that I would be escaping from NYC, or so I thought.  It turns out a group of my friends from Oregon were planning a trip to San Francisco as a last hurrah to summer before work and school took over their lives for the next several months.  I made a joke about meeting them there; well thanks to decent prices online due to people not flying during the holiday I found a ticket that fit my budget.  Three days before they began the drive up, I had purchased a ticket making that joke a reality.

Palm Trees!

I have to say I was pretty excited!  I hadn’t been to California for a while and was ready for some nice weather as it had been getting colder and rainier in NYC for the past few days leading up to the trip.  So early Saturday morning (3:30AM earlier), I was up and ready as I could be with 2 hours of sleep.

The flight was pretty uneventful for once which was nice.  I still couldn’t sleep like usual, so turned to my studies to try to help me fall asleep, nope didn’t happen.  Strangely enough, even with the sleep deprivation, I was super excited to see my friends when the plane touched down.

The first thing on our agenda was food.  Plane food = yuck and the others had waited for my arrival and were hungry, too.  Though, I almost got into the wrong car as there was someone who looked just like my friend David.  So much so that I waved to him and jumped up and down in excitement like a maniac.  I soon realize that my friends don’t drive a minivan and this guy looked really confused if not disturbed.  Luckily, it worked out for both of us and we found our intended parties so there were no hard feelings or calls to security.

Live for the Fog

Now, it’s kind of lame, but by the time we went to our hotel we had read online about a place inside the mall that was supposedly really good.  Yeah, I know what you are thinking, mall food?  Well, it isn’t a mall joint, more of a restaurant in the mall and it got very good reviews and we were all starving so we figured why not?  I wish we had rethought that.

The restaurant was called Straits and I wish we had walked straight out of there as soon as we were introduced to the host.  He didn’t even look us in the eye and sat us in a crap seat though everything was open due to only 3 other groups being there.  He said nothing to us just threw down the menus and walked back to the front to check his Blackberry.  Uh, okay. 

Next the waiter showed up and rushed us through our order even though the place was empty.  It took forever for our food to get there and they served three of us and kept the fourth one waiting for 10 minutes before her dish showed up.  It was okay as we shared each others dishes even though the servings were very small. 

You Guessed it Pier 39

I have to say that nobody would even touch mine after they saw the chicken.  Now, I am a picky eater and I don’t much care for dark meat so I can be a pain in the ass that way.  But this chicken was beyond the normal dark meat.  It had fat and other parts attached to it making it very disturbing.  In fact, David who will eat anything, I mean ANYTHING thought it was disgusting and told me to return it.  The problem was the waiter was MIA.  He only came back after the bus boy had cleaned the table (the busboy was the only decent human being in the joint) and to kiss a little butt for a higher tip.  I was willing to let one of the worst meals of my life go, I was in San Francisco with my amazing friends and was satisfied, but David being a server at one time told the guy that the food was inedible and that he hadn’t checked on us once to get it rectified.  The server said nothing but gave us a dirty look and then took my meal off the bill.  This was one of the vilest experiences in my dining experience, seriously.  Horrid restaurant and even worse service!  After the meal, we decided to walk around a bit to get the food out of our system and I bought a coffee to wake me up and to fill me up until dinner.

After that low point in the day, we decided we needed some fun.  So we hopped on the train and were off.  After a short ride towards pier 39 on the F train, we spied a tented crafts fair and decided to get of the train.  I have to say it was disappointing, the prices were high and the stuff was just, eh.  But the churro lady there rocked!  We took a few photos and decided to hike it the rest of the way to Pier 39, though we were quite a ways a way.  Didn’t matter, it was nice outside and we were ready, especially me after sitting for 5.5 hours. 

I forgot how windy San Francisco can get at times and the fog was already rolling in and covering the skyscrapers.  It had been pretty warm leading up to this walk, but by the time we hit Pier 39 it was getting cloudy and really cold.  Still, nothing was going to stop us from checking out the seal lions and their crazy antics.  I have to say, I could watch these guys for a hours as they are that amusing, but the smell is a little overwhelming at times.  If you are not into wild life, there are also great views of Alcatraz at Pier 39 though it was almost entirely covered by fog. 

If you walk further, you will run into a little shopping area with a carousel.  Okay, I am a fan of the carousel and thought I would have a hard time convincing others to go with me but everyone but David was in.  David is a wild man and more into rides that will make you puke, so this was not his scene, though he offered to take photos.  I hate rides, I get sick very easily (Seattle Blog) and the carousel was made for kids and weenies like me!  So, the three of us grabbed our seats (dragon for me) and we were off.  I have to say, it did not disappoint even though it was really hard to get three people in a photo on a moving carousel that and it had started to rain.  Still, it was pretty sweet!

Someone's Not Sleepy

After the carousel ride, we decided to shop a little to get us out of the cold weather.  So, we dropped into a few candy stores to keep us busy.  The taffy we bought was really good though a little spendy, still, you can’t go to a coastline and not buy candy, it just isn’t right.  I don’t recall either of the names of the candy stores, but the other one had an amazing array of turtles, but they were $5.50 apiece and I couldn’t justify buying one with that price so I bought a piece of the fudge.  Not very good really.  It tasted like it was made out of the candy melts you can buy from craft stores for $2.50 a bag.  Not good.  So far the food situation had been disappointing, but I had faith in dinner.  SF couldn’t let me down in that department much longer, it just couldn’t. 

After an additional hour on the wharf, we grabbed the F train to test that theory out and I am glad we did!  The hotel we were staying at suggested that we eat at nearby sushi joint that had good food.  The sushi restaurant had a nice ambience and decent menu plus sushi boats.  I decided to get the salmon teriyaki plate and some plum wine.  Both were great!  The problem is the wine always starts a chain of events of drinking for me.  I can’t drink wine for whatever reason and soon was hankering for more drinks.  Unfortunately, the desired early night spiraled into a night of debauchery and we didn’t get to bed until 2:30AM.  Not good, as the next morning we would be getting up at 8AM for a visit to Monterey.  I was already on 2 hours of sleep from the previous night.  Oh, well.  You only live once! So, after one last drink I hit the pillow in hopes that 7.5 hours of sleep in 48 hours would be enough to make me some what functional for a day at the beach.