City by the Bay – Day 3

On December 23, 2015December 23, 2015 By rebeccawanderlustingIn California, San Francisco, US Travel3 Comments

On our second day waking up in San Francisco, we still stuck with our Chicago time zone. We went down to the kitchen in the hostel for the complimentary breakfast, which consisted of assorted bagels, cream cheese, fruit, coffee and tea and juice. The kitchen and dining room were big and bright and welcoming. I really enjoyed the hostel, and would definitely stay at a HI Hostel again. We checked out early to rent a car and drive out to Muir Woods. Conveniently, there was a bevy of rental car companies right across the street from the hostel. We had to take the historic Highway 101 across the Golden Gate Bridge and towards Sausalito.

We drove up the twisty turny roads through the mountains to get to Muir. I was gripping the passenger side handle so tightly, with my other hand half covering my eyes. Despite the terrifying drive, we made it. After parking at the visitor center, we paid our $7 a piece entry fee and entered the park. We didn’t have a set plan in mind, so we started down the boardwalk path admiring the regal trees.

Everyone around us was perfectly silent, as if we were in a church, and I suppose we were, in a way. The age and size of these magnificent trees is awe-inspiring and the park is so beautifully maintained that it’s easy to see why people would be stunned into silence upon entering the park. We walked along, crossing over the creek that runs through the trees. Eventually we walked to a fork in the path, one side was the path that we were on and the other was the Fern Path, which circled up through the mountains and back to the visitor center.

It boasted a canopy view of the pines, which sounded promising, so we took it. It turned out to be a 2.5 mile hike total, mostly up hill. I’m not sure we will ever learn the lesson that Chucks are not good shoes to hike in. But as we moved up into the tops of the trees, the view trumped our aching feet and all we could do was stare. It took us two hours to complete the hike, taking breaks here and there for water or to take in the beautiful scenery.

My 10 Favorite U.S. Hikes, RebeccaWanderlusting

We passed a few other people, but mostly it seemed like we had that particular corner of the forest to ourselves. Once we reached the end of the path, we stopped in the gift shop/café for a snack. I’ve said it before, and I’m positive I’ll say it again, but I’m a sucker for a good gift shop. I never buy anything but I appreciate a gift shop with more than t-shirts and it was fun to browse here.

Once we got our fill, we left the gorgeous park and headed towards Stinson Beach. The drive there was just as treacherous as before, but just so pretty. We made a pit stop at the Muir Beach Overlook and it was like stepping onto a movie set. It was too perfect. We were in the clouds, on a cliff, with the ocean below us and mountains and beaches all around us.

There’s a Jack Kerouac quote that kept going through my head while we were up there – “We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess…” That’s how it felt. It was so completely gorgeous that we had to stand there for quite some time before we could leave.

We got back on the road and drove along the cliff and the down the motion sickness-inducing curves to Stinson Beach. There were multiple times we had to pull into the pullouts to let people pass us because we were moving too slowly for the more practiced cliff drivers. We parked at the beach, and walked out into the sand. The beach was a long stretch of pastel, with mountains on three sides of it.

The waves were large and loud and beautiful. There was a cute looking café at one end of the beach, called The Siren Café that we attempted to visit for lunch. Unfortunately, it seemed that it was closed for the season. So we ended up at Parkside Café, which turned out to be pretty cute too. I had the Clam Chowder and Mike had the Cod Club Sandwich, both of which were delicious.

We got a bit lost on the way home, going the wrong way twice before realizing we had to go back up into the mountains to get back to San Francisco. Once we got on the right track, I ogled the view as Mike navigated us through the hills. We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge again and I checked us into our next hotel, Hotel Vertigo, while Mike returned the car. Hotel Vertigo is a Hitchcock inspired boutique hotel with orange accents and a dizzying spiral staircase. Our room was a petit queen and had an amazingly huge shower.

We freshened up and headed back out to tie up our exploration loose ends on our last night in SF. We walked around Union Square a bit before going to dinner at Hops & Hominy, a delightful soul restaurant with a modern twist. We chose to sit outside, seeing it as a last opportunity to do so before enduring the Chicago winter that was waiting for us back home. We had cornbread, the cheese plate (always a good choice, in my eyes) and the chicken wings. The cheese was good and came with delicious accoutrements: glazed walnuts, fig cakes, pears, bread and the best grainy mustard ever made. We enjoyed the dinner and the drinks and made plans for the evening.

After dinner, we walked through Chinatown to see the lanterns lit up at night. Our main destination was City Lights Bookstore again to get the books we were eyeing the first time we were there. I got Allen Ginsberg’s “The Indian Journals” and Mike got “Darkness Spoken” by Ingeborg Bachman. We crossed the alley and entered Vesuvio Café for a drink.

It was such a fun and unique place to have a drink; the walls were cluttered with posters and art, and we sat upstairs where there were booths and mosaic tables. It was there that I decided that we needed to do a Beat Generation tour immediately. We had already hit two influential spots (City Lights and Vesuvio) so we planned it out while we drank, mostly just googling where the Beat writers hung out. After our drinks, we went to The Beat Generation Museum, which was kitty corner from Vesuvio.

The store was on point, and interesting to browse through, but we did not cough up the $8 entrance fee to go into the museum because it was very small and you could virtually see the whole thing from the store. We moved on to Caffe Trieste, in the North Beach neighborhood, which was just a short walk away. Allen Ginsberg was rumored to sit in this café and write. I got a hot chocolate there and tried to soak up all the good creative vibes.

The neighborhood it was in was chock full of unique shops and hip bars, with strings of lights twinkling, crisscrossing over the street. All of shops were already closed for the evening, which did not stop us from walking along and window-shopping. I’m really bummed we discovered this area until late our last night. But, at least we know it’s there for next time. We turned back to walked towards Chinatown, and were hit with the best pizza smell my nose has ever smelled: Golden Boy Pizza.

We were not hungry, but we had to try it. So we got one of their beautiful, rectangular slices with everything on it to share. It was so delicious, well-seasoned and had the perfect amount of crisp. We walked through the eerily quiet city, eating our Pizza and self-navigating back to Union Square. We stopped for one last drink at The White Horse Bar. It was in the Hotel Beresford, right near the Academy of Arts University, so it was mostly populated with college students. But there was shuffleboard and the drinks were cheap so we were content. We stopped one last time before getting to the hotel to get a bottle of wine to celebrate another successful trip. In the morning, we packed up and went to Lori’s Diner for breakfast. The atmosphere was classic 50’s diner, with a Cadillac in the center and pictures of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis on the walls.

The food was just OK, nothing super special. When we were finishing up, a deafening fire alarm went off and continued to go off for ten minutes or so. Apparently it was a drill, but it still left a literal and figurative bad taste in our mouths. We took the BART back to the airport and got through security surprisingly fast. When we got to our gate, I opened “On The Road” and continued reading with a new understanding and appreciation of Mr. Kerouac’s draw to San Francisco.

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California

City by the Bay – Day 2

On December 14, 2015 By rebeccawanderlustingIn California, US Travel5 Comments

We woke up pretty early on our first full day there and decided to use it to our advantage. We walked to Dottie’s True Blue Café for breakfast, which came highly recommended and with warnings of a long wait for a table. However, since we were such early-risers, we only waited twenty minutes before we were seated in the cozy dining room. The coffee was great and the food was pretty good. I’m not a very good judge of breakfast places since I don’t eat eggs and typically stick to pancakes, so I usually rely on Mike’s opinion. He was in omelet heaven. He ordered the lamb sausage and goat cheese omelet with dill potatoes and cornbread toast. The cornbread was served with a jalapeno jelly and was such a treat. I had the pancakes and bacon which were uncomplicated and simply delicious. The servers were very friendly and the whole experience was worth walking through an unsavory part of town to get to it. When we left the restaurant, the line was wrapped around the block… so fair warning: if you plan on visiting Dottie’s – go early. We cabbed over to The Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District in order to walk over to the ocean, not realizing that it was a destination in itself. We were awestruck by it.

The tall, golden structures loomed over us and we walked with our chins tilted up to take it all in. I’m so glad we stumbled upon it because it was a mistake not to have it on our to-do list in the first place. Once we had our fill, we walked to the yacht club across the street to get our first view of the Golden Gate Bridge. I was literally jumping for joy when we finally saw it, and the ocean. It was just so beautiful. Mike was equally as excited – it was his first time seeing the Pacific Ocean.

We took the requisite photos of the bridge and then moved down the small peninsula to the Wave Organ. It was misting and cold due to our early morning trek, and I wish I could say it was worth it but once we got there, the organ was absolutely silent. It was a very pretty view from there and we could have just caught it in the wrong conditions, but I was just a tad disappointed. We turned around and made our way towards the bridge. The walk was so relaxing; we strolled along the beach, mountains on one side of us and the ocean on the other.

A ways down the path, we stopped at the Warming Hut (a small cafe and gift shop) to get some water and then cut up into the hills to the entrance of the bridge, a walk which provided beautiful panoramic views of the bay. We approached the bridge, and our path became much more crowded. Buses of tourists joined us as we got up onto the bridge. We walked across, tripping over each other as we stared at the ocean and took pictures. The Golden Gate Bridge is about a mile and half long, so we saved crossing it for when we’d have a car the next day and turned back at the halfway point. The views from the middle of the bridge were so beautiful, photos don’t really do it justice, but I tried.

Once back on solid ground, we decided to walk along the coast a bit and move on to Golden Gate Park, a good hour’s walk. I cannot fully explain the complete contentedness I felt as we walked along the coast. Every turn in the path showed a new view of the ocean or the bridge or the beach and I loved every minute of it. It was still a little foggy and misty, which made it even better. There was even a lookout point where we could see fins moving through the water. I would like to say they were sharks, because that’s my favorite possibility, but we’ll never know for sure. We walked downhill and through the trees to Baker Beach and listened to the waves in the mist, which soon turned to rain as we stood there. The beach is vast and beautiful with a fantastic view of the mountains and bridge across the way.

Our GPS designated path took us through the Presidio neighborhood next, which was pretty ritzy. We walked through it with our jackets soaked through and our sneakers full of sand, admiring the huge houses behind iron gates. We trudged to Golden Gate Park and called it quits after all we could find was a disc golf course. I know there is so much to see in the park, but we just couldn’t enjoy it in our current state. We got an Uber, which took us through the park towards Haight Ashbury. We had lunch at Street Taco on Haight Street and scarfed down some good carne asada tacos and chips and guacamole – that long walk really worked up our appetites. Wandering around Haight Ashbury, popping into stores and people watching proved to be an interesting experience. It’s a pretty eccentric crowd over there. The shops featured a lot of vintage and artsy items. Our favorite shops were: Amoeba Records (an incredible superstore of music and movies), Wasteland Vintage and Loved to Death (macabre art at its finest). We wandered up and down the street a few times, trying to hit every store before we finally went back to the hostel to rest a bit before dinner.

The F “Train” (which was more like an electric bus) took us towards Fisherman’s Wharf. The train was a good way to see the piers from a distance, as it goes all along the Embarcadero. We got off at Pier 23 and hoofed it up a good amount of stairs to Coit Tower. It was a steep hike to the top, and the path took us through some backyards, but it was so worth it. The view from the top at night was sparkling and beautiful. The Bay Bridge lit up the right side of the sky with the lights of the city just beyond it, the rest was a perfect darkness.

We took it all in and then moved on to walk to dinner, realizing then that we went up the back way instead of using the main entrance. Regardless, we went back down the way we came, back towards Fisherman’s Wharf. We walked along the piers which were not very crowded for a Sunday Evening, and on to the famed Pier 39. It was full of lights and shops and restaurants and people. This seemed to be the happening spot. We moved past the expensive souvenir stores and chain restaurants to the end, where the seals were. It was pretty eerie to see them move around in the dark, and hearing the disembodied barking every few seconds.

We went to The Franciscan Crab restaurant for dinner, which was a little bit further down, on Pier 41. The restaurant was not very crowded, but seemed like a classic west coast seafood joint. We ordered the iron skillet roasted shrimp and crab legs with potatoes and corn on the side. I loved the crab legs, because, well, I always love crab legs, but the shrimp were not for me. The cocktails were very good – I had the Ariel’s Allure Martini, but The service left a little to be desired, so overall the experience was just OK. There were obviously plenty of other seafood restaurants to choose from, so next time, I’d probably go somewhere else. We walked back to the F train and took it to the financial district to walk the rest of the way. We stopped at Bartlett Hall, which was just around the corner from the hostel, for a nightcap. The bar had a lot of character and played great music. The cocktails (particularly the Al Capone) and the gentleman slinging them were delightful. It was the perfect place to end our first full day in San Francisco.

To Be Continued…

City by the Bay – Day 1

On December 12, 2015January 5, 2016 By rebeccawanderlustingIn California, US Travel4 Comments

We landed at SFO at 10:10am PST on a Saturday. After picking up our luggage, we headed up to the Airtram and then to the BART station to go downtown. $8.65 and thirty minutes later, we arrived at the Powell St. Station in Union Square. Our first view of downtown was of the beautiful buildings on Powell Street and the trolley. However, before we could enjoy any of it, we needed to eat something. We went into the first place we saw that wasn’t a fast food joint, which was Tad’s Steakhouse on Powell Street. It was a decent enough place, we ordered at the counter and sat down to eat some pretty good burgers before moving on. We walked to The HI San Francisco Downtown, which was very close to the train station, to check in. The helpful women at the front desk allowed us to check in early, and explained the amenities of the hostel, which include: daily activities and city tours and complimentary breakfast.

We went up to our private room (with en suite bath) to freshen up. The room was pretty large and cutely decorated. We settled in and changed clothes before heading out to explore the city. My sister had recommended that we go to City Lights Bookstore, so we walked over to check it out. We walked through Union Square, which was festively decorated with a Christmas Tree and skating rink. We had to walk through a tunnel to get to Chinatown, which made me think of the tunnel scene from “The Stand” and I rushed us through it. We fought our way through the crowds and found City Lights on Jack Kerouac Alley, right where it should be. It featured three glorious floors of books, and a good selection of Beat Generation works. Naturally, we browsed for a while, taking our time on each floor. Outside, Kerouac Alley was very colorful, with murals on the walls and quotes etched in gold on the cobblestones. Of course there was one from the man himself – “The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great…”.

We walked back through Chinatown and took in the sights and smells. Women haggling over cabbage, shopkeepers trying to lure us into their stores, fireworks going off in the street, it was a pretty authentic scene. That night we met my cousin, Katie and her fiancé, James for dinner in the Mission District. Mike and I got over there early so we could check out the neighborhood. We picked up a coffee from Muddy Waters

Coffee House and popped into some of the stores in the area. There were a lot of really cute and unique stores along Valencia Street. Our favorites were Needles and Pens, Wallflower Vintage and Wonderland Gallery. The stores were interspersed with a diverse set of restaurants and cafes. My first choice for dinner was Lolo’s, a tapas restaurant, but there was an hour and a half wait, so we decided to moved on. We stopped at La Taza (a cute cafe with lighter fare) for a beer and to get our dinner plans straight. Katie wanted to take us somewhere memorable, and once that was settled, she certainly delivered. We walked to The Crafty Fox, and I am so happy that’s where we ended up. It is a brilliant gastropub located on Mission Street, and has a bar up front and long shared tables in the back. We staked out an area at the end of one, and went up to the bar to order. They had an excellent selection of craft beer and the food was amazing. Mike and I split the salmon skewers and the wild boar sausage, both of which we loved, and I had the New Kids on the Hops (Altamont Beer Works) beer, which complimented our food choices wonderfully. Plus, the company and conversation made the evening even better, of course. Katie and James proved once again to be fantastic hosts (they were also nice enough to open up their home to me in Korea).

We all took the subway to our respective homes, us going back to Union Square and Katie and James going farther down the line, to Berkeley. Once we were off the train, Mike and I decided to stop for one more drink at a bar his coworker recommended: Golden Gate Tap Room. We got our hands stamped at the door and walked up a flight of stairs to the bar. It was more or less a beercade, except unlike some of the ones in Chicago, you had to pay for the games. We each had a beer and played a couple games of Mrs. Pacman before feeling too old for the young crowd and retiring for the night. Back at the hostel, we fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows.

To Be Continued…

Trip Planning: San Francisco

On November 10, 2015November 10, 2015 By rebeccawanderlustingIn Travel Tips, Trip Planning3 Comments

Trip Planning: San Francisco

I cannot tell you how excited I am for my upcoming trip to San Francisco. One more month! I booked the flights three months ago, but have only just begun to plan the actual trip. I will once again be travelling with my boyfriend, Michael, and we’ll be celebrating my birthday (ahem, my 26^th Birthday) while we’re there. Right now, I have one hotel booked, but only for two out of our three nights there, and a long list of attractions I want to see. Here’s what I have so far:

Flights: Frontier Airlines – Previously, I had a not so great experience with Frontier (see SLC Punks), but was willing to try them again because the price was so right. I plan on doing a full review on them this time to set the record straight.

Hotels: Hostel International San Francisco Downtown – 2 nights booked. We are on a little bit of a budget for this trip, which is why we chose to stay in a hostel for the majority of the trip. However, I tend to like to stay in a hostel for a couple nights to save money, then book a nice-ish hotel for the last night, just to get both perspectives (I did this in North Carolina too). I think our second hotel will be Hotel Vertigo, but I have yet to book it out of sheer procrastination.

Attractions: The Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, The Mission, Cable Cars… the list goes on and on. I would really like to bike across The Golden Gate Bridge, shop in Haight Ashbury, eat some good seafood by the ocean, and find the Full House house. We are also planning on driving to John Muir Woods to hike and Sonoma for some wine tastings. There are a lot of things to check off and I’m hoping we can get to them all without going crazy.

Restaurants: I have had two recommendations that were pounded into my brain by insistent friends: 1. Dottie’s for breakfast and 2. Yank Sing for dim sum. I plan to try both, and as I said before, I really want to east some good seafood in Fisherman’s Wharf. I don’t want to pick too many restaurants that we absolutely must go to so we can ask around when we get there to see what the locals recommend.

Typically what I do for trips like this is to write down my must-sees/must-eats, which I choose from Pinterest and Travel Blogs, and use Google maps to see how far away from the hotel each one is. That way, I can group attractions together based on what’s near what. I try to make a rough, but not too binding, schedule of how I can make it to everything. This is especially important for this trip, because we have to rent a car for a day to get to a couple of our must-sees (John Muir Woods and Sonoma). I haven’t made the car reservation yet, or our last night hotel reservation, BUT I did get “On The Road” to read on the plane before we visit the historic Jack Kerouac Alley. So that’s settled. Even though not everything is organized quite yet, I am beyond thrilled to be able to visit and experience this gorgeous city.

I’ll keep you updated on this trip, but in the meantime, enjoy these photos from the first time I was ever in San Francisco in 2002. We only stopped there for a couple of hours on our way to Yosemite National Park, but I guess it was long enough to make me want to go back!
Feel free to leave all of your best San Francisco travel tips in the comments!