Our last day in San Francisco began with drizzly weather, very Seattle-like. Appropriately, Lesley and I started the day at Starbucks. We didn't really have any plans for the morning. We walked around Union Square and then took the streetcar down to the Ferry building. On the way back, we stopped at a cool toy store, and then went to the mall downtown.

Since we had to check out of our hotel, we dropped off our bags at our friend's apartment. Our friend wasn't feeling particularly well, so Lesley and I went to a sandwich shop in the Castro. It had apparently changed locations and the old address didn't show the new address, so it took us a little while to find it. We took our sandwiches to nearby Dolores Park and fortunately by this time the rain had stopped and the sky had started to clear up. It was still quite windy, so we had to keep our food from blowing away. Our sandwiches were pretty good.

After lunch, we walked to the Mission district. The weather by this time was beautifully sunny and the walk was very pleasant. We walked a ways down Mission St and our friend met up with us. We then took a bus over to the Noe Valley to walk around some more historic San Francisco homes. We had a very nice walk and then stopped for a drink before heading back in the direction of our friend's apartment. We had some frozen yogurt before getting our bags from our friend's apartment and saying goodbye. It was unfortunate that our friend had felt sick during the trip, but we still were able to have a good time together.

We took BART to the airport. Our plane was flying out of a new terminal, which had better food than typical airport fast food. We shared a tomato bisque soup, which was actually not bad, before heading back to Seattle.

One aspect of unfortunate timing was that both Lesley and our friend happened to be feeling a little sick during our visit. While we were still able to get out and do a lot of things, we had been taking things a little easy. Unfortunately, people wasn't feeling well enough to attend a Easter Sunday church service.

Later, Lesley and I did stroll through Chinatown as well as through North Beach. We found an Italian place for lunch in North Beach, though were hoping to be a little more impressed by the food.

After lunch, we took a couple buses to get to the upscale neighborhood of Nob Hill. San Francisco has a very good public transportation system and maps are posted at many of the bus stops, which helped us find our way around. Also, unlike Seattle, buses come very frequently, it seems like our average wait time for a bus was under 5 minutes.

We walked around Nob Hill, enjoying the upscale atmosphere. We ran across a classic car show near the Fairmont hotel. After that, we found the nearby Cable Car Museum, which was actually pretty interesting. The cable car system is operated by the motors in that building, which keep the cables moving at around 10 mph throughout the city. The museum also showed how the cable cars work and told the history of the cable cars. There used to be a lot more cable car lines operated by different companies, but the great fire of 1906 destroyed most of them. Later, the whole system was in danger of being scrapped in the name of progress, but was saved due to the work of citizen activists.

After this, we met up with our friend and his girlfriend at the grocery store to buy food for Easter dinner. Our friend's girlfriend made most of the food and we had a nice dinner with green beans, carrots, potatoes, and chicken.

We hung out at our friend's apartment the rest of the day and played some Mario Kart, then played Ticket to Ride again, as well as a game of Uno. This day was probably my favorite day of the trip thanks to the good weather and fun Lesley and I had, as well as the friendly Easter dinner we had.

Saturday morning we had a small bite to eat from the hotel continental breakfast and headed out to Golden Gate Park to see the Conservatory of Flowers. The current exhibit was called "Wicked Plants: Botanical Rogues and Assassins" and they had all kinds of poisonous or otherwise deadly plants such as poison ivy, the tobacco plant, and others. It was very interesting reading all the stories about each of the plants and how they killed people over the past 150 years. The rest of the conservatory was pretty cool too, with all kinds of weird looking leaves and flowers. We saw some lily pads that were probably 2 feet wide that were pretty cool.

We continued walking through Golden Gate Park and enjoyed the great weather. It was mostly sunny and in the 60s. After the park, we took the bus to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was really crowded, but once we got out onto the bridge the people thinned out. We walked about halfway across and were able to see pretty far in every direction. Last time we were here, it was foggy all around us and we couldn't hardly see anything. Going to the Golden Gate Bridge is probably my favorite thing to do in San Francisco.

It was about time for lunch, so we headed to Fisherman's Wharf by bus and ate at Boudin. Their sourdough bread bowls with clam chowder and tomato bisque soup were excellent. Not too far from there was a place called Musée Mécanique where they had all kinds of old arcade and carnival games. Some looked to be almost 100 years old. We played a few of them, including an Indiana Jones pinball machine.

We walked over to Ghirardelli Square next and ate an ice cream sundae called "The Cable Car" while sitting on a bench looking out to the bay. It had three scoops of ice cream - rocky road, vanilla chocolate chip, and chocolate - topped with whipped cream, nuts, hot fudge, a cherry, and a milk chocolate square bar. It was really good.

After that we walked along the pier and eventually made our way to the Embarcadero via a historic streetcar. AT&T Park where the Giants play wasn't too far away, so we decided to go check it out to see if there was anything new on or near the stadium about them being World Series champs. We actually showed up just after a game had ended, so the place was swarming with orange and black. We didn't hang around too long because of the crowds, so we headed on back to the hotel to rest a bit.

We wanted to go to an A's game since we'd already been to a Giants game the last time we came here. Unfortunately the A's were out of town - oddly enough playing in Seattle, so we didn't see any baseball games.

We ate dinner at a place our friend recommended that was really close to our hotel called Bangkok Noodles & Thai. After dinner we went to hang out with our friends and played a few games of Mario Kart. We also played two new games called Carcassonne and Quiddler.

The first thing we did Friday morning was ride the cable car, which picked us up at the end of the Powell-Hyde/Powell-Mason line, less than 2 blocks from our hotel. It was pretty full and we were stuck inside the car, so we didn't have much of a chance to look out of the car. We were trying to get to Mama's, a breakfast cafe I'd heard about located in North Beach. We accidentally took the cable car that went farther west, so we got off at the top of Nob Hill and walked down to Washington Square to the east. The Powell-Mason cable car would have taken us almost straight there.

We gradually made our way to the restaurant and the line of people out the door was almost too intimidating. We decided to stick it out and waited almost an hour in line, which seemed really long despite getting there around 9am on a weekday. While I waited in line, Troy explored the neighborhood a little bit and even went up to the steps of Coit Tower. Our friend met us there for breakfast, which turned out to be pretty good and not too expensive. I had an omlette and Troy had the french toast sampler with fruit. It was a neat little restaurant, but I can't say I'd go out of my way to eat there again.

After breakfast, we continued exploring North Beach, which is a neighborhood we didn't visit at all on our last trip. It was probably my favorite neighborhood we visited. There was so much to look at and all the cafes looked cool. Several of them had outdoor sidewalk seating. We stopped briefly at a bookstore and a couple ornate cathedrals.

The next stop was Lombard Street, the crookedest street in the world. We went to it on the last trip, but only at night, so we couldn't really see it that well. Troy and I walked all the way to the top and took some pictures of the nice view. It was pretty crowded with tourists, so we didn't stay too long.

We were all pretty tired after all that walking, so we decided to head back to our friend's apartment. After visiting a little, we decided to play a board game called Ticket to Ride. Basically it's a game where you try to claim different train routes displayed on a US and Canada map. Major cities are linked by anywhere from 1 to 6 car-length trains of different colors. You get extra points for the longest train and for completing routes that you receive randomly at the start of the game. For example, I got a route card for New York City to Atlanta (with stops along the way) and it took me 3 yellow cars, 2 black cars, and 2 red cars. You can only draw two train car cards per turn and you have to wait until you have enough cards of the same color car before you can turn them in and claim a route. It took me a while to figure out a strategy. Troy eventually won after playing about an hour.

We waited a while for our friend's girlfriend to get home and ordered pizza for dinner from a place nearby. We took it easy the rest of the night and went back to our hotel a little early to rest up for the next day.

Living on the West Coast means that we're able to visit other cities on the West Coast and flights cost less for us than for much of the country. We have a good friend who lives in San Francisco, so we wanted to visit him again. We last visited him more than two and a half years ago, so we thought it'd be good to go to San Francisco again.

We had been looking for airfare for several weeks and the prices kept rising after we started looking. Fortunately, a new flight was made available at a good time, so we were able to book our tickets and book a hotel near Union Square.

Since we have a limited amount of time off, we planned our trip over a weekend and flew out from work on Thursday after work. We grabbed a bite to eat at Seatac and then flew out via Virgin Airlines. The flight was quite full and departed late from the gate for some reason. Then, when we were about ready to take off, we had to turn around because a person in the exit row had taken a sleeping pill or something. I'm not really sure what the deal was, but we arrived in SF like an hour late.

Otherwise, the flight was good. Every seat had a screen for watching certain TV shows or listening to music for free. They also had movies and other entertainment you could purchase to watch. We enjoyed watching some Comedy Central, which made the flight go by much more quickly.

After we landed, we took the shuttle to the BART station and then took BART to our hotel and prepared for the next few days in the city.

We finally put together a video from our trip to San Francisco. Troy did most of the work on this one, which is probably a good thing, because I would have tried to include too much and it would have ended up being a 30 minute video. Enjoy!

Unfortunately we've come to the end of our posts about our trip to San Francisco, after more than a week. It took a while to figure out how we wanted to organize our thoughts for posts since there was so much we wanted to say. We ended up posting about things in a random order rather than chronologically. So, here is a brief list of things we did day by day:

Wednesday

• Chinatown
• Alamo Square
• Divisadero Street
• Giants game

Thursday

• Oakland Bay Bridge
• Yerba-Buena/Treasure Island
• Twin Peaks
• Sausalito
• Muir Woods
• Marin Headlands
• Fort Point
• Ocean Beach
• Twin Peaks at night
• Golden Gate Bridge at night
• Drove down Lombard Street

Friday

• Cable Car
• Fisherman's Wharf
• Pier 39
• Ghirardelli Square
• Fort Mason
• Walked halfway across Golden Gate Bridge in fog
• Walked around Clement Street
• Walked to Rossi park and USF in fog

Saturday

• Golden Gate Park
• Japanese Tea Garden
• Haight/Ashbury
• Walked around Clement Street
• Walked to USF in clear daylight

Sunday

• Yerba Buena Gardens and Martin Luther King Memorial
• Ferry Building
• de Young Art Museum
• Arboretum in Golden Gate Park
• Walked on 9th Avenue
• Buena Vista Park at dusk

Monday

• Civic Center
• Rode Streetcar

We had a lot of fun on the trip and look forward to going back some day. We hope you enjoyed the pictures and look forward to sharing video soon.

List of Previous Posts

1. Introduction
2. Neighborhoods
3. Giants game
4. Hanging out with our Friend
5. Muir Woods & Gardens
6. Food
7. Bridges
8. USF
9. Famous Places
10. de Young Museum
11. Transportation
12. Marin Hills and Other Viewpoints
13. San Francisco Video

Probably the best place to see the Golden Gate Bridge is from the Marin Hills, just North of San Francisco. After we went to Muir Woods Thursday afternoon, we stopped at the Marin Hills on the way back. We were very lucky to have clear weather for viewing the bridge. Normally there are blankets of fog that cover the bridge every day. The Marin Hills are neat because they are so high that you can look down toward the bridge and you can see the everywhere from the Pacific coast to Oakland. We went to several viewpoints on the hills and took lots of pictures:



There are so many other viewpoints around the city: Treasure Island, Twin Peaks, Sausalito, and Buena Vista Park to name a few. The day we rented the car, the first thing we did was drive across the Oakland Bay Bridge to go to Treasure Island to see the view. Most of these pictures were taken from Treasure Island, but some were taken from Buena Vista Park, USF, and the de Young Museum observation tower.

Figuring out how to get where you want to go is one issue (or it can create many recurring issues) on any vacation. In San Francisco, we had a lot of options, and the numerous ways we got around made the trip more exciting.

Flight toward SF

First, we flew out from Seattle toward San Francisco. We decided to fly into Oakland instead of SFO because it was $75 cheaper per person. Fortunately, Alaska Airlines had quite a few flight options so we picked the best one for us. However, that meant flying on a Bombardier CRJ-700 (operated by Horizon Airlines), which is the smallest airplane that either of us has ever flown on. Instead of walking on a jet way to get on the plane, we walked on the ground and up some stairs to get on the plane. I really liked the plane, though, because it was very quiet inside, flew pretty smoothly, and we didn't have anyone between us and the aisle or window.

BART from airport to hotel

Once we arrived in Oakland, getting to our hotel was pretty easy. We didn't rent a car at the airport because we would be spending most of our time in the city and having a car to drive and park would just be a hassle, so we opted to take BART rail. Unfortunately we had to pay $3 each to take a bus to the rail station, but it didn't take too long and we didn't have to wait too long for the rail. The dated-looking light rail trains took us just a couple blocks away from our hotel in the middle of downtown.

Bus

Once we got in the city, we used multiple ways to get around. San Francisco is very walkable, so we were often able to get where we wanted to go on foot. However, we also took the bus quite frequently and had some negative experiences the first day. We tried to catch the bus at one stop, but all the buses that came were too full and didn't stop. The buses we were able to catch had standing room only with little room to breathe. After attending the baseball game our first night, we waited for the bus for 30 minutes before it came.

Throughout the rest of our time there, we rode the bus a couple times almost every day and had some good experiences where we didn't have to wait long and were able to sit, but those were balanced by the less positive experiences. One benefit of a big city is that you have a lot of ways to get around, but the problem with that is that none of them are very good. Still, the bus was a fine way to get around the city.

Car Rental

However, for getting outside the city, we chose to rent a car. It was nice having a car so that we could drive over the bridges, visit Muir Woods, and go to some of the less accessible viewpoints. We also drove down Lombard street, though it was at night. The car rental place closed at 6 and said that we could return it after-hours for $30. That's a lot of money, but parking it at our hotel would have cost $38 overnight, so we dropped it off that evening after we drove pretty much everywhere we wanted to.

Cable Cars

San Francisco is known for its cable cars, so we rode the Powell-Mason cable car to Fisherman's Wharf. Unfortunately, the line to board was pretty long and there was a temporary problem with the track that slowed things down. However, eventually we got on and rode across the city.

Streetcar

On our last day, we rode a neat, old Italian streetcar along Market Street.

Returning to Seattle

When we left, we took the same way back to the airport. Amazingly, checking in and getting through security in Oakland took less than 10 minutes. We saved time because we didn't check any bags but it was incredible how quickly we got to our gate. We gave ourselves a good time cushion, though, but missed the previous flight to Seattle, so we had to wait a while at the gate for our flight. Anyway, after a 96 minute flight, it felt good to be back.

Here are some pictures we took related to transportation:

San Francisco has a few famous art museums, but the one our friend most strongly recommended was the de Young. We decided to visit on Sunday and it was incredibly busy. We waited in line for tickets for like 30 minutes. Most people were there for the special exhibit, but we just saw the regular exhibits, which were fortunately not very crowded. The exhibits we saw had some impressive works of glass and contemporary art. The building itself was also very interesting and had an observation tower. Click below for some pictures we took at the museum.

When we arrived on Wednesday, the first thing we did after eating lunch was meet our friend downtown and walk through Chinatown. It was cool seeing all the Chinese buildings and signs. After that, we took the bus to one of the most famous spots in San Francisco: Alamo Square. This is where the opening sequence was filmed for the tv show Full House. The famous Steiner street houses run along the east side of Alamo Square. Seeing all the old Victorian-style homes was cool.

On Friday we did most of the touristy things we were planning on doing. First we rode the cable car to Fisherman's Wharf, where we ate lunch at Boudin's. After that we walked along the waterfront to Pier 39, one of the major shopping areas nearby. One of the cooler things to see at Pier 39 are all the sea lions that congregate there. About a hundred of them sit on the docks there and make noise all day. There isn't much else to do at Pier 39 besides browse around some of the little shops there. I did want to go to one specific place though, the San Francisco Music Box Company. The last time I was in San Francisco, I bought a Beatles music box that plays "And I Love Her." I wanted to go again this time to see if they had any new Beatles music boxes, but I didn't see any.

After that, we went to do one of the things I wanted to do the most on the trip: eat ice cream at the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory. They have old equipment on display in the store in the process of making chocolate, which is pretty neat. We ate a brownie hot fudge sundae and barely finished it. We also went to the gift shop to look around some, where they gave us free samples of the new flavor, milk chocolate with peanut butter filling. I managed to eat my sample somehow, but Troy saved his for later. There are other small shops in Ghirardelli Square, but most of them were closed due to major renovation of the Square.

Near there is a small beach and a pier that extends into the bay that offers a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island. We spent some time on the pier watching the blankets of fog roll over the bridge and across the bay past Alcatraz. Fog covered the entire city after a few hours. After that we walked through Fort Mason, which also offers good views of the bridge and the water. Then we called our friend for directions to a bus that would take us to the Golden Gate Bridge so that we could walk on it. It was neat walking across the bridge in the fog.

Other touristy places we went to included Lombard street at night, Yerba Buena Gardens, the Martin Luther King Memorial, and the Ferry Building. The Ferry Building was recently renovated and now has several shops inside and vendors on the street outside, along with a fountain. It was kind of similar to Pike Place Market, but not nearly as good. Most of the shops inside were pretty upscale, one of which was a wine-tasting bar. I did enjoy going on the other side of the Ferry Building toward the water, where you can see the Oakland Bay Bridge. On Monday, we briefly went to City Hall and the Civic Center, but there wasn't that much to do there.

It would have been nice to see Lombard street during the day and I would have liked to see Ghirardelli Square again, but it's hard to fit everything into so little time. Overall though, I'm happy with the places we were able to see.

Our friend goes to school at the University of San Francisco, which is prominently located on a hill in the middle of the city. We were able to tour the campus on both a foggy day and a sunny day. The architecture of the campus is impressive and the campus also offers good views.

Here are a few pictures:

The Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge are two of the most beautiful things in the city. We drove across the west section of the Oakland Bay Bridge on the way to Treasure Island on Thursday. The bridge is divided into two main sections: west and east, both over 9,000 feet long. By comparison, the Golden Gate Bridge is only 8,981 feet long.

After visiting the Marin Hills (also on Thursday), we drove to Fort Point for a great view of the Golden Gate from sea-level. Fort Point was built in 1853 and was the only fort on the West Coast at the time. There are still old cannons on display in the old, preserved fort. We tried to go back at night to walk on the bridge, but didn't realize that it closed to pedestrians at 9. Instead, on Friday we took the bus to the Golden Gate Bridge and walked halfway across it in the fog, which was pretty neat. Sometimes it looked like the bridge disappeared into a cloud of fog. I wish we had walked across it when it was clear on Thursday. Maybe we can do that someday.

Oakland Bay Bridge pictures:



Some of my favorite pictures from the whole trip:

San Francisco is a very international city with a lot of places to eat. The number of different places to eat and types of food was almost overwhelming, with lots of small, unique restaurants on every block. Fortunately our friend helped us find some good places to eat while we were there. And, even though San Francisco has one of the highest costs of living in the nation, Lesley and I never paid more than $30 for the both of us and often paid much less than that.

We had a lot of Asian food while we were there. When we first arrived, we stopped at a Japanese place two blocks from our hotel. I had some pretty good ramen noodles and Lesley had sushi. Our friend lives close to Clement Street, which has a lot of Asian food, and we went to a few places that he likes. One evening we picked up some good Chinese food, another time we went out for Thai at King of Thai Noodle and shared several different dishes, including a noodle dish, a rice dish, and a curry dish. Another time we picked up Dim Sum, which is a type of Chinese food that Lesley and I hadn't had before. We also stopped at a couple pizza places and went to a place that had pretty good chicken kabobs on Haight Street. We also stopped at a burger place on 9th Avenue, which had a good turkey burger. One of the highlights was when we went to Boudin's sourdough bakery at Fisherman's Wharf - the clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl was very good. Most mornings we ate breakfast snacks that we brought, but one morning we went out to breakfast near our hotel and another time we got bagels.

There were a couple meals that weren't very good, like the $10 sandwiches in Sausalito and the other location of Boudin's that we went to. But, most of the food was very good and I really enjoyed getting to try a variety of good stuff.

We really wanted to go to Muir Woods since we like nature and the outdoors so much. We rented a car for one day so we could drive to Muir Woods, among many other places. It didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would to drive there. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, stopped in Sausalito for lunch, and then drove the rest of the way to Muir Woods. It was a really windy road for a little while, but not long enough to make me car sick thankfully. We finally arrived in the park and it was pretty busy and full of other tourists. I had forgotten how crowded and loud it can be.

In order to avoid the crowd, we walked on the longest loop trail (about 2 miles) and eventually were able to get away from all the noisy kids and other people. It was nice and quiet after that and we could hear the water flowing through the creek and birds in the distance. On our way back, we saw a young deer eating, which was really cool. It wasn't more than 15 feet from me and didn't seem to mind all the people taking flash pictures of it.

It was really cool to see the giant redwood trees again. It wasn't quite as impressive as I remember, perhaps because I've gotten so used to seeing fairly tall evergreen trees in Washington. But Muir Woods was still definitely worth going to and I'm glad we were able to go. It would have been nice to spend more time there, but we had a full day planned and had to use the car to go do other things. Maybe some day we'll go back to San Francisco and take a longer hike through Muir Woods.

As for other garden areas, we went to the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. It had some neat looking pagodas and bridges, but wasn't as big as I thought it would be. They also have a little deck area where people can buy tea and crackers for an extra charge, but we didn't stop for that.

We also walked through the Strybing Arboretum, also in Golden Gate Park. It was grouped in sections according to the different countries or states. For example, there was section for plants native to Australia and a section for Californian plants. The arboretum was alright, but overall not that impressive.

I wanted to go to Baker Beach, but we never did. We went to Ocean Beach at late sunset though, which was neat. It would have been nice to do more things outdoors in natural areas, but I guess we have Seattle for that.

Anyway, here's pictures from Muir Woods and other garden areas:

One of the compelling reasons for going to San Francisco now, rather than one of the many other places we want to go to, was to go while our friend is still living there for school. I was personally very interested in getting to experience more than just the touristy areas and to go to and explore some of the unique neighborhoods of the city and having our friend there made that much easier. Plus, he guided us to lots of good food places and gave us tips for riding the bus to get around. And, aside from all that, it was great to get to hang out so much. We got to hang out at his apartment and go out and do a lot of stuff in the city together. It made it tougher to leave, knowing that it could be a lot of fun to stay and do more things in the city with our friend. But anyway, I'm very glad that we were finally able to go visit him and the city.

I definitely wasn't going to miss going to a Giants game while in San Francisco, so we got tickets for the last game of their home stand against the Rockies on August 27th, our first day there. My dad has always been a big Giants fan and we went to games before on our trips to San Francisco. In fact, Troy and I planned our trip around the game since the Giants were going to be on the road after the 27th.

We arrived pretty early because we were unsure how reliable the bus system would be and we wanted plenty of time to explore AT&T Park. We spent about an hour walking around ballpark, which is right on the water actually. In fact, several home runs have been hit into the water (named McCovey Cove) behind right field. It was a good game to go to since the Giants' best starting pitcher was going to pitch. They beat the Rockies 4-1 with back to back home runs in one inning. I'm glad there were a few home runs so I could hear the fog horn again, which sounded every time the Giants hit a home run. I remember hearing it when I went to Giants games the last two times I was in San Francisco. Anyway, I'm glad we went to a game, here are some pictures we took:

San Francisco is the most walkable city in the country and it's also known for its unique neighborhoods. I was very interested in walking and exploring the city and I feel like we did a good amount of that.

Our hotel was in the middle of Union Square, which isn't a neighborhood in the residential sense, but was a very interesting part of town. It was very dense and busy and reminded me a lot of Manhattan. There were tons of major stores and diverse people and small restaurants and art galleries and big advertisements. It was pretty neat. Another interesting neighborhood was Chinatown, which wasn't too far away. We walked along the touristy part, which had a lot of intricate accessories as well as some trinkety junk for sale. Then we walked around the more authentic part, which was really busy and had interesting foods on display.

We walked through the Haight, which is famous for some stuff that happened a long time before I was born. To me it just seemed like another vibrant neighborhood. There were a lot of independent stores and restaurants. We spent some time in Amoeba Records as well as in a very small bookstore with way too many books.

Another neat area we walked through was the Mission District. There were some unique stores there, such as the weird pirate store we went into, which wasn't a party store, it was very serious about pirates and had pirate clothes, sea salt, and some books. There was a tub of sand in the middle and there was also a barrel of lard for some reason. There were drawers along the side of the store that had different things. One of them had hair in it. I'm not really sure why.

There was another weird store nearby, which was definitely creepier. It had bins of different kind of animal claws for sale, like badger claws. It also had rodent remains wrapped in foil. I'm not sure why you would buy either of those or how the store obtains those in the first place. It was a strange but very interesting place.

Near our friend's apartment along Clement was a diverse area, which had some things similar to Chinatown but also had a lot of other types of establishments. His neighborhood was three miles or so from downtown but still had a lot of places to walk to. It amazed me that there were so many businesses on each block and that they were all so diverse.

Walking through all of these unique, vibrant neighborhoods made me realize how unique San Francisco is among American cities. It was amazing how dense the city was and how many square miles it covered. It's a huge city and I felt it reached a potential that most cities never dream of. It certainly has its flaws, but its lively neighborhoods make San Francisco a pinnacle of urbanity and one of the few great cities in the country. It's definitely a place that I would like to go back to and experience further.

Here are a few pictures we took in various places throughout the city:

Like I mentioned in a previous post, Troy and I went to San Francisco to visit a friend over Labor Day weekend. We left Wednesday, August 27 and flew back on Labor Day. We had a really great time seeing our friend and spending a lot of time in the city. We did pretty much everything we wanted to do and enjoyed being there. Over the next week or so, we'll be posting about our trip along with different sets of pictures each day.

Today's set of pictures were taken from Twin Peaks, one of the best viewpoints in the city. Hope you enjoy them.

List of Posts

1. Introduction
2. Neighborhoods
3. Giants game
4. Hanging out with our Friend
5. Muir Woods & Gardens
6. Food
7. Bridges
8. USF
9. Famous Places
10. de Young Museum
11. Transportation
12. Marin Hills and Other Viewpoints
13. San Francisco Video

We got back from our trip to San Francisco this past Monday and have been so busy that it's been hard to make time to edit all of our photos. We took over 800 pictures and I shot more than 40 minutes of video during our trip. It's taking a while to figure out which pictures we want to post and how to organize them. We've already worked on the photos over 3 hours and are still not really close to finishing them. Hopefully we'll have some posted by the end of the weekend.