Summer Vacation Day 5

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

On Friday morning, we took the ferry from Larkspur to San Francisco, passing by San Quentin State Prison.

Once we arrived in the city, we headed straight for Blue Bottle Coffee in the Ferry Building.

I had read on Oh Happy Day that this was the best coffee in the city and thought it would be a great place to start our day. Also, I had something to prove: I knew that the ferry building was an amazing place with some of the best food in the city, but my husband was skeptical. He thought it would be like a food court in a mall and he was concerned that I had planned to visit there a few times during our stay. However, one taste of blue bottle and he was convinced that the ferry building was the place to be. We had their caramelized belgian waffles that they serve in coffee filters (so delicious), my husband had a latte, and I had a steamed caramel milk from the Cowgirl Creamery Sidekick Milk Bar. Everything was delicious, but my husband's latte was incredible.

After leaving the ferry building, we hopped on a streetcar that got us about half the way to our next destination, The Palace of Fine Arts. After a 40 minute walk in cool and windy weather, we finally made it. I asked my husband to take my picture in front of the pretty dome. I looked pretty cute that morning, but by the time we got there, I looked like this:

I had no idea my hair was that bad. My husband didn't say a word, either. I was looking through the pictures a few minutes later and finally realized that I looked like I had wondered out of an insane asylum. Thanks for the heads up, hubs.

I used to love the Exploratorium when I was little and would beg to go each time we would visit family in San Francisco. I hadn't been in years and my husband had never been, so we decided to check it out and see if it was still cool even though I was all grown up.

It was really fun! One of my favorite exhibits was a heat sensitive camera hooked up to a TV :

The dark spots are the coldest and the white spots are the warmest. See how cold my nose was??

This next one was the creepiest:

Two people sit on either side of this two way mirror type thing and you adjust the transparency and reflection. At one point, your two faces will merge into one and it is the strangest thing ever. You can sort of see it in the picture, but it was creepier in real life.

As we were leaving, I decided that this was my dream house:

It had a rooftop deck and a view of the dome and lake surrounding it. I love the style, too.

After our play time at the Exploratorium, we began an extremely long walk to our lunch destination,
Pizzeria Delfina in Pacific Heights. It's only about two miles, but it felt like 15 because it was almost all uphill. On the way, I spotted these:



Hugest peonies ever! They were as big as my head. I found them at Fiori, a really cute flower shop in the Marina, probably my favorite neighborhood in the city.

After a nice flat walk through the neighborhood, we faced one long major hill.

See the stairs in the sidewalk? Stairs. That's how steep the hill was.

It wasn't just one block of hill, it was several. Don't these cars look like they're going to topple over?

There was a pretty sweet reward for all of our hard work:

What a beautiful view!

We could see Alcatraz...

The Golden Gate Bridge, and the dome! That's where we walked from!!

By the time we got to Delfina, another recommendation from Cathy and Jordan, we had worked up quite an appetite. We started with the fresh stretched mozzerella. I know it looks like salad and toast, but there is a huge blob of cheese at the top of the plate.

I had a glass of savignon blanc and my husband had a peroni. We felt we deserved the drinks with lunch after our hike through the city.

Next, was a classic Margherita pizza.

So delicious. They give you the typical red chili flakes and parmesan, but also some oregano. I will always put oregano on my pizza from now on.

I love how they served the water in clear glass bottles. So simple and chic. If you're planning a trip to San Francisco, you must eat at Delfina. They have two pizzeria locations and one fancier restaurant, but I've heard not to bother with the restaurant and just go for the pizza.

We walked around Pacific Heights a bit more and found a cute dessert shop:

Among other adorable boutiques. This is probably my second favorite neighborhood.

My husband wanted to walk through Japan and China towns on our way back to the ferry building, but Japantown seemed kind of dead.

Here are some ducks hanging in a Chinatown window:

Somehow two creepy ghost faces ended up in this picture. They weren't there when we took it, so I'm thinking our camera was possessed for a minute.

Our original plan was to shop at the ferry building, eat at The Slanted Door, and head back to Marin on the ferry. However, by the time we got there, most of the shops were closed. We decided to eat at Kokkari instead and hit up the ferry building after we visited Alcatraz on Sunday.

On the way to dinner, we saw these pretty parrots hanging out on a lamppost:

We had planned to sit in the bar for dinner because we didn't have reservations and knew we'd have to wait hours for a table. However, the manager said he had a table we could take that was in the bar, but was being saved. We happily sat down right by a big window and high-fived over how lucky we were.

We had a zucchini appetizer that was just ok, but our entrees made up for it. I got moussaka:

It was delicious, but very rich. I'll admit, the only reason I ordered it was because I remembered it from My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

My husband got a roasted duck special:

AH-mazing. I ate more of his than my own.

By the time we were done with dinner, our feet were sore and swollen. Both of us had a hard time walking to the restroom after resting for a while. But, we made it back to the ferry building just in time to catch one of the last ferries of the day.

It was nice to catch up with my phone after a full day of barely looking at it at all.

My husband couldn't get enough of San Quentin. He has a strange obsession with prisons...

By the end of that day we were exhausted and ready for a long night's sleep. Somehow I managed to shower before collapsing into bed, though.

Next up: farmer's market fail, much needed massages, and our favorite cuisine, SUSHI!