When I say “California,” I usually mean everything south of Fresno and north of Mexico. In my mind, West Coast geography is Los Angeles, some forgettable road trip scenery, and then Washington State. (Sometimes Carmel-by-the-Sea is in there too.) Basically, San Francisco is a place I drive through on my way somewhere else. (I was always confused by that one colleague who’d humblebrag about being from the Bay Area. Isn’t it overcast up there? Like, all the time?) Anyway, this is Chinatown, and it is awesome.
Then Nene suggested a spontaneous trip to San Francisco to see A Strange Loop. To someone who plans months, sometimes years, in advance, two-weeks notice is a thrillingly short amount of time to get a “San Francisco Trip” spreadsheet filled out. So we spent 24 hours in San Francisco. (This is a cable car on the Powell-Hyde line. San Francisco’s cable car system is the last manually operated system in the world.)
Turns out there’s something to this whole “I left my heart in San Francisco” thing, because San Francisco is delightful. First of all, there was sun. Because of June gloom, the Long Beach sun hasn’t been around much these last few weeks, and wandering the bright streets of San Francisco was a welcome change. Plus the high-speed clouds were constantly moving, which made everything feel sort of mysterious and magical. (This is Alcatraz Island, a maximum-security prison from 1934-1963.)
Then there was the walkability. My memories are of hordes of people fighting for space with frustrated drivers while everyone struggles to navigate steep hills. But there weren’t a ton of people or cars, and the one hill we climbed was small. It was easy to walk from the BART station through Union Square, Chinatown, and the Italian neighborhood (called North Beach) and end up by all the cool stuff at Fisherman’s Warf. It was the like the charming walks in New York City set in the Mediterranean climate of Los Angeles (Los Angeles parrots included).
I’d forgotten how much there is to see along the water. We probably could have spent all 24 of our hours exploring just that area.
We found the Boudin Bakery that has been making sourdough since 1849. This is Nene’s sourdough bear.
I was most excited for Ghirardelli, which I didn’t realize takes up an entire city block. It’s like a outdoor shopping mall with a network of chocolate anchor stores.
The reason I was excited for Ghirardelli was their non-dairy hot fudge sundae. It’s non-dairy chocolate chips turned into hot fudge, with vanilla coconut ice cream, almond whipped topping, diced almonds, a cherry, and a 72% dark chocolate square. However good you’re thinking it looks, it was even better.
After dinner in Chinatown, we headed for North Beach. This is Nene’s tiramisu from Stella Pastry.
We saw so many Waymo cars! On Sunday morning they were flooding Union Square as people headed out. It was so cool. One of them waited to turn right so we could cross the street. We kept trying to see if there were people inside.
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