San Francisco (Part Three)

On Wednesday morning, Steph and I tried to wake up early for free admission into the Tea Gardens at Golden Gate Park. The gardens are free until 10am on M,W, F. With Scott's help, we got to the garden's at about 9:45.

I think this Buddha is in a Photoshop book that I have:

The gardens also had this insane bridge. Only I was brave enough to scale it:

But I also had to be brave for the descent:
The rest of the day our plan was to get more use out of our double-decker bus tour. Our first stop on the bus tour was Chinatown. I had been to Chinatown a few times before, but I never knew what to be excited about. I mostly saw a bunch of $1.88 t-shirts, and a load of tourists. In our guidebook we read that most tourists hang out on Grant street, while the locals shop on Stockton.

Here is Grant:


We stopped by the fortune cookie factory and grabbed a bag full of fortune cookies. We had to resist the urge to buy a bag full of "Adult" fortunes.

After the cookie factory, we went to Stockton street in search of some grub. I always have a hard time in international districts. I want to stay away from tourists traps, but I usually can't understand the menu at the places that locals frequent.

We did however, see a line coming out of this place. We thought it best to check it out:

I couldn't understand the menu, so I just pointed, payed 50 cents and ended up with this deliciousness:

My greatest regret of the trip is that I didn't go back and get 5 more of them.

After Chinatown, we hopped back on the bus. While waiting at a stop at Fisherman's wharf I spotted a pier with an interesting sign "Musee Mecanique". We got off the bus and decided to check it out.


The Musee was pretty cool. Essentially a collection of old, strange, penny arcade machines. Some favorites:


I won't post the video of me getting beat by the arm wrestling machine on the "Fly Weight" setting. But I did get to see 3D photos of the San Francisco fire and earthquake.

Our next stop was the Ferry Building which was really cool -- Essentially an old building which was converted to a mall full of fancy foods.

Next we stopped at Civic Center and took a tour of city hall:

After it started raining really hard. We had a few hours until we went to Betsy and Steve's for dinner, so we found refuge in Lee's Sandwiches. Which had a boat-load of Bahn Mi.


So many choices!


After our sandwich, it was still raining. So we found refuge in the Public Library with some smelly and even belligerent homeless people.

After the library, we caught the train over to Betsy and Steve's in the inner sunset. Steve is my new hero because he makes awesome pizza and he is really funny. We are sad that we didn't get to hang out with them more. The evening was fun, as we got to eat pizza and 2 dozen cookies, and catch up.

Another great day - other San Francisco fun will follow shortly.