San FrancisGO

As crazy as the traffic is, San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in the world.  I’m definitely a city girl because I love being around skyscrapers and retail stores. It’s nice being able to walk from block to block where each block has something new and different 🙂 In the future, I hope to live in a city such as SF or NYC because I feel like there’s always something going on. (WARNING: Long blog post + tons of pictures ahead) 

Luckily, one of my best friends came back from summer school to hang out with me and we spontaneously decided to go to San Francisco (sorry Milk and Wood in San Jose, maybe next time). But for lunch, we decided to stop at one of our favorite restaurants: Applebee’s. Honestly, I have never found better mozzarella sticks than Applebee’s mozzarella sticks. If you love mozzarella sticks, you NEED to order these at Applebee’s! I ended up getting the Double Crunch Shrimp while my best friend ended up getting the Steak. It was on the 2 for $25 menu which is a pretty good deal!

Applebee’s Mozzarella Sticks

Applebee’s Double Crunch Shrimp

Then, it was onto San Francisco!

Crossing the Bay Bridge to San Francisco!

At first, we went to the Coit Tower because my best friend said that it was a great location to look at the overall view of San Francisco (apparently it’s also a great place to catch Pokemon according to my brother). There is a small museum inside but my friend and I weren’t really willing to wait because we wanted to explore as much as we could in SF that day.

 

The front of Coit Tower (left) and the back of Coit Tower (right).

View of the Bay Bridge (left) and of San Francisco from the Coit Tower (right).

So next we went to Lombard Street which is “San Francisco’s Crookedest Street”. For some strange reason, I thought that going down this street would be so much fun but it’s literally just a downhill spiral street that you drive down. Taking pictures of the street were nice though. When I went, there were SO many people here. I wonder how the people who actually live here deal with all this traffic to be honest.

Looking down on Lombard Street (left) and looking up from the bottom of Lombard Street (right).

Some beautiful flowers on the side of Lombard Street with colorful houses in the background.

After hitting Lombard Street, my friend and I were pretty thirsty so we decided to go to Boba Guys in the Mission District. Boba Guys is one of the most popular milk tea places in San Francisco. Everytime I go there, there’s ALWAYS a line. It’s almost $5 for a regular sized cup, but trust me it’s worth it.

While sipping on some milk tea, me and my best friend then walked over to the nearby Clarion Alley. I first discovered this place from one of my closest friends and now every time I go to the Boba Guys in the Mission District, I take everyone to Clarion Alley. Clarion Alley is basically a bunch of colorful murals with strong messages (I see what people meant when they said that they expressed their emotions through their artwork).

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After showing my best friend Clarion Alley for the first time, we walked over to Dolores Park which is a huge park where a bunch of people like to bring their beach towels, phones, dogs, children, etc.  and just sit on their beach towels to chill. There’s also a playground where you can see many children playing on it and having the time of their lives (I secretly wanted to play on the playground too because I’m a kid at heart). As we were leaving the park, this man’s dog kept putting this ball at our feet and wanted us to throw it so that he/she would fetch the ball and bring it back to me or my best friend. This dog was sooo adorable and I was actually pretty sad when we had to say goodbye 😦

Dolores Park with Mission High School in the background

After we said goodbye to the man and his dog, we spontaneously decided to visit Ghirardelli Square. When you walk into the Ghirardelli Store, you can smell the rich chocolate smell and there’s usually a person by the door holding a basket handing out free samples to make you love their store even more. Ghirardelli chocolate is honestly so rich and creamy, my favorite is the Peppermint Bark (but that one only comes during the holiday season 😦 ) Luckily, I have a friend who works at Ghirardelli Square and he gave me and my friend 50% off on our total bill! (s/o to my friend Ricky!)

Me kneeling behind the Ghirardelli sign in Ghirardelli Square

After taking this picture at the Ghiraredelli Square sign, next on our travel agenda was Pier 39. Pier 39 is a place where they have many stores to buy souvenirs and restaurants to eat at such as the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. I only ended up going into one of the stores that sold shells (I don’t remember the name) and took a couple of pictures of my favorite things inside the store. I also like the “Sock Market” : where they sell the coolest and craziest socks and “Lefty’s”: a store of things made specifically for left-handed people.

Shells, shells, shells

Large Gulf Sand Dollars ($4.95)

Pink Starfish!

Me holding a scallop

And lastly, me and my best friend picked up one of our high school friends from Berkeley and went to eat all-you-can-eat hotpot dinner at a place in San Francisco’s Japantown called Cafe Mums. It’s about $26 per person I believe but you can literally ask for as much as you want to eat. My friends kept ordering many plates of meat and more vegetables until we were completely full. It was actually extremely satisfying and I would definitely recommend it if you like AYCE hotpot 🙂

Plate of Beef (took this from a weird angle, sorry!)

Noodles + Vegetables

 

If you got this far in the blog post, I’d just like to say thank you so much! I know that this is only my second blog post so far, but I’m excited for more to come. I think my favorite part about blogging is uploading all the pictures and seeing what great pictures I took 🙂 Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time!

Carolyn