Arriving at San Francisco

This morning, after Matt was sucessfully able to get our windshield repaired, we headed out to San Francisco....

The first thing I wanted to do, after checking in at the hotel, was walk to Chinatown. Thankfully both Josh and Matt were more than happy to have this be our first event.

Here is the gate into Chinatown:

As it was already afternoon and we hadn't had lunch, I suggested that we go grab some Korean nosh. So we stepped out of Chinatown, passed some cable cars...

and stopped at a restaurant called 707 Sutter. I had the best bowl of kimchi jjigae I've ever had. It was so spicy! Josh and Matt shared some dumplings, jap chae and some chicken and shrimp skewers.

Then we headed back into Chinatown where we perused some stalls...

There was even laundry being hung out on balconies....

We then decided to head back to the hotel to plan a trip to Alcatraz for first thing tomorrow.... only to find out that the tours sell out at least a week in advance :(
So instead we bought 48 hour passes aboard a hop-on hop-off sightseeing bus company that has 4 routes around the city. We were just in time to catch the last tour for the day that crosses the golden gate bridge..

We had an amazing tour guy, he had us in stitches!!!

For any Star Wars fan readers, this monument was the inspiration for R2D2, it is across from the Lucas Studios. It remains from a world fair that was held here in the early 1900's. I wasn't able to make the monument look like R2D2 from the bus, but you can use your imagination and pretend you're looking at it from a different angle, as Lucas did, up a hill...

As it was the last tour bus of the day we didn't have a chance to hop-on-off, but the driver did stop at each end of the bridge for 5 minutes so that we could take photos....

Josh so near, yet so far from Alcatraz

I took loads of photos of the bridge, but from the wrong side, the lighting was way better taking it from the North, the red comes out. Unfortunately I didn't take many from the North as I thought I already had plenty

From the South:

From the North:

A view of all the tourists and downtown San Francisco from across the bay:

Matt and Josh on the bus:

From the North:

At the end of the 90 minute tour Matt chose a lovely seafood restaurant called Scoma's for us to eat at, right on the waterfront. Here are some of the views the restaurant treated us to....

We shared a smoked salmon plate for an appetizer. I opted for Pasta Dimplomatica (lobster, clams, scallops, prawns and mushrooms in a creamy sauce), Matt had Lobster Thermodore (sp?) and Josh had Scallop and Shrimp alla Gannon (a lemon garlic sauce). Very delicious, but also very expensive! Luckily for us we can save money when we do our next camping part of the trip, ramen and hot dogs it shall be!!!!

We are now back in our hotel room, tired and fed up! ;) There's talk of maybe going to a coffee shop, or if Josh is tired and wanting to stay in the room, Matt and I might go grab a glass of wine from a bistro next to the hotel.

Tomorrow we plan to go on more of the bus tours and use the hop-on hop-off aspect. In the evening we are going to meet up with a Chinese colleague of Matt's, she is going to show us her favourite place for dinner in Chinatown :) I can't wait!!!!