Flossbolna
Sea days are just so relaxing!
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2006
The Sights of San Francisco - Part 2
Once we were done with all the picture taking, we were starting to get hungry again. That “breakfast” had been more of a snack, so we thought we would check out the neighboring De Young Museum to see if they had a café or restaurant in there (as museums tend to have) for lunch. They had one, but not only was it rather pricey, but also really very strange food. We both are not adverse to trying new things, but somehow those dishes just sounded crazy and not appealing.
We debated if we wanted to actually visit the museum, which is an art museum. I visited in 2005 and Michael is not a big art museum fan and the entrance for the museum was $10, so we thought it was not worth it for us. However, we ended up checking out the gift store which had a lot of really neat merchandise! I managed to find a lovely magnet for my brother in law:
I also remembered that I had read that the museum had an observation tower, so we decided to check this out. In the lobby to the tower there were some interesting installations:
And from the observation deck you really had a lovely view:
The access to the observation deck was free.
This is the tower from the outside, we were behind those windows that you see in the upper part of the tower.
By now we were really really hungry, but it seemed like the park did not really offer anywhere to eat, so we decided to take a bus to downtown as we were sure we would find food there. It took some time for the bus to arrive, but then it was a direct bus that took us all the way to Powell Street/Market Street. There we got off and saw that we were directly next to a large mall, the Westfield Shopping Mall. This was one of the highlights of my first visit to San Francisco as the mall has a curved escalator and in 1986 this was the most amazing thing to me!
(yes, I made sure to get a picture of this escalator this time!)
Our thinking was mall equals food court, we are bound to find something to eat in there. And we were not disappointed, they had an amazing food court!
Originally we considered this place:
But then we saw a Japanese place that was handing out small samplers (a number of places did that) and they were offering some delicious teriyaki chicken that we both thought was very good, so we decided to eat there. Once we looked at the menu, neither of us ordered the dish that originally had brought us in though!
I had Poke Tuna, which was a new dish for me, but I absolutely loved it! Michael had panko fried chicken and was very happy as well!
It was absolutely amazing for mall food court fare. Heck, it was just plain delicious, period.
This was part of the food court seating area:
We were really happy with the decision to go into the mall, the food was good and it was also reasonably priced.
From there we started to walk through downtown a little bit. This here is Market Street, where we got off the bus
One of our first stops was the Disney Store, which was hidden behind some building works. You can see it peak out a tiny bit here:
But this was quite a bit of disappointment as it was free from anything an adult would want to buy for themselves.
The second ever Disney Store opened in 1987 on Pier 39 and had unique displays not to mention many SF themed items. I knew, like most of the great original stores, that it was long gone, but I thought I might be able to buy a tee, a mug, a pin, a something that said Disney and San Francisco. And ... despite multiple floors, it was the same crap available everywhere.
We visited Macy’s and Michael found some great shorts for a very cheap price. Not sure if these are still alive, Michael always seems to be in search of shorts…
Considering you washed them last night and they are in your laundry basket, I'd say he did.
We then took a bus from Union Square back to the hotel.
This was the crazy crowded bus. It also went directly through Chinatown, so Michael got to see that as well.
After some relaxing at the hotel, we ventured out for dinner. I had looked up reviews for restaurants in the neighborhood and one place was very well rated, it was called Patxi’s Pizza which seems to be a local chain. This one was right around the corner from our hotel (on the other side of that parking lot that we could see from our window). It serves deep dish pizza and this is something that I cannot get at home, so that was another big plus (besides the location and the recommendations).
The restaurant was fairly empty and Michael was at first very skeptical about my choice. But, we did go in and got our table. We started with a salad that we shared that had butter lettuce, bacon, blue cheese, tomatoes and ranch dressing. This is my half:
We were debating which size to get and the nice server told us that we for sure wanted to go with the smallest size. Now it was my turn to be skeptical, but Michael agreed with our server. We chose one that had pepperoni, fresh mushrooms and black olives.
It took quite some time until it was being served, but our server had warned us that this would be the case and we had the salad to munch on while we were waiting.
When it came, our server cut the first piece for each of us, so I only have a picture of the pizza with two pieces missing:
This was my piece:
It was absolutely amazing! I am still dreaming of this pizza! Yes, partly because deep dish pizza cannot be found here, so it is something special. But even Michael thought the pizza was really good! We were not able to finish even the smallest pizza, we had one piece left over that we took to the hotel with us. It became a snack for us later.
Some of the finest Chicago-style deep dish I have ever had. I am getting hungry thinking about it and I can't even see the pics right now. A friend had recommended the place and we were so happy with it.
As much as we liked last nights dinner, this was far better – will we be able to top it tomorrow?
Spolier Alert: YES, YES, YES!!!
After dinner we walked through Chestnut Street, the street behind our hotel with shops and bars and restaurants. It looked really nice and we decided that the next evening we would pick one of the places on that street.
And with this our first full day in San Francisco ended.
Up Next: The first time in my life that I cried in a museum
Once we were done with all the picture taking, we were starting to get hungry again. That “breakfast” had been more of a snack, so we thought we would check out the neighboring De Young Museum to see if they had a café or restaurant in there (as museums tend to have) for lunch. They had one, but not only was it rather pricey, but also really very strange food. We both are not adverse to trying new things, but somehow those dishes just sounded crazy and not appealing.
We debated if we wanted to actually visit the museum, which is an art museum. I visited in 2005 and Michael is not a big art museum fan and the entrance for the museum was $10, so we thought it was not worth it for us. However, we ended up checking out the gift store which had a lot of really neat merchandise! I managed to find a lovely magnet for my brother in law:
I also remembered that I had read that the museum had an observation tower, so we decided to check this out. In the lobby to the tower there were some interesting installations:
And from the observation deck you really had a lovely view:
The access to the observation deck was free.
This is the tower from the outside, we were behind those windows that you see in the upper part of the tower.
By now we were really really hungry, but it seemed like the park did not really offer anywhere to eat, so we decided to take a bus to downtown as we were sure we would find food there. It took some time for the bus to arrive, but then it was a direct bus that took us all the way to Powell Street/Market Street. There we got off and saw that we were directly next to a large mall, the Westfield Shopping Mall. This was one of the highlights of my first visit to San Francisco as the mall has a curved escalator and in 1986 this was the most amazing thing to me!
(yes, I made sure to get a picture of this escalator this time!)
Our thinking was mall equals food court, we are bound to find something to eat in there. And we were not disappointed, they had an amazing food court!
Originally we considered this place:
But then we saw a Japanese place that was handing out small samplers (a number of places did that) and they were offering some delicious teriyaki chicken that we both thought was very good, so we decided to eat there. Once we looked at the menu, neither of us ordered the dish that originally had brought us in though!
I had Poke Tuna, which was a new dish for me, but I absolutely loved it! Michael had panko fried chicken and was very happy as well!
It was absolutely amazing for mall food court fare. Heck, it was just plain delicious, period.
This was part of the food court seating area:
We were really happy with the decision to go into the mall, the food was good and it was also reasonably priced.
From there we started to walk through downtown a little bit. This here is Market Street, where we got off the bus
One of our first stops was the Disney Store, which was hidden behind some building works. You can see it peak out a tiny bit here:
But this was quite a bit of disappointment as it was free from anything an adult would want to buy for themselves.
The second ever Disney Store opened in 1987 on Pier 39 and had unique displays not to mention many SF themed items. I knew, like most of the great original stores, that it was long gone, but I thought I might be able to buy a tee, a mug, a pin, a something that said Disney and San Francisco. And ... despite multiple floors, it was the same crap available everywhere.
We visited Macy’s and Michael found some great shorts for a very cheap price. Not sure if these are still alive, Michael always seems to be in search of shorts…
Considering you washed them last night and they are in your laundry basket, I'd say he did.
We then took a bus from Union Square back to the hotel.
This was the crazy crowded bus. It also went directly through Chinatown, so Michael got to see that as well.
After some relaxing at the hotel, we ventured out for dinner. I had looked up reviews for restaurants in the neighborhood and one place was very well rated, it was called Patxi’s Pizza which seems to be a local chain. This one was right around the corner from our hotel (on the other side of that parking lot that we could see from our window). It serves deep dish pizza and this is something that I cannot get at home, so that was another big plus (besides the location and the recommendations).
The restaurant was fairly empty and Michael was at first very skeptical about my choice. But, we did go in and got our table. We started with a salad that we shared that had butter lettuce, bacon, blue cheese, tomatoes and ranch dressing. This is my half:
We were debating which size to get and the nice server told us that we for sure wanted to go with the smallest size. Now it was my turn to be skeptical, but Michael agreed with our server. We chose one that had pepperoni, fresh mushrooms and black olives.
It took quite some time until it was being served, but our server had warned us that this would be the case and we had the salad to munch on while we were waiting.
When it came, our server cut the first piece for each of us, so I only have a picture of the pizza with two pieces missing:
This was my piece:
It was absolutely amazing! I am still dreaming of this pizza! Yes, partly because deep dish pizza cannot be found here, so it is something special. But even Michael thought the pizza was really good! We were not able to finish even the smallest pizza, we had one piece left over that we took to the hotel with us. It became a snack for us later.
Some of the finest Chicago-style deep dish I have ever had. I am getting hungry thinking about it and I can't even see the pics right now. A friend had recommended the place and we were so happy with it.
As much as we liked last nights dinner, this was far better – will we be able to top it tomorrow?
Spolier Alert: YES, YES, YES!!!
After dinner we walked through Chestnut Street, the street behind our hotel with shops and bars and restaurants. It looked really nice and we decided that the next evening we would pick one of the places on that street.
And with this our first full day in San Francisco ended.
Up Next: The first time in my life that I cried in a museum
