San Francisco Nights - Day 4, Part 1

With all my ramblings, I forgot to post a picture of Bill and I with the bride and groom.  This is one of my favorite photos:

DAY 4 - Monday, May 18th.

The night before we were craving mexican so we happened to find a trendy neauveau style Mexican restaurant close by which had no vegetarian options and there was a 30 minute wait.  Since we were hungry, we opted for Italian and ended up at Vive Pizza Restaurant in North Beach.  The food was decent with good crusty bread to start off with and that was good thing because service was very slow.  It's the Cali way, I guess. Bill had the gnocci but I can't remember what I had. I know tt was pasta of some kind.  :)

We woke up around 7:00 and lazed a bit. We were still on EST but pretty exhausted from yesterday's walk.  I decided to take photo of our room and views from rom our hotel room.

Views from outside of our room

 Coffe shop is in the corner with Chinatown gate on the far left.

 Banana Republic one block to the right of the hotel. How convenient for me. :)

We were itching to use the laptop and since we only brought his, we shared.

Coffee shop during the day. Wine bar by night.

The night before, Bill and I discussed what to do the next few days and we definitely wanted to take a tour of the city. We didn't take just any tour but the ultimate Mr. Toad's Tours of San Francisco for a 3-4 hour tour.  It was smaller tour group with a group of 8 and to top it off we rode in a vintage (revamped) 1929 Model A. There were cozy blankets to keep you warm. The heater was running on full blast which made it quite a pleasant experience on such a cool and overcast day:

Our tour guide, Eric, was young but pretty knowledgable. He didn't seem to be as "seasoned" as I expected on their website but he was from the city after all and he knew all the ins and outs. We asked him some questions and he answered them pretty well.

The tour took us all over town:

This was on Nob Hill with a view of Lombard Street at a distance. We didn't get a chance to go there although it was fairly close to our hotel. Oh well. Too much to do and see and so little in time. 

Passing through with views of the SF hills.

Flat Iron building on Columbus Avenue and last building standing after earthquake of 1906.

Driving by North Beach again - people waving at us

Financial District and TransAmerica building

Pacific Heights with beautiful Victorian homes and amazing architecture. That's what makes these SF homes so unique and beautiful.

The famous photo of all - Victorian homes overlooking the city.

Russian Hill - named for the Russian Cemetary found on the Hill although there is no signs of Russian settlers or any kind of community on the hill.

Grace Cathedral (a miniature version of Sacre C'oeur in Paris) surrounded by a beautiful park.

The Fairmont Hotel - famous and very expensive

Back to Chinatown for a stop to see hidden, so-called secret narrow alleys.

Map of these alleys on the ground by Ross Alley.

Ross Alley (below) in Chinatown, was notorious for gamblers and prostitute back in the 20s.  Plus this was the alley where The Beatles had their first gig in SF and also stopped to have a drink at the Rickshaw Bar, now defunct.

The alley was fairly crowded due to a movie production company filming so lots of their equipment and props were all over.  Not sure what movie was being filmed but I heard the name Nicole Kidman.  Check out the fake slab of meat prop.

 
We managed to move through the busy alley and find one of the oldest factories that made fortunate cookies by hand. On any given  day, they make approximately 30,000 fortunate cookies by hand.  We got a chance to eat them fresh and warm as they came out of the oven.  Photographs were a no-no but I managed to take one.