About a month ago Kyle and I went on a quick trip to San Francisco. I've finally gotten around to getting the photos together and writing out a guide of all that we did in the short three days we were there. I miss it already!
What we did/ate/saw!
Friday: We arrived to SFO airport around 4ish, and took an uber to our hotel, the Monarch Hotel. We found a deal for this hotel on expedia and since everything in San Francisco is crazy expensive (including airbnb's!) it was exactly what we paid for...cheap. I don't really recommend it, but we were barely at our hotel (except to sleep), so for us, it was worth it!
We were famished from the time change so we walked over to Japantown and ate at Marufuku Ramen. It was SO good. We have been on a ramen kick the past few months and finding good ramen was on our list of things to do. We read online the wait can be really long (1-2 hours) but thankfully we were eating really early and were second in line before the restaurant even opened at 5!
After ramen we walked the mile or so down to the Painted Ladies. Aren't they cute? I kept thinking of Full House!
We then treated ourselves to Smitten Ice Cream before walking the long (mostly uphill!) walk back to our hotel. They have such unique flavors and churn your ice cream to order! I tried the pretzel cookie dough with brown sugar caramel. Kyle got the brown sugar ice cream. YUM.
Saturday: We woke up ridiculously early due to the time change and were ready to try one of the 5 bakeries on our list (lol). We walked over to Mr. Holmes Bakehouse, and since we arrived 30 minutes after it opened we had to wait in line for a bit. It was only about a 20-25 minute wait and it just made us more excited for breakfast and hot coffee! I tried the matcha dipped croissant and Kyle ordered the churro croissant. They were so flaky, buttery, and worth the wait. We love croissants!
We then rode a cable car down to the Ferry Market. This was one of the best parts of our trip! We had so much fun hanging out the side of the car, taking photos and looking like tourists, and going up and down the steep San Francisco streets. Highly recommend this if you've never done it!
I had organized a meetup with a long time blogger friend, Megan from the bay leaf kitchen! This was such an exciting moment because we've been following each other on instagram/our blogs for over 2 years now. She first reached out to me after reading my blog bio and we discovered we had so much in common: we were both (at the time) working in book publishing, we both married our HS sweethearts, our husbands are both in school, we are both part Filipino, love the Lord, and obviously both loved cooking and food blogging! Meeting people IRL is seriously the best part about blogging, especially when they are just as amazing as their blog suggests, and in this case, even more so!
We hung around the Ferry Building Farmer's Market where there are tons of vendors, produce, shops, and good eats. I honestly didn't pay attention to much of it though because we were all talking and laughing together! Now if only they lived closer, hint hint.
After the farmer's market Megan and her husband Jonathan walked us over to the SF MOMA. We spent a good part of the afternoon here and while modern art is something I don't necessarily love, I still appreciate it and enjoy looking at it. It's a really cool building itself too! We also had this really amazing chickpea salad at one of their museum restaurants, and it was much needed after a croissant breakfast.
We pretty much just walked around the rest of the day and then headed over to Hayes Valley for dinner. We ate at a pizza place (can't remember the name). It's a very hip neighborhood though with lots of restaurants, bars, and boutiques!
Sunday: Breakfast at Tartine Bakery! The line wasn't ridiculously long surprisingly and we tried several things. Our favorite was the pain au jambon (croissant with ham and cheese in it). I will dream about this pastry until we can go back again one day.
We then rode a cable car and had planned on taking another one to Fisherman's Wharf but it was really crowded so we walked part of the way and went through Chinatown. Once at Fisherman's Wharf we explored the Musee Mecanique, which was recommended to us by Megan. It was so cool! It was also the arcade museum in The Princess Diaries, fun fact!
We then rented a tandem bike and rode across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito. This was another highlight of the trip. I loved seeing all of San Francisco from the bridge and just sightseeing by bike is always fun. We ate lunch and got ice cream in Sausalito all while exploring the little shops there. We then waited over an hour in a long bike line to take a ferry back to the city - it was kind of insane. When we finally made it back we were so exhausted and just went straight to our hotel.
Later that night we wanted Asian food and found a Vietnamese restaurant called Anh Hong. It was packed so we knew it had to be good! This was one of our favorite dining experiences there because we were able to cook some our own food right in front of us and had so much fun wrapping it in the rice paper rolls. So good!
Monday: Our flight was around noon but we managed to have time to go to Tartine Bakery once again! We had to bring pastries with us on the plane of course...
Until next time, SF!
