[E] I left my heart at San Francisco!

I haven't blogged for few days because I did not have my computer with me while I was out of town. It's July 4th long weekend...since I don't have much vacation time, we went on a mini-vacation for 3 days 2 nights at San Francisco. We left our home on 7/4 morning, and came back on 7/6 late afternoon.

One USA Unit and I don't really "plan" vacation - we pick a destination, and then randomly do stuff there. We kind of go online, google and yelp, for a little bit. Since the trip was so short, we for sure did not think we should spend too much time on planning. We walked a lot as usual - we feel that this is a way to get to know the area and the culture.

When we arrived San Francisco on the 4th, we took BART to Civic Center and then walked to Japan town. We wanted to have some shabu shabu, but it wasn't open for another 30 minutes. We decided to walk into the mall and looked at some cute Japanese stores. I got my favorite 0.3mm dark blue pen (yup, I love writing with 0.3 pen), and One USA Unit got a cool Trafalgar Law toy. I like the book stores, and I wish I lived nearby. We ended up eating tasty Ramen at Suzu Noodle House. After that we continued walking around in Japantown and then headed to our hotel to check in and drop off our backpacks. We then walked through Chinatown and walked around the piers and Fisherman's Wharf - around there, we snacked at Boudin Bakery and ate dinner at Pompei's Grotto. We wanted to hang out there until the 9:30pm firework, and eventually we decided that it's too cold and we'd rather go back to the hotel. On our way back, we stopped by Uniqlo to get some cheap/cute polo shirts. 

On the 5th, we ate at Taylor St. Coffee Shop and then took bus to California Academy of Sciences...omg, this place is sooooooo fun!!!! We both love it! When we arrived the museum, (remember I said that we don't usually prepare for the trip?!) we noticed there's a thing call "City Pass" that we can purchase - for $86, we get to take MUNI/Cable car for 7-day, get into California Academy of Sciences, take an hour bay cruise, go into one of the aquarium, and choice of Exploratorium or De Young Museum. We got the City Pass...and we think it's so worth the price! We ate our lunch at California Academy of Sciences, and we went to Pier 39 for the bay cruise - the weather was not too good that day, but we still enjoyed the experience. After the cruise, we went to Aquarium of the Bay. Oh, we got to pet baby stingray there! For dinner, I really really really wanted to eat at Katana-Ya, but there's always a waiting line and it was kind of cold that day. Eventually, hubby went to eat a cute pizza place by Katana-Ya, and I got some Thai food next door to-go. I was glad that the Thai food from Chabaa Thai Cuisine was very tasty, otherwise, I would probably be really sad. We went out for late night dim-sum that day, but nothing special that worth mentioning lol

July 6th, we were going to leave beautiful San Francisco this afternoon. We ate our breakfast at Golden Coffee Shop, a place that offers cheap and yummy breakfast. We then walked and walked and walked and was hoping to take cable cart, but we couldn't be able to find the stop (yup...this is also the problem that came from not preparing before the trip lol)...all the sudden we saw people getting on the cable cart at the intersection!!! We ran and jumped up the cart...this saved us some time walking to the bay. We grabbed a coffee at The Plant Cafe Organic by the Pier 3...the coffee is okay, but the cup...holly crap, the cup is very leaky lol you just can't not drink it without leaking it. We arrived Exploratorium a little bit before it actually opened...we tried to finish the leaky coffee while we were waiting. This place is fun, and I bet it'd be even more fun if I was a kid :) Too bad that we don't have much time to try every single exhibit...however, we still got to experience some fun things there. After that, we headed to the Civic Center area to have lunch at Jin Mi Korean Cuisine, and we stopped by Asian Art Museum for an hour before we headed to the airport. We probably wouldn't stop by there for this short amount of time if not because it's free that day. Hopefully we will be able to go again and actually listen to the recorded tour :)

Good bye San Francisco! You've stole a piece of my heart!