San Francisco & Yosemite - Part II

After having skimmed the surface of all San Francisco has to offer, we woke up, ate a hearty breakfast at the Embassy Suites and set out for our first full day in the city. Not wanting to deal with heavy traffic and not rushing to beat any crowds at any sort of tourist attractions, we headed into the city around 10AM. Our first stop: Chinatown. It might seem silly to visit Chinatown as a tourist, but I've always heard that Chinatown in San Fran is the largest and most authentic in the USA maybe with the exception of NYC. (The Chinatown in Washington DC is ok, but not very big.)

Our plan was to browse some shops, take pictures of the iconic things like the gates and the historic bank, and find a place for Dim Sum. Unfortunately, I completely chickened out on the Dim Sum. We ate a huge breakfast at the hotel, and I couldn't muster up the appetite or the courage for anything new. Looking back at my 7 year younger self, I laugh at how timid I was to try this new food. We all have to start somewhere, right?

So, we enjoyed our morning walking the streets, looking at the funny Chinese signs and buying trinkets like a jade necklace and "dirty" fortune cookies. (I say "dirty" because we had the option of normal fortune cookies or fortune cookies with more "adult" themed fortunes. For a laugh, we got the "adult" themed ones. Were they dirty? No. In fact, they were so bizarre, we brought them with us when we visited a friend for a dinner a few nights later. They had fortunes like, "the butterfly will find the lotus blossom." That's some PG-13 stuff right there.) :) We tried to find a fortune cookie "factory" and after much searching down shady alley ways we finally found one, but it wasn't anything significant nor could I even tell you how to find it again if I wanted to.

Gates at the entrance to Chinatown

As we continued walking through Chinatown, I suddenly noticed a big change. No longer were there signs with Chinese characters. Instead we started seeing pizza shops and Italian flags. Without realizing it, we had gone from Chinatown to Little Italy in a matter of blocks. It wasn't that Little Italy was distinctly Italian, but the streets were all decorated as if there was going to be a parade. 

While just minutes earlier I couldn't muster up the appetite for Dim Sum in Chinatown, suddenly I found myself very hungry for some Little Italy pizza. We found a little pizza parlor and sat right by the window so we could enjoy some people watching with our salami pizza. It was almost 1:00 in the afternoon and suddenly we noticed that the streets were filling up with people. Sure enough, before too long, a parade started. A parade?? It was the middle of October? Why would there be a parade? We sat watching from the pizza parlor window in amazement when we then realized that the parade had a distinct theme to it. We were in the middle of Little Italy on Columbus Day, and we had the chance opportunity to catch the San Francisco Columbus Day parade. Talk about a random stroke of strange luck. And it was very strange. The different types of characters that this parade drew out of the woodwork made for some very interesting people-watching to say the least. 

With tummies full of pizza and our minds full of strange parade images we headed out of Little Italy and toward Coit Tower, one of the tallest points in the city. The day was beautiful, so I was excited to see what sort of views we would get from the top of the tower. Getting to the tower was a big of an aerobic exercise.

I've seen many movies set in San Francisco where they show the hilly streets (Mrs. Doubtfire and The Princess Diaries to both date myself and show just how girlie I am). I guess I just didn't think that all of the streets in the city would be like that or that they would all actually be that steep. I was completely wrong. In some cases, the roads were so steep that they added stairs into the sidewalk to make it easier for pedestrians to walk them.

Very steep sidewalk in San Fran

Walking to Coit Tower wasn't just another walk in the city. It was uphill and then uphill again and then again and again and again. We certainly got our workout that day. We thought about driving to the top because there is a small parking lot surrounding the base of the tower, but when we arrived in the late afternoon, the lot was completely full with cars driving around waiting for people to leave. That would have been very frustrating for us, so I'm glad we walked instead of driving. (Despite my calves aching the next day.)

Walking up to Coit Tower

Just as I suspected, the views from Coit Tower were stunning. There were angles from all over the city and the day was clear, so I was able to get some great shots of Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge.

The walk up to Coit Tower and the subsequent downhill walk away from Coit Tower helped us work up an appetite for dinner. Our final destination for the day was Ghirardelli Square. Before dinner, however, we took a walk through their gift shop partaking in some delicious free samples. 

We at dinner at a restaurant right near Ghirardelli Square before heading back to our hotel for the evening. Today we saw lots of classic San Francisco sites, but not all of them. The last day of our trip covers some of the rest of them like Pier 39, Fisherman's Warf, Alcatraz Island, etc. But that won't be for a few more days.

The next morning, we got up early, checked out of the hotel and started our drive from San Francisco to Yosemite National Park. On the way, we stopped at the USS Hornet aircraft carrier and museum. It was only about 40 minutes from our hotel to the USS Hornet Museum, and I'm glad we took the time to stop there. This carrier has a pretty amazing history and it gave us something to remember the day other than just a long drive.

USS Hornet Museum

From the USS Hornet, we buckled up for a good 3.5 hour drive out to the Tenaya Lodge. We picked the Tenaya Lodge over a hotel that was actually inside of Yosemite park mostly for ease of access and price. The hotel got great reviews, fit our budget and really ended up working out well for us.

Click HERE for my next blog for our adventures in Yosemite.

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler