Day 4: Lombard Street

Second time to San Francisco, we definitely wanted to see how does Lombard Street actually looked like. The bus ride was a short one but the toughest thing was to climb that hill! 

We took about 20 mins to walk all the way uphill to the most curvy street. What attracted us the most was not the famous Lombard street but it was the beautiful scenery from the top of the hill. We could see Coit Tower right opposite! 

Yawns.. Alright.. I'll stop here today. Getting tired. Anyway, Ju made a desert for me today. It looked gorgeous and tasted awesome! Guess what is it!?

Day 3: Alcatraz/Muir Woods/Sausalito

Rajesh and Nisha just left after we had green curry dinner prepared by Ju. It's delicious! We had a great time sharing about our holidays (They went LA when we're away).

Our third day in San Francisco was a one day tour booked through Viator.com. The tour comprised of Alcatraz, Muir Woods and Sausalito. This was our first visit to all three places and we loved them. The Alcatraz tour was an eye opener.  The self audio was really amazing! We were lucky to meet an ex-inmate of Alcatraz, Mr William G Baker and had his autograph. The prison looked alittle cozy though. 

Muir Woods should be very familiar to those who had watched the movie ' The Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes'. It was a National Park with giant redwood trees. The air was very fresh in the park and it's really quiet there. Before we went to the park, the tour guide actually brought us to the top of a hill to see the beautiful scenery of the Golden Gate Bridge across the Pacific Ocean. The view was breathtaking! Our last stop was at Sausalito. There's nothing much there except for some beautiful places like the Yatch dock. We didn't took many pictures there though.

Afterall, the tour was really interesting and enjoyable especially with a very knowledgeable tour guide. Would go back for their tour package next time when we go on holidays.

Day 2: Six Flags Discovery Kingdom

Ok... Trying do some catch up. Here's post no. 2 of the day and probably the most interesting part of the trip. 

When I started planning for Six Flags in Vallejo, I did not know that the ferry was operating based on weekend schedule. Hence, the trip to Vallejo was a little rush as the last ferry departing to San Francisco was at 5.15pm and there's no bus service. Damn! 

We woke up very early and had our breakfast in IHOP. However the next available ferry to Vallejo was at 11.10am. The ferry ride took approximately an hour.    Argh! When we reached Vallejo, we had problem locating the bus to Six Flags and in order to save time, we took a cab there that took about 10 mins. 

We rushed into Six Flags and in no time had our first thrill ride, Kong. Six Flags Discovery Kingdom was like a mini zoo combined with theme park. There were only 5 thrill rides (Kong, Roar, Medusa, Vertical Velocity and Superman Ultimate Flight). The most thrilling one would be the Superman Ultimate Flight. We took all the thrill rides except for Vertical Velocity which was down for maintenance. Argh x2!! We loved the Superman ride the most. Moving forth and back at high speed before rocketing way towards the sky. The most thrilling part of the ride would be the slow twist at the top before going down vertically at full speed. If not for the queue, we would have take a few more times! 

Other than the rides, there were also some games like 3 point shoutout. We tried our luck on the shoot out game and won two prizes! Even though the time in Six Flags was short, we really enjoyed ourselves! (Coach! I'm ready to be a SF)

P.S. Enjoyed the pleasant service with Alaska Airlines on the flight back to Boise..our home.;)

Day 1: Chinatown/Union Square/Japantown

The place that you don't want to miss in San Francisco as a Chinese is their Chinatown. Traditionally decorated and populated mostly with Cantonese speaking Chinese that gave us a feeling of HongKong. It was pretty small, stretching only three streets, most notably Stockton St and Grant Ave. 

It was extremely crowded and we thought maybe it's Sunday. Later we realized it was the last day of lunar new year and there were performance like Kung fu dance, lion dance, dragon dance and even fire crackers were lit up. Grant Ave was partially blocked for the celebrations. We were really fortunate to be at the right place at the right time. It was a joyous event! 

After Chinatown, we walked to Union Square located a mile away. There were lots of huge shopping outlets along the way and we just felt like we were in Shenton Way. Lots of tall buildings and high end brands along the streets. I celebrated Ju's birthday at Union Square street and it was one to be rememebered. We left Union Square for Japantown and it was a long walk along Geary Boulevard. We could have take a bus there.

The main reason to go Japantown was not for sightseeing but for karaoke session. Yes, there were some attractions there but we were not into Japan culture. We were no J pop fans anyway. Ju had waited long enough to have a karaoke session in the states. I did my homework and found Fillmore Karaoke which was on Fillmore St. USD13.50 for an hour was really cheap and it was cheaper than KBox in Singapore just that there was no service and complimentary drink. But we could bring our own drinks there. The system was great and was similar to the ones we went in Singapore. We really enjoyed ourselves there.

After singing for three hours, we had dinner at a mall in Japantown. It was not good enough to be mentioned here. The rice was a mixture of Japanese rice and Thai rice and was pretty expensive. If we knew earlier, we could have go to nearby ramen stores for some noodles. 

That pretty much summed up for day one and our last day in San Francisco was almost similar to day one. These places just had too much to look at. 

Good Mongkok Dim Sum and Imperial Palace restaurant

After having an early rest, we woke up early to have our breakfast in Chinatown. We set off to Good Mongkok Dim Sum but only to find out that it only have to-go service. As the reviews for them were excellent, we bought a Char Siew Bun, a set of 'Siu Mai' and prawn dumplings, red bean sesame balls and 'you tiao'. The 'you tiao' is tremendously big!! We have never seen such a big 'you tiao' before. I had a quick bite on the sesame ball and it was delicious! I tried the Char Siew bun after that and it is also very impressive! We were thinking why don't they just open a restaurant? 

We head aimlessly around the street and finally came to a decent looking restaurant called Imperial Palace Restaurant. We were too hungry to consider and just went in for our breakfast. Man! The dim sum were equally good but it was a little costly. However, the good attitude of the staffs with the cleanliness of the restaurant compensate for the costly dim sum.