October 2, 2015 – Life as Lauren

The second half of our trip to San Fran was maybe a little less organized, a little too hot and a little tiring, but that’s the kind of stuff that makes vacation memorable, ya know? What’s a better story — having a perfect time in Muir Woods or having a perfect time in Muir Woods then realizing you don’t have service to catch an Uber ride back from the woods and eventually having to go fess up to the park visitor center that you’re dumb and ask them to help you out?

Exactly!

We started the day (Labor Day, actually!) by picking up coffee beans and iced coffee from Ritual in the Mission District. That area was so all over the place. Hip coffee shops next to run down repair shops, empty on one block and swarming with young people on the next. We were so confused!

Things went downhill fast when we ended up waiting an hour and a half at Tartine for breakfast-turned-lunch. We could not, for the life of us, figure out how it could possibly take that long to serve ready-made pastries! Was my Croque Monsieur good? Yes. Would I wait in line again to eat one? Never ever in a million years.

One stalled bus ride and emergency Uber pick up later, we made it to Haight-Ashbury. At this point it was about a million degrees out, there were naked men walking around and I was wondering what the big whoop was about the “Grateful Dead House.” In other words, get me the heck out of here.

So we hopped on a cable car and headed towards Chinatown. It is so strange to me that you can basically hang off of those things and hop on and off so willy-nilly but it’s also really cool. I love when you go to a different city and they have a totally different form of public transportation than what you have at home. And those cable cars are so San Franciscan!

Next up on the list of Touristy Things I Never Need to Do Again: Chinatown. I can appreciate the historical and cultural significance of this area but it’s just not my cup of tea. Sorry! I will say the hanging lanterns we passed under were pretty cool looking. It’s crazy how unique the different areas of San Fran are.

Margarita snack back on Chestnut Street and I snapped a quick pic of my new life motto.

We felt like it was wrong to go to San Fran and not eat fish tacos and lobster rolls so we headed to Woodhouse Fish Co. for dinner. I feel like all the crazy hills in SF make what would be a short and pleasant walk into a workout from hell so Uber it was. How do the locals do it?! In other news, we gave these tacos and the lobster roll, which was on the best toasty butter roll ever, four thumbs up.

We started our last full day back at the Ferry Building, where there was finally no line for Blue Bottle coffee! Joey snagged us a table outside for breakfast at Il Cane Rosso and I was inside trying to take an artsy picture of the Blue Bottle sign and accidentally spilling coffee all over myself instead. Is this really my life? All was remedied by the broken faro breakfast bowl of my dreams.

We took our time exploring all the shops while it was still crowd-less inside then took an 11 o’clock ferry to Sausalito. How cute is that little town? We walked ALL OVER, but I think my favorite part was when I made Joey climb this hidden set of stairs up into the neighborhood. There’s some gorgeous houses tucked away up there.

We ended up having lunch at a place my dad had suggested to us. Not to be so cliché, but I saw a kale Caesar on the menu and I was a goner. This place (F3) was off the main drag so we basically had the place to ourselves. We sat outside in the shade, ate lunch, drank beer and all was right in the world.

How amazing is Muir Woods?! It was such a nice change of pace to be out in nature. Not to mention how refreshing it was to feel some cooler air. All those trees are so unbelievably tall, wide and beautiful. We came across one that had fallen and a nearby sign that said the rest of the environment will feed off of it for the next couple of centuries. WHAT!

Do you even see what is happening in that first picture?? A second tree is legit growing out the side of that first one. Nature, you are insane. Also, Joey decided to do that awkward pose, so I felt like I had to do it too. 🙂

Insert aforementioned transportation fiasco on our way out of Muir Woods and the added bonus of a communication fiasco with our cabdriver, that had us waiting in traffic to cross the Golden Gate Bridge before we realized he was taking us back to SF instead of Sausalito. Ay yi yi! But maybe it was all for the best because we got to see this on our ferry ride back to the city. Joey snapped that second one on my phone and I was so impressed. Just gorgeous!

We made it back just in time for our reservation at Stonesthrow, where we had that super weird but super delicious dinner I told you about. I want to knock this place because when we got there they directed us to “the standing table” while they got our dinner table ready and Joey had barely made it to the other side of “the standing table” when the host was all “okay, we’re ready for you!” And because everything was plated so weird but man was that food good. I told Joey his dinner was “one of the best steaks I’ve eaten off your plate.” Also, we were sandwiched between two newly dating couples and we may have had more fun eavesdropping than having our own conversation 🙂