san francisco california

Her View

San Francisco - Caywood's perspective

San Francisco: home to the largest Chinatown in America. I really enjoyed San Francisco. We got in just before dinner time, and spent the night at a co-worker’s home in Oakland. She was very generous to open her house to us and take us to dinner with the view of the lake from our table. We headed to San Fran in the morning, with our first stop being Treasure Island. Overall Treasure Island was a bit more trashy than I expected (it wasn’t clean by any means), but we got some great views of the San Francisco Harbor, the Bay Bridge, and the Golden Gate Bridge. We also planned to go to a winery or two since we saw at least five on the island, but at 11:30am on a Saturday they were ALL closed for some reason. We never found out why, but it was weird.

Next was the main attraction: The United State’s #1 Chinatown! I was really excited for this, and once we drove into that area so was Feliks. First off, their Chinatown is HUGE. I knew it was the biggest one in America, but I wasn’t sure how it would stack up to the few that I’ve been to. It totally dominated. We walked block after block and it was like it was never going to end. We ventured into a few stores just for fun, bought some traditional China snacks, and of course had to stop for some sake and spring rolls. My favorite part of Chinatown was what came after our little lunchtime snack - tea tasting. We saw multiple “free tea tasting” signs while we were walking, and since I love tea and free stuff I wanted to check one out. We walked inside a Taiwanese tea shop (they have 37 throughout the world) and met a nice man our age named William. William took us past the counter to a small table with a RESERVED sign on it. He removed the sign, and asked us to take a seat. He asked a few questions to learn what type of tea I typically drink, and went to get some loose tea leaves to offer us a free tasting. We sat there chatting, trying two different kinds of green tea, and crunching on a few wasabi covered peanuts for nearly an hour. I can’t even comprehend how much of a great experience this was for me! I had a blast. And naturally before we left, I had to make a purchase.

On our way from San Francisco to our next destination, we stopped at two wineries in Alexander Valley: Silver Oaks Cellars and Francis Ford Coppola. Both great choices. Silver Oaks is a really great cellar, who only produces cabernet savignon. I had had their wine once before and was very anxious to try more than one. For $20 I got to try four of their wines, in hefty portions, plus I got a branded wine glass. Totally worth it. I really wanted to get a bottle here because their wine was spectacular, but naturally the bottle I wanted was $110. Next was Francis Ford Coppola, where I did a tasting of five small portions for $10. Their wine is not as fancy, but still good, and I ended up buying two bottles here.

My advice from our experience:

1. If Alcatraz Island is in your plans for San Francisco, plan in advance. Obviously for our trip we cannot plan in advance because things change very easily, so we went to buy our tickets online one day before the tour we wanted to do. They were sold out for the next three days, and because of this we were not able to do Alcatraz, something I was most excited about. Their website recommends to buy tickets 90 days in advance if you can. So just plan accordingly. I definitely want to go back to do Alcatraz.

His View

San Francisco - Feliks' perspective

San Francisco: When Caywood first told me we were spending the night in Oakland, I had to make sure I heard her right. One of her previous coworkers invited us to stay the night, and my initial image of Oakland was one created through the media. Just like most other cities, there are bad neighborhoods everywhere. Oakland is no exception. While we were told that there are rough neighborhoods, a lot of Oakland is actually really nice. Our host Carolyn gave us a very nice brief tour of Oakland through her eyes. It was an awesome city, and I feel that it is definitely misrepresented in songs and top-10-most-dangerous-cities-to-live-in lists.

After our nice relaxing night in Oakland, we headed West for San Francisco. Half way through the Bay Bridge we made a quick pit stop at Treasure Island. Not much to see there, but there was an awesome view of San Francisco, Alcatraz, and the Golden Gate Bridge. A great photo opp, and there were some random sculptures on the island that were pretty interesting. As we made our way into their beautiful downtown, we hit some pretty gnarly traffic. The downtown area was pretty busy, one-ways and contraction it felt like on every street. We did finally make it to Chinatown, where we spent about 10 minutes trying to park. The hills in San Francisco are not exaggerated on TV, and some of them looked like 90 degree drops. Chinatown itself was way bigger than I thought it would be. Souvenir stores, restaurants, tea shops, nail salons, you name it - it was there. It was really cool to see a busy Chinatown, and smell all of the smells. We had a quick snack for lunch at a Chinese restaurant that had a very nice view from the second floor balcony. I enjoyed Chinatown very much, but I do have to say that a lot of the stores had the same crap…but a lot of them varied in price. We saw one item for ten dollars in one store, and that same item was two dollars in another store. A quick visit to a tea shop where Caywood got to sample some loose leaf teas, and we were on our way out.

Overall, I liked San Francisco. They had a gorgeous downtown. And even though the traffic was bad, it was a very nice city. I see why San Francisco has the #1 Chinatown. It is something I will never forget. Parking was extremely difficult, and the roads weren’t terribly bad.

Henry <3	Our lovely host Carolyn!
random find	Chinatown mural
Chinatown sake	Bay Bridge
San Francisco harbor view	Downtown San Francisco
Treasure Island	Art on Treasure Island
Downtown SF	Golden Gate Bridge
Largest Chinatown in the USA	In Chinatown
Silver Oaks Cellars	Tea in Chinatown
LOVE	Golden Gate Bridge
Silver Oaks Cellars	Francis Coppola Winery