>>> california: days five to eight (san francisco)

The adventures continue!

[Note: You'll have to excuse me if there are any typos or missing words or missing capitlizations... I started this post a couple of days ago by uploading pics to it but didn't get to write anything, and now I'm sitting at the airport about to leave for Barcelona and all I have to access the internet is my Blackberry. Whoops. I guess I could wait until I find some internet cafe in Spain to do this, but we all know that probably won't happen. Let's be real. So this will be a briefer-than-usual recap of my SF trip, sorry.]

DAY 5: My uncles went back to work and Anna left early in the morning to head back to Seattle, so 90% of my day was spent in solitude. My flight to San Francisco wasn't til 5, so I kicked it at the house and watched movies and didn't blog and packed up at the last minute.. Hahaha. I took my very first cab ride by myself and it cost me $18 to go 3.46 miles. Yes.

So I flew out to SFO, grabbed the Airtrain to the BART, took the BART to downtown SF, and walked up to our hotel (Hotel Adagio).

The rest of the gang (Toni, Jeffrey, Paolo, Erika, Justin & Plinette, plus Kuya Don) didn't get to the hotel until a few hours later, and then we (I) had a late dinner at a Thai restaurant called Asha where the first picture below was taken. Good times. :)

DAY 6: We all got a pretty early start to the day - had breakfast at a diner called Dollie's and then piled into Toni's truck (Momo!) to search for the KidRobot store!

Oh man, my love for KidRobot vinyl toys really knows no bounds! Pao and I bought an entire box of Munny zipper pulls together, and I also picked up a couple of other toys. We walked around the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood for a while, then walked over to the USF campus for a bit, and then headed back to the car to check out the Golden Gate Bridge.

Unfortunately, it was extremely foggy over the water, so most of the bridge was not visible. It was almost as though it didn't exist... We took a couple of pictures there anyway, walked around a scenic area (I can't remember the name! =p), and then headed back to the hotel so that we could go shopping around Powell.

After a decent amount of shopping time, we all had some fun BOB (Bodies on Bunks/Beds) time in the hotel, watching the Olympics *and stuff* while waiting for Kuya Don to join us for dinner. It was a pretty early night in for everyone - we ate out at Tad's Steak House and then went to sleep afterwards. True story. ;)

DAY 7: Got off to a slightly later start than the morning before.. Pao, Ek, Pliny, Justin and I ate at a diner across the street from the hotel (mmm, bacon) while Toni got a haircut and Jeffrey went shopping. By noon we were on our way to Stanford University to see the campus and possibly get stuff from the student store. The latter didn't actually happen, but we did get to see a bit of the campus. Our conclusion? UW campus is prettier :)

Afterwards, we headed to Mountain View for lunch at Best Bites, a Mediterranean restaurant that the Bay Area Sanchezes like to frequent. We ate some yummy kabobs and geeerooos (gyros) and then headed back to the hotel to rest.

What we had intended to be just a couple hours of rest before going out turned into a night of Chinese takeout and a scary movie at the hotel. If you're ever staying in the Union Square area and want some crazy ass cheap Chinese takeout, I highly recommend you call Tai Chi Restaurant. The NFT guide to SF does not lie -- it really is crazy ass cheap and pretty good!

That was pretty much it for day 7. I did get a chance to wander around for a couple of hours that night, but that's another story for another time. Or for never. Hahaha.

DAY 8: Sadness -- the end of my California adventures. I got to wander around a bit more in the morning by myself, and then it was time to pack it up and check out. We crammed ourselves into Momo once more --- still better than taking the BART - quality car time! --- and I got dropped off at SFO. I was back in Seattle by 330, just in time to start my laundry and start packing for the next leg of the Tita World Tour '08.

Thank you, Sunshine State, for a great time. I look forward to seeing you again soon. =D

Please enjoy the captionless pictures below... For more, you can check my Facebook albums.