San Francisco tour with Ryan and Jessi

By Jason

I promise I’ll write about my parents’ trip out to the Bay Area soon, but I thought I should finish up the last post before continuing. After our jaunt down to Santa Cruz, we spent a day touring sunny San Francisco.

Our first stop was Japantown. J-town has a very different vibe from Chinatown – for one thing, the heart of Japantown is a mall. It’s actually a rather cramped, older-style mall but it has some really great shops. Here’s Ryan in front of the Japanese Italian restaurant we ate at. Ryan and Jessi had fond memories of Japanese Italian food from their trip to Japan and I thought it was quite tasty.

Lunch at Japantown Center Mall

Here Ann and Jessi sit in front of this cool model castle in the mall.

Japan Center Mall in Nihonmachi

The Peace Pagoda is the most recognizable marker of Japantown. In was built after World War II by the Japanese-American community here. Unlike Chinatown, this area doesn’t seem to have a large incoming immigrant population anymore… it’s telling that right behind me as I took this picture there’s a Denny’s.

Peace Pagoda in San Francisco's Japantown

We walked around a bit looking for the cable car route down to Fisherman’s Wharf. We probably walked a bit too far – all the way up to Lafayette Park, in fact. It’s one of San Francisco’s many high points and a very popular city park. We also passed a building that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stayed at. When we did make it down to the coast, Jessi was attacked by these pirates.

AAAAAARRRRR!

Next we took a boat ride around the bay. It’s really worth doing if you come to visit here – the skyline of the city is really nice, and I can’t get enough of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Chillin on the ferryboat

On the boat with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background

Wind through the Golden Gate

On the ferry boat tour

Sailboat and Golden Gate

We took the cable car back up to Chinatown for dinner. We had some really good food at the Utiopia Cafe, and the owner actually handed me a business card with “yelp.com” written on it. I don’t know if it was because I looked like a geeky sort of guy who might have a yelp account or if it was because we were some of the few non-Chinese in the restaurant and they are trying to branch out. Either way I have been too lazy to review them yet.

I’ll end with this photo of the sunset reflected on buildings just above Chinatown. You can see more photos on Flickr.

Sunset reflected over Chinatown

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