First we'll start with the treats: as I started my birthday breakfast with some leftover Dynamo Donuts. Not a bad way to start the day, right?? (OK, OK...we DID eat these donuts while watching tsunami coverage, but thankfully everything turned out OK for us. It was a creepy hour & a half though:(
We shared another bacon maple donut (of course:) and we also split the chocolate spice. Mmmmm....chocolate with a warm KICK of heat at the end. Totally delicious!
And from delicious to COMPLETELY decadent: Last but not least we tried the sticky bun...MADE OUT OF LEFTOVER DONUT DOUGH!!!!!!!
Holy cow...even HALF of this thing was completely OVER the top! This baby was SUPER sweet, super decadent and mega delicious. It was...A LOT, though;) I wouldn't want to have another one of these for a few YEARS:) hahahahahhahaha...
After breakfast, we headed off to the quintessential San Fran landmark: The GORGEOUS Golden Gate Bridge!
It was cool to drive across it, but you REALLLY get an idea of it's SIZE when you tackle it on foot:
...and you get BEAUTIFUL VIEWS of the city while you stroll.
(THANKFULLY it was MARCH. There were a TON of bikers that you had to watch out for and I can't imagine how many must show up, say, in JUNE!)
It's a 2 mile hike each way and thankfully once you are across there is a beautiful vista point that you can stop and enjoy the view:
And after our 2 mile hike BACK, we were COMPLETELY ravenous. As in DROP. DEAD. STARVING! After what felt like an eternity, we finally made it to our lunch destination...and thank the good Lord, once we got seated at Yank Sing, it was mere MOMENTS before the food started flying at us!
I've never had 'real' dim sum where the little samplings are rolled around on carts throughout the dining room. We were offered "house specialty" dumplings, shrimp sui mye and steamed BBQ pork buns within a second of being seated and we "Yes, yes" and "can you make that a double order?" to all of the above! It was tough to turn down any of the treats that you saw rolling by:)
We also had chicken satay with peanut sauce...
...my beloved Peking duck....
And an assortment of other fine little gems:) (the spring rolls & steamed pork buns were our favorites)
We certainly made a mess;)
The cool thing about Yank Sing was if you didn't see something you wanted on one of the carts, they would make a special order up for you! (Thanks for the piping hot Green Onion buns, Yank Sing!)
And we barely had ANY room left, but there was no way we weren't sampling from the sweets menu! We tried the sesame balls (listed as one of San Fran "Top 100 eats to try before you die") and one of my favorites: the egg custard tarts... (I know, I know...I hate eggs, but love egg custards. I'm an anomaly:)
...and OF COURSE: The coconut cream roll:) Mmmmmmm....the roll was almost like a gelatin, stuffed with coconut cream. Certainly unique and delicious:)
After lunch, we walked for a couple hours to shake off the feeling from being *completely 100% stuffed!* (If I was breakin the "no starving" rule....sure enough, I also broke my "Never be stuffed" rule. This was the one and only time I felt "stuffed" in San Fran and I was NOT a fan of the feeling :)
But of course, we eventally landed at our SECOND treat IN AN ALLEYWAY of the trip! (San Fran really knows how to work every corner of its town;)
....and this time to a BLISS FULL Blue Bottle Coffee kiosk.....sighhhhhh:)
We took our fabulous kyoto style iced coffees to a little park at the corner of the....alleyway:) How cool is that statue? It was made of all scrap metal...
And much like our lattes...this coffee was TO DIE FOR! I already miss you, Blue Bottle:)
While we had our feet up, we figured we'd sample one of the treats we got from "Cups & Cakes" bakery;) I'll get to the real treat in a minute, but to go along with our coffee, we thought we'd try the simple vanilla bean...yum:)
Then it was time for more strolling around and moseying through the BEAUTIFUL Golden Gate Park. I'm not even gonna MENTION the part where we skipped going into the Japanese Tea Gardens because they were charging $7 A PERSON to enter....so this was about as close as we got to it:
Not gonna mention that absurdity at all! ;)
INSTEAD, I'm just gonna tell you about all the lovely thing you can see in the park for FREE, like the hidden Chinese pagoda:
The picturesque Stowe lake:
And this GORGEOUS waterfall that we just happened to stumble upon:
(Can you find me in that picture too??:)
And strolling through the park worked up an appetite. And even though I had made reservations at a "fancier" restaurant AND we still had one last burger to try on our 'list'....absolutely nothing sounded as appealing as one last trip to "In & Out": Complete with TWO Double, Double Animal Styles AND an order of Animal style fries;) I could think of no better way to say farewell to San Francisco than the way we had started :)
We wandered around Fisherman's wharf a bit more for some souvenir shopping and one last trip to see the sea lions. You could hear them, even in the dark;)
Then it was time to head back to the room to pack up our stuff....buttttt, not before one more treat for the night;)
"Cups & Cakes" bakery has a rotating list of 'special flavors' and each month they post a daily list of all of day's delicacies. So how excited do you think I was when I found out one of the 'speical flavors' ON MY BIRTHDAY was THE SAMOA CUPCAKE????
Vanilla cake filled with dulce de leche, topped with chocolate frosting and toasted coconut. The perfect end to the perfect day/trip/birthday:) For it was bright and early the next day that we headed home:(
We absolutely ADORED San Francisco (if you haven't guessed that already!) The people were super friendly, the city was picturesque and we OBVIOUSLY were never bored OR lacking a great meal at every turn:) We already can't wait to visit again one day;)
And with this trip, I also completed one of my travel journals that I've been using to track all of our adventures in for the last few years:
Time for a new one! Who knows where the winds may take us next. I already have a few thousand ideas;)
Hope you guys enjoy the 're-caps' as much as I enjoyed writing them! It'll be 'back to our regularly scheduled program' tomorrow:) I already have a few good things to show you AND an experimental dessert we are trying out tonight:) It was like a mad science lab in our kitchen this morning....he he he....
Have a wonderful Sunday!
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