San Francisco, California

My flight from JFK arrived in San Francisco around noon, and I've been dead tired all day after getting almost no sleep on my Las Vegas to JFK red-eye last night.

After dropping my stuff off at my hostel I decided to spend the day walking around various neighborhoods in San Francisco and getting a general feel for things.

I started by going to Union Square, which aside from being a central meeting spot and relaxation spot for residents, is probably the retail center of San Francisco - all of the big department stores are there. I then walked up Market Street to Embarcadero to see the water and got a great view of the bridge to Oakland.

After that, I walked down Broadway and up Columbus into North Beach, a very nice community with an almost endless shops and cafes. I got an espresso at the famous "Cafe Triste" then ended up eating dinner/lunch at Cafe DeLucci down the road a bit. Exploring North Beach was a real treat, it seems like a very nice community in which to live.

I then took a long walk up to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39 which was very touristy - a markedly different feel from other areas of San Francisco, but still nice. I caught a great view of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. From there I headed down Hyde Street (extremely hilly!) and on the way back to the hostel ran into Lombard Street, a very twisty/crooked road down a steep hill that looks out of place in a big city. Atop "Russian Hill" (the high point on Hyde Street) I caught some excellent views of the whole peninsula.

After getting some solid work done this morning, I ventured on another walk around San Francisco, stopping first in Chinatown. Chinatown in San Francisco is fairly large and, as I understand it, the largest Chinese community outside of Asia. Walking down some of the back streets really makes you feel like you're in China.

I had lunch at Hunan Home's restaurant in Chinatown. The fortune cookie was the best I've ever had (fortune cookies are a San Francisco invention; they don't come from China).

After walking a bit more through Chinatown I got on BART and headed to 16th street in the Mission District. I walked straight to Mission Dolores (the first building in San Francisco, built in 1776). From there I walked to Castro Street and back east to the Mission, walking all the way down Mission Street until 24th.

From there I took BART all the way across the bay to Berkeley, CA where I wondered around the UC Berkeley campus; definitely looks like a very nice college town and UC Berkeley's campus was beautiful.

Early in the morning I checked out of the hostel and began a long walk down to the Caltrain station in SOMA. Along the way I walked past the Moscone Center (big convention center with a tech history) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (which opened too late for me to check out). While waiting for my train, I had an outstanding cup of coffee at "Philz Coffee" which is rather infamous in San Francisco, getting it's start in the Mission but now with multiple locations in the bay area. Newcomers to San Francisco with a passion for coffee should definitely check out this place - it's like nothing else.

The train ride down to Mountainview took well over an hour since Caltrain "bullet" trains don't operate on weekends, but it was nice to catch a glimpse of each little town in the valley. Upon arriving in Mountain View I met up with my friend Greg and we walked through the Art & Wine festival which took up the entire length of Castro street (main drag in Mountain View). He gave me a tour of the Mozilla office in downtown Mountain View and we ate lunch at the Tied House microbrewery.

I then left Mountain View and took Caltrain up to Palo Alto, a place I remember as being extra special last time I was in the area. I walked up and down University Ave and stopped in at "Cafe del Doge", an interesting cafe where they take espresso *very* seriously - all of their drinks are arranged and mixed like cocktails (see picture of mine). I had also planned on touring the Stanford campus but it was extremely hot out and I was already tired, so I just took Caltrain/BART back to SFO. Only when I got there did I realize the free internet is only for 45 minutes.. oh well!