San Francisco, California

San Francisco Love Parade, September 2007

Continuing our year of festivals, we traveled to San Francisco for the Love Parade, an outdoor electronic music festival which started in Berlin and moved to San Fran a few years ago. After our 6 hour flight from Miami (same as flying to Europe), we were picked up at the airport by a friend and drove over the Golden Gate bridge to their house in Marin for dinner before checking in to our hotel in the Financial District.

San Francisco neighborhoods: Fisherman's Wharf, Financial District, North Beach

We wanted to spend a few free days just to see the city since it was our first time here. The weather is great here in the fall and there was a lot going on. The city is a combination of the best of many things, panoramic views, unique neighborhoods, and amazing food. On our first morning, we jogged along the bay, seeing the ferry buildings, fisherman's wharf, and the old buildings along the water. By fisherman's wharf we heard the barking of animals and came upon pier 39, which has been taken over by dozens of seals since the 1989 earthquake. For lunch we walked to Chinatown and walked into a dim sum restaurant, Y. Ben House. It was a huge room packed with dozens of tables and hundreds of people eating. We found a table amid the noise and realized we were the only non-Asians in the restaurant- a very good sign of how the food would taste! Servers were pushing carts piled high with plates of food and offering us everything on them. We couldn't identify most of the plates, but our table was soon full of them anyway. We identified a few simple things like potstickers, but didn't know other items at all. It tasted good anyway- it was by far the best Asian food we've had and our bill at the end was only $10! We then walked along Columbus street in North Beach and went to Asia de Cuba at the Clift Hotel in Union Square for dinner that night. One thing we noticed about San Francisco, the computer nerds are definitely in style and it's funny seeing everyone get drunk as skunks early in the evening because the bars close so early here.

We went to the weekend farmer's market at the ferry building the next morning to see the selection of organic produce, goat cheese, and of course, grapes grown nearby. We took a ferry boat to Sausalito, a small town on the water just across the bay from downtown and near the other end of the Golden Gate Bridge. Sausalito is considered a top romantic spot due to its views of the San Francisco skyline and the boat ride through the bay and past Alcatraz on the way there.

The Love Parade was held in a huge square by the Civic Center. There were floats created on the back of eighteen wheelers parked all around the square with DJs and dancers on each one. Over 70,000 people were there, with the only common theme being to wear something crazy. The next day we walked to the Folsom Street Fair, with the same theme, except with less wearing of anything at all. The Folsom Fair is an interesting street festival in the gay and lesbian neighborhood near Castro.

For our last dinner, we went to the famous Stinking Rose restaraunt which serves customers 30,000 pounds of garlic a month! No worries about vampires here, as we ate about 20 cloves of roasted garlic alone for our appetizer with bread and then shared two tremendous pasta dishes.

Can't wait to go back, San Francisco is a fun city with the activity of a New York or Chicago, but small enough to walk around its unique neighboorhoods.